Hi,

I tried most of them. You name it. Cashboard, SimplifyThis, SimplyInvoice… they all don’t meet my expectation. Maybe you can recommend something to me. What I am looking for is:

• Integration into Basecamp, e.g. invoice customers based on BC to-dos and projects. Ideally also import client data.

• Write estimates and proposals, e.g. pricing information. For servies as well as products.

• Be able to customize the invoice and estimate letters, including field names, so that I am able to translate them into another language (I have to send invoices in german).

I know Cashboard is probably the closest thing, but I don’t like the way you customize your invoice and estimate templates. You have to know HTML, CSS and what not and you don’t even have a preview of what you just changed. Also, Cashboard’s user interface and workflow doesn’t really seem to be very logic, short, I don’t like it and it’s probably out of the game until they change their invoice/estimate customization to something a stupid end user like me can use.

Any ideas or recommendation would be greatly welcome!

Thanks

Have you tried Freshbooks, I use that with my BC account. It pretty much does everything you just asked. You may want to ask them about the custom invoices though.

Yes. Tried Freshbooks as well. No custom invoices possible.

Have you tried Blinksale?

Harvest?

We download our times and everything else into an Access database using the basecamp xml backup. We then generate invoices into excel templates (one for each project) and date stamp each time record. Works fine www.thicktoast.com but this is just for downloads (and has nothing to do with 37signals). We produce Access Todo reports and all related times are shown on these. Pretty complex but runs like a dream.

I second the Harvest solution. Though not under “invoice” section in the BaseCamp list of recommended products, it should be.

There are a variety of third-party invoicing/billing apps that work with Basecamp:
http://www.basecamphq.com/extras

They all suck (in one way or another)... we’re rolling our own.