Greetings,

I would like there to a better connection between an estimate and its project. If my projects never changed in scope, there’d be nothing to fix ;-) but as it is, projects change over time and I often need to modify an estimate for a client.

If I add a task to a project I have no way to “import” it back to the original estimate. If I add the new task to a project and bill time for it, then I can’t add it to the estimate without having a duplicate task show up in the project. If I create a new estimate I can’t attach it to a current project, so I can’t re-estimate an existing project.

These limitations make Estimates to be too inflexible for most of my projects.

What I’d like is to be able to do is this:

1. Import a single task from a Project into an existing Estimate, whether it’s had billable time attached to it or not.

2. Create a new Estimate and attach it to an existing Project—so I can have Project X with “Estimate 1” and “Estimate 2” OR “Estimate 1-Revised.”

Along similar lines, In the Project page, the sidebar reads:

“Estimating time for tasks not on an estimate

You can still estimate time for tasks that don’t belong to your original estimate.

We track what you originally estimated verses what you’ve added and will generate a pretty report for you.”

I can’t find this ‘pretty report’ anywhere. Where is it?

Hi Adrienne. Lots of stuff here.

Import a single task from a Project into an existing Estimate, whether it’s had billable time attached to it or not.

You can’t do this, and probably won’t be able to in the future. What you can do however is go modify your original estimate. Any task you add there will show up automatically on your Project.

Create a new Estimate and attach it to an existing Project—so I can have Project X with “Estimate 1” and “Estimate 2” OR “Estimate 1-Revised.”

You can already create an estimate for an existing project. Just visit the project tasks screen. If no estimate for that project exists there’s a link in the upper-right hand section of the screen that reads “New estimate for this project”. It will associate the estimate with your project automatically.

Multiple estimates for one project is not planned at this current time.

The “pretty report” shows up automatically as progress bars on each task line – as shown here:

Seth,

Thanks. I’ll be sure to add new items to the estimate before I add hours, and be aware of the other limitations re estimates.