I'm gonna bump Amine. Any word on this feature?

Hi
Is there any news about the progress of this ?

I've responded to the GForm, but it's hard to type in one line. Would it make sense to open a discussion on the internal discussion forum?

What's the ETA on this feature?

Any update on this?

Hi! Any news about the progress on the estimated time feature?
Thx!

Great simplicity, however, I think in any project management capacity, the ability to record an estimate and record against it is essential for effective task management. So the sooner this is implemented the better, thanks.

Want to state upfront I love the simplicity and the idea of the tool so far. But time estimation is a sorely missed feature.

I think without time estimation, this becomes more of a task manager/GTD or not, rather than a project management tool. This probably means, it can satisfy developers or sole traders/contractors that bills time & material without needing to plan much.

Example:
If I go into a meeting, 1 month to deployment and I say : "Guys, there's 20 days left, but there are 35 task left." This statement is useless because it doesn't tell me whether the team is on track or need more resources, or the team has over performed.

At the current state it's all retrospective, which is the ability to see what deadlines were met (by due dates) but it won't have any ways to "plan" the next month, next week etc.

@Suzanne - what is your opinion and who should be able to change estimate on task? Tasks scope often changes as you go. One way to solve is to create a subtask but this will not apply to all possible use cases.

Also, what is your opinion on task estimation vs estimations for time on subtasks? We see our customers using subtasks pro (Lite plan and above) in a few ways:

1. Task is a container - all actual work is happening inside subtasks. In this case task estimation will be a sum of estimations of all of its subtasks
OR
2. Task has own estimation but also subtasks have own estimations. In this case tasks estimation will be a sum of task estimation with all subtasks estimation. Question here is how to separate and show if task itself is within estimate and how a sum of all estimations is vs actual time.
OR
3. Some users want to set estimate on a task allowing subtasks assignees to use that estimate when splitting to subtasks. In this case manager is notified when subtasks estimates exceeded initial tasks estimation.

This would be a great tool for testing assumptions around how much time a particular task *should* take. For instance, if it is regularly estimated that Task A should take 5hrs to complete, then by comparing Estimated/Planned time vs Actual time, it would be possible to confirm if this assumption is true of false. If I'm seeing over several projects that Task A actually takes 7hrs, then I can adjust my estimate/planned time to allocate 7hrs for that type of task, not 5. If there was also the ability to create a report to highlight this type of data, that would be even better. I know many small business owners who are scouring existing project management applications for exactly this feature and coming up empty. Such a feature would be a huge selling point to them and would be a strong incentive to switch platforms.

adding a time (not just days) field to track the hours of a task, not just days would be really helpful. You truly need to track both to be a true allocation tool. If a task is due in 4 days, but needs to be time-budgeted for around other tasks, this is essential. This way people can manage a boatload of tasks and managers can estimate how long it should take for time accounting.

I don't know if this has been mentioned before. I would take this one step further.
I would make 15 min slots. Have an estimated, and actual for future analytic's and better estimation.

I think the features you have outlined would be a great add for the Time app.

However, our company already uses Microsoft Dynamics for time tracking and accounting. What I would like to see is a simple %complete task available with each task that users can update. When I export my tasks to XLS, I can bring the %complete in with the budgets in our accounting software.

I would suggest that the %complete be a part of the basic Freedcamp, while the other features you have outlined would be included in the Time app.

Hi Igor,
Wow, sounds good!

Can this estimated hours new func be added to the issue tracker too?

Hi Hans,

I am hoping that this year we will:
- add time estimates to task
- allow to enter time worked on tasks manually or, if Time Tracking app is added to a project, use timer as an optional feature to start/pause and record time. This will allow to see who is working on what right now.
- extend Time application to allow people to describe each chunk of work done
- extend Time application to store every increment tracked so it will be possible to pull time report for a week or a month, for completed or all tasks etc.
- extend Invoicing app to allow to to both a) get paid from you clients and/or b) pay your staff, contractors, freelancers. By 'pay' and 'get paid' I mean to have a clean list how much you are paying to whom and be able to mark paid hours and generate invoice to pass on to your customers. We are not planning to become Zenefits or Freshbooks just yet.
- extend Invoicing app to be able to provide inly summaries or very detailed invoices for one or multiple projects

Next natural step will be adding Bugget app as described here - https://freedcamp.uservoice.com/forums/126945-suggestions-for-features/suggestions/2215371-finance-integration

Ability to put a budget to a project and a rate or specify each project participant rate and see time planned vs budget, time spent vs planed vs budget in Freedcamp.

For example, all of the above should work the same way for Issue Tracker application where also time should be allowed to be tracked on issues, ability to add issues to Milestones, ability to link an issue with one or multiple tasks etc Once done becomes very valuable system for many people as it allows to do projects, track issues, do support for those who are your clients but not part of Freedcamp and one system finally replaces multiple vendors, pricing, UI's as well as hassles of integration between them.

We do understand that power of Freedcamp is in very deep, smart and flexible integrations at least between apps we already have while adding new ones which greatly enhance system as budgeting or task dependencies/Gantt/timeline.

We gradually add value to our paid offerings, will most likely change pricing soon for NEW ONLY customers and we will never take anything from free plans ever.

We also keep talking to investors as we do understand what needs to be done and how - simply have to find a way to pour more gas on the Freedcamp's fire.

Cheers,
Igor
CTO Freedcamp

Hi Igor,
I really enjoy Freedcamp and believe it is amongst the best already :-)

I'll try to explain what I mean. By budget I mean estimated and assigned hours to a taks (or in freedcamp terms maybe a task-group). The hours spent in a project is the largest and most uncertain part of the variable costs in a project.

Therefore I have two reasons for this feature.
1. Many projects are done on a fixed price, therefore proper estimations per task are needed for a reliable offer.
2. Being able to, from the perpective of Project Control, monitor the hours spent on a task. If the expenditure deviates (too much) from the estimate, one can infer something is wrong and act relatively on time.

So when I add resources and a time estimate to a task, using the time(+?) app to track how much of the hours are burned would be ideal.

As you already have the time app that can be used for both tracking and as timesheet, I was thinking what if you could extend its functionality with some added features and charge for these features, similar to the subTasks app.

Automatically generate a list of all assigned (sub)Tasks.
Inherit the time estimate from the (sub)Task.
Have a timer or a timetask for every assigned teammember (with subTasks).

Hopefully this wouldn’t too hard to implement, but with these features, would mean a serious boost in Project Control. Since freedcamp can export projectdata to Excel, it is not hard to do all further analyses in a spreadsheet.

Hopefully this all makes sense
cheers, Hans

Hi Hans,

We are adding all bits one by one. It is not easy with very little funds and no investors backing.
Can you explain more on how you do burned budget? Is rate per hour is the same typically or must be set for each person invited?

Do you want to allow people assigned to task to change estimate for a task or just ability to track time by a task and see a sum multiplied by rate compared with project total budget is enough?

Best Regards,
Igor

This is mandatory for serious project planning and control. I was actually surprised it isn't there already.
How about a paid version of Time where you can monitor the burned budget? Burn-out chart would also be nice, but with the excel export I can do it that way.

As an addition to the OP the option to monitor hours on tasks *and* Team members

+1