Blog › Tools comparison

Basecamp vs. HourTab for retainer client hours visibility

July 11, 2026 · ~13 min read

Basecamp is the project management tool of choice for thousands of small agencies, studios, and boutique shops. Its opinionated, calm-first philosophy — one central place for messages, to-dos, files, and team communication, without the noise of Jira or the sprawl of Notion — makes it a natural fit for creative and development agencies running multiple client projects simultaneously.

One of Basecamp’s best features for agency-client relationships is client access: you can add clients directly to their Basecamp project, and they can see the message board, to-do lists, file uploads, and team communication for their work. No separate client portal product required — client visibility is built into Basecamp’s project structure.

But here’s what Basecamp’s client view cannot show a client on a monthly retainer: how many hours they have left this billing cycle.

That’s not a knock on Basecamp. It’s by design. Basecamp has never been a time-tracking or billing tool. It manages project work — communication, tasks, files — not hours against a monthly cap. This post explains the structural gap, covers the time-tracking options that work alongside Basecamp, and shows how Basecamp and HourTab fit together for agencies billing clients on monthly retainers.

What Basecamp’s client view actually shows

When a client is added to a Basecamp project, they get access to a subset of the project’s tools — specifically the tools the agency has chosen to make client-visible. Basecamp lets teams configure which tools are for the team only and which are visible to the client.

In a typical agency setup, clients can see:

Message Board: threads where the agency posts updates, the client can reply, and both sides can see the conversation history. Many agencies use this for sprint updates, deliverable reviews, and change requests.

To-dos: task lists that can be shared with the client. The client can see what’s in progress, what’s been completed, and what’s coming up. Some agencies give clients the ability to add tasks directly; others keep to-dos view-only.

Files & Docs: uploaded files and documents. Deliverables, design assets, contracts, and other shared materials all live here.

Campfire: the group chat for real-time conversation. Some agencies enable this for client communication; others keep it internal.

What’s not in any of these views: time data. Basecamp has no time tracking. There is no hours-logged field, no timer, no timesheet, no report. The client’s Basecamp view is a window into the project work — what’s being done, what’s done, and what’s been communicated. It does not answer “how many of our 30 hours have been consumed this month?”

Basecamp has no time tracking — by design

37signals (Basecamp’s maker) has been explicit about this. Their product philosophy is to do fewer things, better. Basecamp is not trying to be an all-in-one business suite. It deliberately excludes features that other tools handle: no native invoicing, no CRM, no contract management, and no time tracking.

This is a genuine feature, not a gap. Agencies using Basecamp tend to be ones who appreciate focused tools and prefer to assemble their own stack rather than buy a bloated all-in-one. They use Basecamp for project communication, pick a separate time tracker for hours, and use a separate invoicing tool for billing.

The challenge arises specifically when that three-tool stack doesn’t include a way to give clients visibility into the hours part. The time tracker captures hours internally. The invoicing tool produces the monthly bill. But between those two touchpoints, the client has no window into their retainer balance.

The client on a monthly retainer needs to know their hours balance mid-cycle, not just at invoice time. They need it to make prioritization decisions: “We have 8 hours left — do we use them on the landing page revision or the blog post template?” That decision requires a number, and Basecamp can’t provide it because Basecamp doesn’t track hours.

Time tracking options that work with Basecamp

Since Basecamp doesn’t track time, agencies using Basecamp need a separate time tracker. The most commonly used options:

Harvest is probably the most natural fit for Basecamp agencies. Harvest has a documented integration (via Zapier or the Harvest + Basecamp connector) that can link time entries to Basecamp projects and to-dos. Developers or team members can log time in Harvest tagged to Basecamp projects, and Harvest generates billing reports by client/project. Harvest exports clean CSVs of time entries by date range and client.

Toggl Track works alongside Basecamp via a browser extension. The extension doesn’t pull Basecamp tasks directly, but the discipline of tagging time entries by client name in Toggl and using Toggl’s detailed report export gives you the same output: a CSV filtered by client and date range, ready for HourTab.

Clockify is a popular free option with similar functionality. The free tier has no seat limits, which is useful for agencies with multiple team members logging time to the same client project. Clockify exports detailed reports as CSV.

