Introducing Basecamp With Your FreshBooks
Today, FreshBooks is pleased to annouce our integration with 37signals’ Basecamp project management service. You can now invoice your Basecamp projects using FreshBooks. The truth is, you can do a fair bit more than that. Please read on.
What You Should Know
This integration does *not* cover every possible workflow scenario. We have had to make a lot of tough choices in designing our integration. To make decisions we said to ourselves, “What do most people need?” We came up with two scenarios:
1) Basecamp customers need to generate an invoice for Basecamp projects based on their time entries and/or their To-Do lists.
[Watch a Screencast of Option 1]
2) Basecamp customers want to import projects into FreshBooks where they can use them to track time. In this scenario your Basecamp project becomes a FreshBooks project and when you create To-Dos in Basecamp, your To-Dos will appear in FreshBooks as tasks. Then, whenever you want, you can invoice for your project like a normal FreshBooks project.
[Watch a Screencast of Option 2]
We figure these two scenarios will cover at least 80% of the people who want to use the two services together.
In deciding to carry forward with these two use cases, we decided on a “just make it work” philosophy. To this end, we decided that people can only track their time in FreshBooks OR Basecamp – NOT both at the same time. We wrestled with this one and came to the conclusion that it’s a business process issue, not something we should solve by synching the data. 99% of teams will use one tool or the other – not both – to track their time.
How It Works For…
1) Basecamp users who just need to generate an invoice
To create an invoice, you need to enter your Basecamp credentials in FreshBooks from the “Import/Export” link on the “Home” tab of your FreshBooks account. Then, when you go to the “New invoice” page in FreshBooks AND we see you have Basecamp API credentials, you will be asked if you want to invoice for a Basecamp project. Relatively straight forward. I should add that you can import people from your Basecamp account and identify them as clients or staff, both or neither, for use in your FreshBooks environment. You will not need to import your Basecamp projects in this scenario, they will be presented to you when you want to create an invoice.
[Watch a Screencast of Option 1]
2) Basecamp users who want to track time using FreshBooks
For those of you who want to track your time in FreshBooks, but collaborate on your projects in Basecamp, we designed another scenario that allows you to manage to-dos in Basecamp that will appear in real time as tasks in FreshBooks timesheets. The use case here is you can still use to-do lists to assign work. Your staff will then have those To-Dos available in their timesheets in FreshBooks so you can take advantage of our start-stop timer and timesheet management capabilities (there is a screencast of FreshBooks’ time tracking service here). Once you are done your project or completed some period of work (let’s say a month), you can simply invoice your project in FreshBooks like normal. Again, you must track your time in FreshBooks OR Basecamp…either or, not both. You decide.
[Watch a Screencast of Option 2]
Wrap Up
That’s about it. We have two screencasts – one of each scenario – that I’ll be posting later today [note: I have added them above]. Stay tuned (here is our RSS feed) and please let us know how the integration is working for you and what you might want to see in the future.
[note: a weird thing happened at the end of yesterday and this post was saved as "private" which means it effectively disappeared for anyone who was trying to view it. Sorry about that; I'm looking into it and the truth is I'm probably the culprit. - Mike]
Copyright © 2000-2010
11:00 am
Thank you! I’ve been looking forward to this integration and it’s a major reason why I switched to FreshBooks at the beginning of this year. I’m so glad Basecamp integration is here. – Donovan
11:01 am
Thanks Donovan – we’re glad you’re glad
2:00 pm
[...] just announced that they’ve added Basecamp Integration into their popular online invoicing and time tracking [...]
2:07 pm
Looks great. One thing I noticed upon attempting to import contacts — FB is importing everyone from one company with the same email address.
2:22 pm
You’ve been dugg, (by me!) http://digg.com/software/FreshBooks_now_integrates_with_Basecamp
2:33 pm
Hi Jamie,
Thanks a lot for the heads up. So you know, if you imported the contact to your staff, it comes in with the proper email, it was just showing up on the screen incorrectly. It should be all fixed now.
