Hi,

I’m currently using Basecamp for tracking and communications in a collaborative project – it works quite well.

As the project is government-backed, it will be important to track everyone’s time spent on the project. I don’t need to do this for a couple of months, and had planned to upgrade to include that feature – however am I correct in thinking that time tracking is not available to client companies? Would they all need to be made members of my company????

Keith

That is correct—time tracking is only available to the people in your company.

Why?

Yeah, why? What’s the point then? That’s not very ‘collaboratively’.

In this crazy mixed-up world of contractors, subcontractors, sub-subcontractors, development partners, and so forth, allowing people from other companies to log time would be a massive improvement to Basecamp.

I use Basecamp to log time, and then I use that data to both pay my contractors and bill clients. But when my “contractors” are actually companies with multiple employees, this system falls apart.

Our workarounds are either to —treat the entire subcontractor company as one “employee” of my company…but then we can’t use To-Do lists to delegate tasks to individuals… or —make each individual an employee of my company…but then it’s really hard to filter out the subcontractor company’s people’s hours for billing.

The To-Do lists with Time Tracking are so elegant, I wish I could use them for my entire business! I hope you’ll consider adding this feature.

Meanwhile, if you have any suggestions for me I would appreacite your help!

Veronica

I concur with everyone’s sentiments. Any word on if this feature may happen?

3 months and no feedback. This RFE forum is really quite frustrating. Lots of passionate Basecamp users offering up valuable suggestions and very little feedback from 37 Signals. I understand the need to avoid feature creep. And I understand the desire to avoid turning future development into an open debate. But the silence alienates people … well, at least me ;-)

Hence the title “Customer Forum”... This forum is for us, not them. The fact that they contribute at all surprises me.

We continue to look into ways to open up all Basecamp’s features more. But at the same time, we also have to be sure that the original firm/client setup works well. Most consulting companies don’t want their clients to see the time reports directly and that was the original target for the time tracking feature. But we’re thinking about ways we could allow for both ways of operation. I can’t promise when/if/how, though.

Also, we do read every post in the forums, but we don’t always have time (or that interesting information) to reply.

Add me to the list of users eagerly awaiting this feature, surely its just a matter of adding a options under the main admin/company settings to ‘Allow Time Tracking for outside companies’.

“Most consulting companies don’t want their clients to see the time reports directly and that was the original target for the time tracking feature.”
Check the People & Permisson tab. There is a “Change what people can do”. This feature fits there perfectly.

Dear All,
the most time consuming and annoying task for me is moving all people that work in a specific project to my “own company” just to allow them to track time. And back afterwards, when the project is over.

Please, please, please!! Allow time tracking as a switch for all members of a project. It could be so easy. Time tracking could be something that could be allowed like adding milestones or todos. Why does it have to be so hard to effectively use ist?

I have a small company but work with a dozen other small companys on big projects. All of them are in my Basecamp but we never can keep track of the time spent by the project as a whole.

Please think of it.
And: many thanks to making moving between companys possible. That helps a lot.

yes, i also desperately need that too!

Why not allow the admin to select – across the board from internal to client – who sees TimeTracking and on what projects? It would clear up any debate because it’s in the users hands to define how basecamp features will be used.

Remember also that in the current configuration that timetracking entries can be deleted or altered by anyone who belongs to your company. This is why we take regular xml backup downloads and convert them to MS Access becuase if someone deletes a 8 hour day, that is as much as I pay basecamp for a year in lost revenue.

Now if you add other companies to the mix, that deletion option becomes a little hand grenade.

Garry Robinson

Definitely need the ability to have external companies track time. Initially, “companies” was assumed to be clients, but it is clear that this now includes the whole gamut – clients, subcontractors, suppliers, etc… among with a wide variety of relationships.

In some cases, I have been contracted by a client to manage their internal team – so I was shocked to learn that I could not track their time with my own BC account. Instead, I had to set up a separate account just for that client, and re-enter all of the project details. Not a good day for usability.

I understand the developers interest in keeping features to an essential minimum. However I don’t see this as a feature request – permissions control are not a feature – they are just a necessity that we take for granted, and are dumfounded when we find they are not there.

I agree that the ability to edit time entries can be a potential issue. This could be solved by allowing administrators to “freeze” time tracking data as needed, or to have it freeze automatically after a while – 1 week, 2 weeks, etc…

They finally did add a “Change Permissions” control to include Messages, To-Dos, and Milestones, so let’s hope time tracking is coming…

I agree completely with the posts before me.

I purchased the Plus package for the sole purpose of the “Time Tracking”, however I am disappointed to learn that I had to move the subcontractor to my own company in order for them to actually track their time! This causes a serious problem because now any items I have marked as Private they can now see.

I’m sure I’m not the first to also email support about this; and hopefully they will start listening to their customer base. I don’t see any point in rolling out features like this if they don’t roll them out in a useful fashion.

Consider this additional support for wanting to be able to time track on people not in our company. Moving these people to our company listing in order to do so causes many more problems.

+1

I’m having the same problem as pop10

Please consider fixing this issue.

I’m feeling a little bit tricked. I just payed an account and… If I/we can’t track time for people outside the company Basecamp is absolutely useless. Please 37 signals, start listen to the consumers!