TimeDoctor is used by some larger agencies for workforce monitoring, but its primary direction (employer monitoring contractor productivity) is different from the freelancer-to-client transparency use case. Not ideal for small agencies doing creative or development work.

Any time tracker that lets you tag entries by client and export a CSV with columns for date, duration, and description can feed HourTab. The specific tool matters less than the discipline of logging every client-facing hour and exporting weekly.

The Basecamp client view vs. the retainer hours question

Let’s be concrete about why Basecamp’s client view — genuinely good as it is for project visibility — doesn’t answer the retainer hours question.

A client logs into their Basecamp project. They can see the message board with the last three project updates. They can see the to-do list, where six tasks are marked complete and three are in progress. They can see a file upload from yesterday with the revised wireframes. The project activity is clear. They can tell that work is happening.

What they cannot tell: whether that work consumed 4 hours of their 20-hour monthly retainer or 16 hours. The to-dos that were completed could have taken 2 hours each or 20 minutes each — Basecamp doesn’t record or display time. The client is informed about the project without being informed about their budget consumption.

This creates a specific decision paralysis: the client wants to add a new task (a quick change to the navigation, a new landing page section) but doesn’t know whether they have the hours to accommodate it this cycle. They don’t want to email and wait for a reply. They check Basecamp, see the project activity, and still have no answer. They email anyway.

HourTab gives the client the missing piece in the same no-friction format: a URL they can bookmark and check in under 10 seconds. No account. No login. Just the number: “14 of 20 hours used · 6 hours remain · resets August 1.” Below it, the work log lists each logged session with a date, duration, and description.

Now the client has complete information: Basecamp tells them what’s being done, HourTab tells them what their budget looks like. The “can we add this task?” question becomes a decision the client can make without involving the agency.

How agencies post hours updates in Basecamp today (and why it’s not enough)

Most agencies using Basecamp and running retainer clients handle hours visibility one of two ways:

Weekly status post: the account manager posts a message to the client’s Basecamp message board every Friday: “This week: 5.5 hours. Remaining in cycle: 10 hours.” This approach creates a useful cadence but has three limitations. First, it’s push-based: the client only gets the number when the agency sends it, not when they need it. Second, it requires manual effort from the account manager every week without exception — the week that gets skipped is the week the client emails to ask. Third, historical posts accumulate in the message board; when the client wants to check their current balance, they have to scroll through thread history to find the most recent update.

Pinned document or note: some agencies keep a Basecamp doc (in the Docs & Files section) that they update periodically with the current hours balance. This is better than weekly posts because the client has a single place to check. But it still requires manual updates, and a document that hasn’t been touched in two weeks feels stale. The client doesn’t know whether the number is current or from a prior update.

Both approaches work better than nothing, but both require ongoing manual effort that adds up across multiple clients. An agency with six retainer clients doing weekly Basecamp updates is spending 30–60 minutes per month per client on hours-status communication that could be automated with a weekly CSV upload.

HourTab doesn’t require updating a Basecamp post. The account manager exports the week’s time entries as a CSV from their tracker and uploads to HourTab. The client’s URL updates automatically with the latest balance. The client can check it any time — not just on Fridays when the account manager posts an update.

Basecamp + time tracker + HourTab: the complete agency stack

The setup for a Basecamp agency running monthly retainer clients:

Basecamp handles project communication and collaboration. Each client has their own Basecamp project with access to the tools you’ve enabled for them. Clients see messages, to-dos, files, and team updates. Internally, the team uses Basecamp’s Hill Charts, private to-do lists, and internal discussion threads.

A time tracker (Harvest, Toggl, Clockify) runs alongside. Every client-facing work session gets logged with a timer or manual entry, tagged to the correct client. The tracker is the internal record: it answers “how many hours did we work for ACME Corp this month?” for invoicing and capacity planning.

HourTab is the client-facing hours layer. Once a week, export a time tracker CSV filtered by client and current billing period. Upload to HourTab. HourTab recalculates the balance and the client’s URL updates. The client bookmarks the URL at retainer start and returns to it whenever they’re making a scope or prioritization decision.

When the new retainer month starts, the agency resets the HourTab retainer (or the system rolls over automatically) and the client’s URL shows the fresh 20-hour (or 30-hour, or whatever) balance. The cycle of visibility continues without any additional client communication needed.

