Basecamp was created to help a design firm stay organized with their client projects. More than 20 years later, we're still here helping thousands of customers do the same thing. If you work with clients, stick around. I'm Kimberly from the 37signals team, the makers of Basecamp, and this video, I'm gonna walk you through how you can stay really organized and keep everything in one place when you're working with clients in Basecamp. We're gonna do that in three steps. First, we'll get your project set up with the project tools that you wanna use for your client project. In step two, we'll turn on client access. This is where you decide what parts of the project the client can see and what stays private to your team. And then in step three, we will invite your client into your project. So let's go ahead and get started. The first thing you'll wanna do is get your project set up. Click the make a new project button from your home screen. Give your project a name, and then choose which tools you want for your project. Once you're all set, click create this project. From here, you can add any content to your project. I always recommend starting with a welcome message on your message board. You can also add any to-dos or any docs and vials. Just get your project set up as you'd like your client to see it. Once you have your project set up the way you want, it's time to move to step two, turning on client access. Now, by default, everything is private to your team. You have to actively choose if something is visible to the client. So let's go ahead and turn on client access. To do that, go to your project page, click set up people, then head to the client's tab and toggle on work with clients. Then add the name, the client's company. Now at this point, you could skip straight to step three and invite your clients into your project, but they won't be able to see anything once they get there. Like I said, everything is private to start. So instead of inviting them in to a blank project, let's go ahead and make some decisions on which parts of the project you wanna share with them. Now that work with clients is toggled on, you'll see a new banner within each tool that lets you set visibility. So that welcome message that you posted earlier, it's automatically set to private, but if you'd like the client to be able to see it, you'll select Allow the client to see this too. The yellow indicator at the top lets you know that it's visible to the client. From the message board tool. You can tell which messages the client can see. Any messages without the yellow highlight are private to your team only with to-do list. The process is the same. When a to-do list is private, the client can't see if someone adds a task to the list, comments on a to-do or completes an item. They only see the to-do list that have been shared with them. Docs and files works the same way. If it's private to your team, the client won't ever see the file or even know that it exists. But if you want them to see it, comment on it or download it, you'll need to just change the visibility. One thing to know about the chat tool is that you can't make individual comments either private or client facing, but you can select if the entire chat tool is private or not. So if you wanted to keep the chat just private for your team, you can do that. Or if you want clients to be able to chat with you too, you can open up access for them. If you wanted to have both options within a project, just go to the three.menu, select set up tools, then add another. You can keep one chat private and open the other to the client. That yellow indicator carries over throughout your Basecamp project, so there's no confusion on what the client can see and what they can't. Now that your project is set up and you've decided which parts are private and which parts are shared with a client, let's go ahead and invite them in. Now, if this is the first time you're adding this client to Basecamp, you'll have to first invite them into your account before you can add them to a specific project from your home screen. Click the green Invite People button. You'll want to identify the person you're adding as a client you're doing work for. This is the most important part of the setup as this is the only option where you can control what the person sees and what is private. If someone is added into your account in any other way, they have full access to all parts of the project. So if you're wanting to hide anything from a client or have private conversations with your internal team that the client can't see, super important that you choose this third option, you'll enter in the name, email address, and the client's company. You can add more than one client at a time with the Green plus button. Click email invitation now and Basecamp will send an email to the client so they can set up a password to access your account. Then on the next screen, select which projects they can access and save. Just a note here, only projects that have client access turned on will show up on this list. So if you're wanting to invite someone you've identified as a client into a project and you're not seeing the project on this list, you'll need to go back one step and make sure you turn on client access for the project. So now your client is added to your project. On your home screen, you'll see the client's company name listed just above the name of the project. So it's easy to see that the project has clients invited to it. When you open the project, you'll also see the client's avatar at the top with a client label and a yellow circle around the avatar. One last thing before we wrap up. Even though we use that term client here at Basecamp, you can really use that designation for anyone you wanna invite into your account and be able to control what they can and can't see within your project. They don't technically have to be a client. So we see teachers who use that client designation for students or nonprofits using it for volunteers. That terminology really just means you can control what parts of your project are visible. So don't let that client term get you stuck. I hope all that helps. If you have any questions as you're getting set up, please reach out to our customer support team. You can reach them with that question mark in the bottom right corner of your screen. Or you can email them at
[email protected]. We'd love to hear from you.