Angular - getting data with a factory - angularjs

Question

I'm modifying the way an app gets it's data.
The app originally got data on the page load like this
<script>
var entries = <?php echo $this->entriesData; ?>;
</script>
and then in the angular controller
$scope.entries = entries;
Requirements changed so that a user would be able to go forward or backward one week so I added a factory to the app that is supposed to load the data when the page loads and then refresh the data when changeweek() is fired. According to the console the factory (loadData) fires when the page loads and then again on changeweek() and data comes down from the server as expected. The problem is that the view doesn't display the data. I'm assuming that I'm not returning the data to the $scope.entries correctly. Help please!
var timeEntry = angular.module('timeEntry', ['ui.select2']);
timeEntry.factory('loadData', function($http){
var url = 'index/getentries';
var returnData = '';
var factory = {};
factory.getData = function(sDate, eDate){
$.post(url, {week_start: sDate, week_end: eDate})
.done(function(json, textStatus){
if (textStatus === 'success') {
returnData = json;
}else{
// handle fail
}
})
.fail(function(){})
.always(function(){});
return returnData;
};
return factory;
});
timeEntry.controller('timeEntryController', ['$scope','loadData', function ($scope, loadData) {
$scope.loading = true;
$scope.date = [];
$scope.date.start = startDate;
$scope.date.end = endDate;
$scope.entries = loadData.getData($scope.date.start, $scope.date.end);
$scope.weekTotal = 0;
$scope.timeEntryError = [];
$scope.$watch('entries', function(newNames, oldNames) {
$scope.dataCount = newNames.length;
$scope.timeEntryError = [];
calculateTotals();
checkDayHours();
checkSpecialDays();
}, true);
$scope.changeWeek = function(change) {
sdate = moment($scope.date.start);
edate = moment($scope.date.end);
$scope.date.start = sdate.add(moment.duration(change, 'week')).format('YYYY-MM-DD');
$scope.date.end = edate.add(moment.duration(change, 'week')).format('YYYY-MM-DD');
$scope.entries = loadData.getData();
};
}]);