Basecamp vs. HourTab: feature comparison

The Basecamp account requirement for clients

Every person who accesses a Basecamp project — including clients — needs a Basecamp account. For most agency clients, this is a reasonable ask and something they’re comfortable with — especially compared to the complexity of setting up access in Jira or Salesforce. Basecamp is generally perceived as a friendly, easy-to-use tool.

But not every retainer client will want to maintain a Basecamp account, especially for clients who work with multiple agencies. A client who collaborates with three different agencies might be managing accounts on Basecamp (one agency), Notion (another), and Asana (a third). Each account requires a login, notification management, and a context switch when checking on a specific agency’s project.

For the specific use case of checking retainer hours — a 10-second task that the client needs to do once or twice a month when making prioritization decisions — requiring a Basecamp login is more friction than the question deserves. A client who gets distracted setting up their Basecamp account or who can’t remember their password in the moment they need the number will email instead.

HourTab’s URL format removes this friction entirely. The client receives the URL once. They bookmark it. Checking their hours balance requires exactly one click — opening the bookmark — and zero authentication. There’s no Basecamp account to set up and no HourTab account for the client to create. The URL is the entire interface.

Which agencies benefit most from Basecamp + HourTab

The combination is particularly well-suited for:

Creative and development studios billing monthly retainers. A 3–8 person studio running 5–15 retainer clients lives in Basecamp for project work and needs a lightweight layer to give each client their hours balance without the overhead of a full client portal product. HourTab is that layer — one URL per client, updated weekly.

Freelancers who adopted Basecamp because their clients use it. Some freelancers have no strong tool preference and use Basecamp because their larger clients already have accounts and prefer working in a familiar environment. The freelancer manages their retainer relationship in Basecamp for communication but still needs to give the client a live hours view. HourTab doesn’t conflict with Basecamp — it adds the missing piece.

Agencies transitioning from spreadsheet-based hours tracking. Many small agencies track client hours in Google Sheets, shared with the client as a view-only link. This works but creates maintenance overhead and a fragile update dependency. The Basecamp + time tracker + HourTab stack replaces the spreadsheet with purpose-built tools that require less maintenance: Basecamp for communication, the time tracker for logging, HourTab for the client-facing balance.

FAQ

Can Basecamp track retainer hours for agency clients?

No. Basecamp has no time tracking. It manages project communication, tasks, and file sharing — not billable hours. Even with client access enabled, a Basecamp project shows the client what’s being done (messages, to-dos, updates) but has no view of how many hours have been consumed or how many remain in the current billing cycle. For retainer hours tracking and client-facing visibility, agencies using Basecamp need a separate time tracker and a tool like HourTab.

Does Basecamp have client access?

Yes. Basecamp lets you add clients to their project with access to the tools you configure as client-visible: message boards, to-do lists, file sharing, and Campfire chat. Clients can see project activity, contribute to discussions, and communicate with the agency team. What they cannot see is any hours data, because Basecamp has no time tracking. Project visibility and hours visibility require different tools.

What time tracking works with Basecamp?

The most common choices: Harvest (with a Basecamp integration via Zapier or the dedicated connector), Toggl Track (via browser extension with manual client tagging), and Clockify (free tier with multi-user support). All three export detailed CSVs of time entries by client and date range that can be uploaded to HourTab weekly to update the client’s hours balance URL.

Can clients see their retainer hours in Basecamp’s client view?

No. Basecamp’s client view shows project activity — messages, tasks, files, and communication. There is no hours section, retainer cap field, or billing cycle display. Even if the agency posts a weekly hours update as a Basecamp message, the client gets push-based data at the agency’s posting cadence, not pull-based self-serve access when they need the number. HourTab’s public URL solves this with a dedicated, always-current page the client bookmarks.

Can I use Basecamp and HourTab together?

Yes. Basecamp handles project communication and client collaboration. A time tracker (Harvest, Toggl, Clockify) logs billable hours. HourTab takes the weekly CSV export from the time tracker and generates a public hours URL per retainer client. The client uses Basecamp for project visibility and HourTab for hours visibility. Two tools, two types of information, no overlap, no conflict.

HourTab gives retainer clients a live hours URL from a time-tracker CSV — no Basecamp account, no client login, no portal required. Works alongside Basecamp + Harvest, Toggl, Clockify, or any time tracker that exports a CSV. Free tier covers one client. Start free →