Project Management and CRM Application

[eluser]SethG[/eluser]
I have begun creating a simple job/project management and crm system in Codeigniter as a foundational system to run a graphic design studio - though should certainly have implications to other fields. Basically, we have been interested in basecamp and highrise and similar types of offerings but felt that there was not an integrated solution that had the type of features we needed, so having built a similar custom solution before and having been interested in Codeigniter, I thought I would give it another go.

Some highlights include:

- Basic job tracking system
- Basic Invoice System that allows for the creation of invoices, invoice line items, and payments
- Organization/people management
- Basic Time Tracking for jobs/projects
- Notes system to add notes to Jobs, Organizations, People, Invoices
- Task system to add tasks that are related to jobs, organizations, people, invoices
- Starting to build in a basic security and access model - currently customizing to distinguish between access as an administrator from access for a freelancer. Would like to continue to evolve this to allow some sort of job/project access to clients as well as access to payment/invoice reports to clients.

So I am sharing what I am up to with the codeigniter community as if there are others of you out there that are interested, I would be open to exploring how to make this a communal project.

There is little to no documentation currently, though I have done some code cleanup to try and make my approaches as consistent as a I could. Working alone and juggling many other higher priorities likely means more needs to be done in these regards. I have also never setup or have been a part of a communal development project though I have started using Trac and SVN with this project through a hosted site/service called assembla. In other words to make a communal project work, I would need a fair amount of leadership help.

Also, this would have to be approached with some degree of seriousness as this is a critical business operations tool.

[eluser]Michael Wales[/eluser]
Holy smokes... have you been reading my email?

Your tabs: Home, Contacts, Jobs, Invoices, Tasks
My tabs: Home, Accounting, Clients, Projects, Staff

At least my product hasn't left the planning stage. I absolutely love Freshbooks, Basecamp, Highrise, Writeboards, etc. but I don't have the funds to pay them all and I hate having to bounce around amongst 3-4 different applications to get all of the info for a particular contract.

That's the reason I started thinking about an application like this.

Good luck with this - I am definitely interested in where this is headed. And thanks for posting about your work here, now I can get back to the stuff that really matters rather than planning an app someone is already completing.

[eluser]Michael Wales[/eluser]
Maybe this will give you some more ideas, a brief synopsis of what I refer to as ClientIgniter:

General Info

ClientIgniter is a client management application designed with the freelancer and small design studio in mind.
ClientIgniter is a hosted solution with 2 plan options:

* Free: A 100% free plan that is limited to 3 clients.
* Pro: The pro plan has no limitations and starts at $6 per month. Customers are encouraged to subscribe for an amount they feel is fair based on their usage of the site. ClientIgniter will provide stats based on your usage, telling you whether you are paying more or less, than the average.


Accounting
The account section of the site allows you to perform various functions related to the money that flows into and out of your business.

* Estimates
* Invoice

Clients

The clients section of the site acts as a client relationship manager where you can include contact information, notes on the client, as well as quickly reference the projects and accounting functions you have performed that pertain to that client. By courtesy copying an email address, your contact with this client will be logged automatically.

Projects

The projects section of the site allows you to break a project up into various tasks (which can be viewed by the respective client). Time tracking is included which makes invoicing as simple as a single-click.

Staff

The staff section of the site allows you to manage the contact information as well as the projects your staff members are currently working on (with the ability to invoice at a staff members rate).

[eluser]kevinprince[/eluser]
How many of us are building CRM systems!

I'm currently building one aimed at small sports clubs or similar after failing find any decent software for a local sports club.

It would be interesting to see everyone here working on some modules which we could drag drop to at CRM functions.

[eluser]champs[/eluser]
We're just integrating with SugarCRM and calling it a day. It take some work to get the hang of SOAP (hint: use NuSOAP), then the learning curve for one-way stuff is pretty flat. Getting to full CRUD with the first app took quite a bit of work to get right, but the rest will be easy now that all the important Sugar interactions are written.

[eluser]SethG[/eluser]
[quote author="champs" date="1192481006"]We're just integrating with SugarCRM and calling it a day. It take some work to get the hang of SOAP (hint: use NuSOAP), then the learning curve for one-way stuff is pretty flat. Getting to full CRUD with the first app took quite a bit of work to get right, but the rest will be easy now that all the important Sugar interactions are written.[/quote]

This seems interesting - what is it that you are integrating that SugarCRM does not have for you?

[eluser]champs[/eluser]
My company offers a backup service with software from Ahsay, which has its own APIs to deal with and is totally obscure. Big surprise, there's no module for it. ;-)

[eluser]Code Arachn!d[/eluser]
Wow - funny how all of us are working on some sort of CRM/PM app - I'm building one for our design & development company. We needed a full app where we could have an semi intranet (trying to integrate into Sharepoint has been interesting) along with client access to billing and time tracking. But I'm game seeing where this app goes and would love to throw some lines of code into it if desired.

Cheers

[eluser]Jim OHalloran[/eluser]
Seth,

I've been contemplating doing the same for my small web dev bsuiness. My needs are quite similar to yours, and I'd be quite happy to develop something colaboratively. PM me for contact details if you're interested.

Jim.

[eluser]llbbl[/eluser]
Not to knock off what you have done, but I would recommend using SugarCRM and activeCollab. SugarCRM is very customizable, I have done some custom work with it before. activeCollab is one of the best project management tools available. The best part is that the open source version is available, so it is free just like Sugar. The new version of activeCollab is paid, but in the end it would work out to be cheaper than paying for Basecamp. I am using the new version of activeCollab and it is very good.