My situation currently is thus:

• I have a small (read: micro) web design business, which is really just me + contractors
• We’re all on macs
• We’ve been using a nifty little app called Project Calculator to track our time (not particularly accurately either, I might add… we miss a lot)
• I don’t have (nor really want) a laptop, and sometimes need to commandeer on-site machines for demos etc when I’m not in my office
• My contractors email me their hours, exported from Project Calculator as a PDF
• I don’t really have much time on my hands to follow things up/tabulate/calculate stuff
• We’re on the Basic plan at the moment for Basecamp

So basically, I’m looking for a better time tracking arrangement. I’d like to use Basecamp’s, because it’s then in the same spot as where I spend a good portion of my day. I’m not overly concerned about the jump in price, because I know how much time I’ll save in the end by doing it in a centralised way.

(At this point in the saga, it probably looks like I’ve made up my mind… not so!)

I’ve tested other web-based time tracking apps (Harvest etc) and they never really grabbed me. One thing I find about testing for something like time tracking though, is that if you only go as far as fiddling with it (the app/solution) you never get a feel for whether or not it’s working. True fact.

I’m really interested in responses (if I may be so bold to ask) from people who are using/have used Basecamp’s time tracking feature.

Why do you like it? Is there anything specific about it that helps/hinders managing your time?

[As someone who is usually in the opposite position to the one I’m in now (replying to posts rather than starting them), this is all somewhat nerve wracking.]

Big ups in advance.

John,

May not be the answer you want be we have used Harvest for a year now. We tried several apps and, like you, struggled a bit to get ‘hooked in’. However, having used it now for some 500 projects spread across a team of 6 in different locations I am a big fan.

The Basecamp system looks good but we like Harvest as it actually does all the calcs and reports for you, contractors submit timesheets to you, it is SAAS so access anywhere. The main thing is that you simply clock on to a project and it adds up the time spent. As far as I can see, with basecamp, you have to monitor the time elsewhere or simply guesstimate.

We’re using Basecamp’s time tracking. As usual for 37s, it’s basic, it doesn’t have nearly all the features dedicated time tracking systems have, but for me it delivers enough of what I need to get the job done. All the actual reporting, though, happens outside of Basecamp (in Excel.) To answer your questions directly: I like that fact that’s it’s integrated with the rest of our project tracking. Don’t like the limited reporting functionality.

rich: Thanks! Definitely interested to hear about good experiences with similar apps, for sure. I’m not ruling out trying Harvest (price is the same, but looks like the feature set is a bit more advanced). 500 is a pretty huge number of projects to send through a system and still be happy with it, so that definitely makes an impression. Cheers.

Mike: Awesome. That’s pretty much what I figured… Now that I think about it, I would love to have snapshot reporting when I need it without having to export etc. Thanks very much for responding.

I use tickspot.com. I use its dashboard widget as a timer and after completion of a task as a quick way of logging the time into the system.

John—one of my particular dislikes is the lack of any ability to save reports. So I’m adding hours to a project which gets billed monthly, I like to see the current months report. Because our ‘months’ start on a Monday and finish on a Friday, it’s not as simple as creating a report from the 1st to the last day of the month. As it is, I have to create these reports every time. It’s not a big deal, but it’s repetitiive… and the whole idea is that the computer does the repetitive stuff for me!

For me, Timepost works well for tracking hours, better than tickspot or harvest.

But I’m still looking for a good solution for generating/tracking invoices…
I’ve considered using BlinkSale, but I’m haven’t been excited enough about it to move my invoices out of Studiometry yet.

My company runs the same as yours (me and contractors). Tickspot.com is awesome. Spend a little time using it and you will see just how granular you can get if you really like or simply have people log in their tasks and hours straight away. The interface is great as well. I would have a hellava time tracking hours without it.

Right now I use Billings. If I had todos integrated with time tracking in a way that didn’t suck, that would be cool. Basecamp looks like it would do the trick, too.

There’s one problem, though. For someone who just does projects on the side instead of full time, $50/month is ridiculously expensive.

I use Actytime (http://www.actimind.com/) and I find it very usefull and easy to control.

We use Harvest. Over 200 projects to manage from several Basecamps. We like it.

Before we used http://www.myhours.com
The nice concept about myhours is that your contractor can have his own environment – track ALL his hours for different clients and point to your projects when needed.
For the moment it is still free.
In the future only the accounts that give outside access need to pay.

Interface is not as sexy as Harvest but it works

We use the time tracking function. It is a bit of a pain to export to a CSV file, then clean up and make pretty to show the client. But I like having my sub-contractors and employees use the Basecamp time tracking tool because it allows me to quickly glance at a project and see how many hours we have in on it (and who’s doing what). It’s also nice to use the to-do/time tracking feature (you have to turn this on when you create to-do lists).

I just downloaded Avalanche and will see how well that supports our time tracking.

I us the time tracking feature in basecamp along with Avalanche. I love the combo, because Avalance helps me time on my desktop and then I can save right to basecamp, when I’m done with the work. I don’t even have to open basecamp to do it.

My subs don’t use avalanche. They all tend to have their own timing programs, so they just copy and paste into basecamp. That’s the tough part. If there were a timer like Avalanche IN Basecamp, my subs might use it and they wouldn’t miss any time they spent. I can’t have them forgetting 15 mins. in basecamp, because then I can’t bill for it.

Create a great day!
Kristen

we use Basecamp time tracking as it’s unobtrusive to the studio staff, we built our own management reporting tool for getting an overview of the data which we’re in the process of turning into a public application at http://www.bctoolkit.com