Thanks again,
- Levi
3:03 pm
[...] Freshbooks, the online billing system announced that you can now bill and share data with your Basecamp account. This is a long anticpated [...]
9:28 am
[...] one of two use cases, and together we anticipate they will address 80% of peoples needs. Go here to learn more about the use cases. I also added a third screen cast (which is a little long, but more detailed) which describes [...]
10:35 am
Though I don’t use Basecamp often, this is a nice added feature. Just too bad I didn’t wait another week to upgrade, I could have taken advantage of the excellent promo code I received via email yesterday.
2:01 pm
There is a nice “Basecamp FAQ” thread going in the forum right now. Feel free to drop by and join in the thread.
2:32 pm
[...] the Freshbooks’ blog entry, we learn that they believe this will satisfy 80% of people’s needs who use both the [...]
11:00 pm
Week in Review (25 Feb – 3 Mar 2007)…
No internet at home for over a week now. Really not coping here!
Development
Jeff Atwood laments the quality of programmers, while Phil Haack laments the quality of Jeff’s commenters.
Long Zeng has a very interesting article on the new Use…
12:22 pm
[...] your 37Signals’ Basecamp projects using FreshBooks. Especially helpful for Web Worker crowd. More details and screen casts here. Sphere Topic: The Daily | Tags: 37Signals, Basecamp, [...]
2:01 pm
[...] just got a whole lot fresher. FreshBooks, the online invoicing and time tracking tool, has just announced that they have integrated with [...]
12:15 am
I cannot express how great I am for this integration!!!!!!!!!!
W A Y T O G O !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
figgy.
3:33 pm
[...] a little CSS and a .gif image with some transparency. I recently used this technique on our new Basecamp integration screens in our application. See the example [...]
7:07 pm
Week in Review (4-10 Mar 2007)…
Finally got my internet connection back up!
Development
Following on from all that Fizz-Buzz discussion last week, Phil Haack looks as recursion vs using stacks and why recursion isn’t always the best solution.
Jeff Atwood looks at using Am…
1:11 pm
[...] on how we consume video content for years. Start up Fresh Books is also taking this same type of partnership model to heart as they announced integration with Basecamp which proves that solving a simple business problem is one of the keys to [...]
2:19 pm
[...] considering whether we should build the integration of FreshBooks with Basecamp, there were a few questions all of us here wanted answered before [...]
6:34 pm
FreshBooks For Web Invoices …
What are some good invoicing applications to use? A friend of mine recently asked me this very question and I surprisingly drew a blank. So I made it my mission to seek out an anwser. FreshBooks, a Toronto-based startup, offers…
8:10 am
[...] FreshBooks [...]
5:33 am
I very like what is happening now. You get one genuine app – Basecamp – and others are attracted to it. So you can get amazing suits to run your company. Just add great Freshbooks to Basecamp and you get a general pro. company starter kit. AddSpringloops that also integrates with Basecamp and you get with those three professional kit for a web development shop. Web 2.0 rocks!
5:19 pm
[...] FreshBooks integrates with Basecamp for generating invoices, tracking time, [...]
7:26 pm
[...] FreshBooks integrates with Basecamp for generating invoices, tracking time, [...]
4:05 pm
[...] Introducing Basecamp With Your FreshBooks (tags: basecamp productivity finance) Leave a Reply [...]
3:28 am
“Hello!
Our company develop the synchronization between FreshBooks and MS Outlook. GrabSync FreshBooks plugin makes it easy to import and invoice your clients and customers from MS Outlook without having to re-enter their data into FreshBooks.
I hope that it would be useful for you.
To learn more, please follow the link: http://www.grabsync.com/freshbooks/
or you can Email me personally: venera@grabsync.com
Thank you
“
1:28 pm
[...] up with your favorite productivity tool or desktop widget. (Tip: We’ve already integrated Basecamp! Maybe you want to integrate with some of the other great services out there.) Stuck with [...]
