ProjectDetail.com: Behind the scenes

ChronoPipe Update coming soon...

cbusse — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 23:11:50 -0400

Intuit has released a new SDK for QuickBooks and I'm working to release an updated version of ChronoPipe that should fix some of the bugs and odd QuickBooks version compatibility issues some people have reported, as well as add a couple of new features.

Work on the next phase of Ascender has begun

cbusse — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 18:55:47 -0400

Here's a screen shot of the working prototype Budget vs. Actual report, which will be the next report added to Ascender. Initially, it will look for Basecamp To Do Items with "[budget=#]" at the end and use that as the budget amount:

Accessing the Basecamp API with Excel / VBA

cbusse — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 00:53:02 -0400

I had made an offhand comment on the Basecamp forum a few months ago that I had a working example of an Excel document that accessed the Basecamp API directly.

Well, it took me a while to get around to cleaning it up and commenting the code, but here it is. It is still a rough, but it works if you treat it gently. Mostly I wanted to show how it could be done. When you open it, you'll need to "Enable Macros" to make it work.

This example only reads from the API -- I have an idea for something that will write to the API in the near future.

Download BCInvoiceGen_0.1.xls

37Signals covered in Time: Let the rumors begin!

cbusse — Fri, 18 May 2007 08:36:03 -0400

In today's (May 17) issue of Time Magazine there is an article on 37Signals titled "Small is Essential" (In which I'm briefly quoted).

Anyway, what I found really interesting was that at the end, when asked what they were going to be working on next, Jason says "Possibly financial software" -- given all the rumors and expectations prior to the Highrise launch, I can't wait to see what comes of this!

ChronoPipe mentioned on the new 37Signals product blog

cbusse — Tue, 15 May 2007 22:47:53 -0400

37Signals launched a new product blog today and when it went up, a post about ChronoPipe was at the top of the page -- thanks guys!

Use Ascender to create Basecamp Milestone reports

cbusse — Tue, 15 May 2007 22:36:23 -0400

I'm working on a reporting and utility suite for Basecamp called "Ascender" at http://www.UseAscender.com -- I gave the home page of that site a bit of a face lift tonight.

Right now you can generate a very useful report of all your Milestones for 2007 across a particular month span.

I have two additional reports in development as well. One a Trac-like project roadmap report, and the other is a slightly modified implementation of a report that some might consider unholy for Basecamp -- but I think I've come up with an elegant way to handle it that doesn't stray too far from what Basecamp is all about.

What reports would you like to see developed for Basecamp?

ChronoPipe workflow: How we billed our clients this month

cbusse — Wed, 09 May 2007 14:33:15 -0400

This month I used ChronoPipe for the first time at MemberPath to bill our clients without giving in to the temptation to make some tweak or change to the source code.

Here's the workflow I'm using:

1. In Basecamp, click on the Time tab from the Dashboard.

2. Run a report of Everyone's hours for the past month and print it out.

3. Go through the report noting who should be billed and who had prepaid their time, as well as verifying that the time entries looked generally correct.

4. Use ChronoPipe to import the time on projects that needed to be billed to QuickBooks.

5. Run invoices out of QuickBooks!

New Screencast: In-depth ChronoPipe Tutorial

cbusse — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 23:36:24 -0400

Tonight I recorded a new screencast, an 18 minute ChronoPipe tutorial showing detail on:

Matching names between Basecamp and QuickBooks (setup and execution)
Matching To Do Items in Basecamp to Service Items in QuickBooks (setup and execution)
The ease of Time Invoicing and Reporting in QuickBooks
A few other tips & tricks for using ChronoPipe

This tutorial should be useful to anyone who is setting up their QuickBooks to work with ChronoPipe and Basecamp, or maybe a Basecamp user who isn't using QuickBooks, but would like to see what they can gain by choosing it as their accounting solution.

http://www.choronopipe.com/tutorial

ChronoPipe, 2 days after release

cbusse — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 23:17:47 -0400

Wow, the response I've been getting to ChronoPipe has definitely reaffirmed that all the effort I've put in to it has been worth it!

As far as initial post-launch issues go, there seems to have only been one major problem that manifested itself in about four ways. Thankfully it had nothing to do with the actual import of data from Basecamp to QuickBooks.

It turns out that Windows Vista ships with a new version of Microsoft's Core XML Services , a version 6.0 (MSXML6). It seems that some Windows 2000 and Windows XP computers have MSXML6 already installed, while others have the MSXML3 and/or MSXML4 versions.

So, in my efforts to make it compatible with Windows Vista, I created installation headaches for some people on 2000 and XP.

Late last night I released an update to ChronoPipe, (1.0.1) and split the installer into two versions, a Vista and non-Vista version. That's when I found that some people on XP and 2000 had the MSXML6 already and they needed to use the "Vista" installer for ChronoPipe which just caused more confusion.

Tonight I released another update to ChronoPipe (1.0.2) and have gone back to the one installer that does not attempt to install MSXML6, but I added a feature to ChonoPipe that will detect whether or not the computer needs the MSXML6 update and then instruct the user how to easily get it.

I also updated the download page with some text to prepare the user for this possibility.

Hopefully this will be all there is in the way of major issues and I can get back to work adding some neat features I have planned and working on some screencast tutorials going into more depth on how to categorize time, and what kind of reports you can get from QuickBooks once your time is in there

And most of all, I want to say THANK YOU to everyone who has tried ChronoPipe already and especially those who've run in to issues -- you've all been very patient and helpful while we work out these initial kinks and I really appreciate it!

Basecamp and QuickBooks, together at last!

cbusse — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 01:58:55 -0400

After several months and many late nights or programming I am happy to announce that ChronoPipe is available for download!

ChronoPipe is a utility that enables you to import time entries from Basecamp in to QuickBooks. From there you can generate invoices, payroll, and all sorts of reports.

My company has been using it for several months to generate detailed invoices for our clients and it has proven to be a huge time saver. I hope that the synergy of using Basecamp and QuickBooks together will be just as helpful to your organization!