I am trying to create a time report as of Oct 1 2007 but each attempt only gets data from Nov 3 2007 and nothing before that date.

Time tracking reports are limited to 6-month date ranges. You can run as many reports as you’d like, but you can only pull 6 months worth of time data at once. If you need to pull 12 months, then just run two 6-month reports back to back.

Argh! You beat me to it. I just found the details for that here http://www.basecamphq.com/help/time/#time_cut_off

Please consider putting that in the interface in some way. I understand that there may be good reasons for it, but as a user that’s not a conclusion I would automatically assume.