12:19 pm
[...] apps that all have interfaces and api’s, I believe he could be right! (think about freshbooks invoicing data that was written in [...]
4:27 pm
[...] mark that the balance was paid, how they paid it and see when it was paid. Pretty snazzy. It also ties in nicely with Basecamp (another freelancer fave) filling the invoicing gap that still exists in that [...]
5:51 pm
[...] FreshBooks anounced integration to BaseCamp for easy invoicing. This “Graduate Circle” sponsor could also wear the SES label:-) It’s really promising to see more and more integration within the Office 2.0 ecosystem. [...]
10:14 pm
This is very hopeful, I’m happy to see the integration because I’ve been using both programs separately for some time now.
Any hopes for invoicing NOT based on time? I don’t charge an hourly rate, always quote flat rates for all of my projects, so I’m still not able to use this. I’d really like to just see a way to send an invoice based on a Milestone, rather than keeping track of time spent, otherwise my projects would be all over the place.
Thanks!
10:18 pm
OH! I see, I was trying to import from within my FreshBooks instead of my account here, but I watched the video and see my error. Thanks!
8:06 am
[...] have just announced that they’ve added Basecamp integration to their system. The screencasts show a fairly seamless integration but I’m probably going to [...]
11:55 am
Any chance you would be doing the same thing with Highrise? Maybe it wouldn’t work as well, but I do see a connection between those using Highrise and invoicing Sales they have generated through their CRM
9:11 pm
Once you’ve logged time into Basecamp, how long does it take for the time entries to show up in Freshbooks?
Does Freshbooks automatically check Basecamp on a particular schedule? If so, how often?
8:11 am
@john – on demand. Every time you choose a project, we check basecamp for tasks.
11:15 am
[...] Pro Tip: Add extra functionality to your Basecamp environment or integrate it with your existing systems in the extras and add-ons department. For example if you use Freshbooks, you can even invoice your Basecamp projects via Freshbooks. [...]
4:54 pm
[...] Pro Tip: Add extra functionality to your Basecamp environment or integrate it with your existing systems in the extras and add-ons department. For example if you use Freshbooks, you can even invoice your Basecamp projects via Freshbooks. [...]
4:59 pm
[...] Pro Tip: Add extra functionality to your Basecamp environment or integrate it with your existing systems in the extras and add-ons department. For example if you use Freshbooks, you can even invoice your Basecamp projects via Freshbooks. [...]
5:32 am
[...] Pro Tip: Add extra functionality to your Basecamp environment or integrate it with your existing systems in the extras and add-ons department. For example if you use Freshbooks, you can even invoice your Basecamp projects via Freshbooks. [...]
5:35 am
[...] Pro Tip: Add extra functionality to your Basecamp environment or integrate it with your existing systems in the extras and add-ons department. For example if you use Freshbooks, you can even invoice your Basecamp projects via Freshbooks. [...]
5:44 am
[...] Pro Tip: Add extra functionality to your Basecamp environment or integrate it with your existing systems in the extras and add-ons department. For example if you use Freshbooks, you can even invoice your Basecamp projects via Freshbooks. [...]
4:03 pm
[...] Pro Tip: Add extra functionality to your Basecamp environment or integrate it with your existing systems in the extras and add-ons department. For example if you use Freshbooks, you can even invoice your Basecamp projects via Freshbooks. [...]
7:45 am
Hey All
I have been using the services of http://www.invoicera.com for quite sometime now and they are coming up with the new Invoicera with features like time-tracking, expense tracking, import function, and much more. Check out their blog at http://www.invoicera.com/blog for updates
Cheers!!!
4:06 am
[...] Важный совет: Попробуйте дополнить ваше окружение Basecamp или интегрировать его с другими системами, используя раздел аддонов и дополнений. Например, если вы используете Freshbook, вы можете выписать счет на Basecamp через Freshbooks. [...]