Basecamp anyone?

[brandon]

Howdy,
Does anyone on here use Basecamp for their shop or anything else business related? I have been in contact with several people on this board and others about shop management software. I know there are a few options out there for various prices and you get what you pay for. The general vibe that I get seems that no one program is doing it all. We run QB's for all estimating/invoicing/payment transactions/taxes/payroll and run the old fashioned dry erase boards and clipboards for daily, weekly, and monthly job scheduling. With two manuals and an auto working full time and about to go into overtime/second shift I want to switch to a more efficient system. A friend's shop just started using it. It has only been a couple of days but so far they say it is great. Anyone else heard of or use it?

[mk162]

you are nuts not to use it.  Most people run a cheaper one, like T-quoter, T-cal, T-boss, Price-it and so on.  Shopworks is a very nice program, but I think it's around $10K last time I checked.  That's a little high for 90% of the shops out there.

Most programs offer a trial download. I would check them out.  You won't find everything you love in a single program.  They make them for the masses, and every shop is different.

[brandon]

Oh I agree. Just after checking out a lot of the software out there I have not been impressed. And the much, much larger shops that I know of either

A. have a tech department that wrote their own code and entire system from the ground up and controls all inventory from blanks to ink

or

B. use one of the mentioned programs for around $10k or more but also include dry erase boards and clipboards as well!

Personally I think there will always be a use for the pen and clipboard. However, a software program that could be updated in real time with a monitor and wireless keyboard (or cheap Android tablets) in various places around the warehouse such as screen room, shipping, ink room, all that would be great. For the past few years since we have opened a daily meeting with the auto clipboard and manual clipboard has sufficed with the press operators and a weekly/monthly dry erase board as well. Yes, there have been situations that were not perfect and that is what I want to change as we get way, way busier. I just can't justify $10k when I find something like Basecamp which I believe can be tweaked to work in our shop for something like $20 a month plus maybe a few of those Android tablets. Something has to change at our shop and I agree whatever we do will be for the better. I am liking the tablet situation as I write this....

Please add any pros or cons to this!

[inkbrigade]

Isn't basecamp just for tracking leads? Like salesforce.com?
Maybe I'm wrong.

[blue moon]

we've been using TeeCal and are pretty happy with it. It does offer everything you are looking for and you can get a 4 user license for about $60/month. The support is beyond unbelievable! Getting things going you will need it, no question about it, and it is good to know that somebody is available when in a jam. I've had call backs as late as 11pm and on the weekends within 10-15 min.

The program is a little slow at a time, but we are talking fractions of a second, second at most.
Switching to any shop management program will introduce a significant administrative overhead. Just something to be aware of. What you could just tell somebody in passing and hoped they'd remember, now has to go into the computer and data entry takes time. On the positive, it helps establish the processes in the shop and if done right can even increase productivity (has more to do with the psychology than anything else, but that is a different story).

pierre

[Fresh Baked Printing]

My wife is a Project Manager and they use Basecamp.  It basically a project management tool like Microsofts Sharepoint, but cheaper and fits smaller orgs better. Subscription based.

[mk162]

wouldn't it be cheaper to use OneNote from microsoft?  On a network it would be pretty sweet.  Maybe setup some templates.

I will say that an actual program is a better bet.  $20 a month of basecamp seems steep when for $40 or $50 you could do either T-quoter or Priceit.

In other words, waste of money.  Get something that is built to do what you need it to do, rather than make something else work...sort of.

[Fresh Baked Printing]

wouldn't it be cheaper to use OneNote from microsoft?  On a network it would be pretty sweet.  Maybe setup some templates.

I will say that an actual program is a better bet.  $20 a month of basecamp seems steep when for $40 or $50 you could do either T-quoter or Priceit.

In other words, waste of money.  Get something that is built to do what you need it to do, rather than make something else work...sort of.

Yep, use a manager that was written for the industry rather than trying to get something else to adapt.

[patfinn]

we use basecamp for all of our art side of the projects, files proofs design notes etc. then for everything else we use shopworks.. which is great. it handles everything. works awesome for us, its extremely powerful software.

[Dottonedan]

Just as an FYI, while at Disney, they used a program called Merlin. If its off the shelf, it may be outdated.  I don't think it was written especially for them, but sure could have been. They have a department that does make programs for each dept. but Merlin was what was used for our shop and our documents would easily transfer to other parts of the company and integrate our data to be added to the other departments that did reports and such.