Permissions

Basecamp offers three different types of users: employee, outside collaborator, and client.

Employees 

People who work at your company are the only people who can create projects, add others to projects, and act as administrators or owners. Add them this way if they are full-time, part-time, or a volunteer with your company.

An employee can also be an administrator or owner. 

  • Admins can add/remove people, change which projects someone is on, manage companies/organizations and groups, rename project tools, and set the data retention rules for Pings and Chat.
  • Owners can do everything Admins can plus upgrade the account, export data, reassign someone's to-dos, restore anything in the trash, access any project, handle all the billing and invoices, and require two-factor authentication. 

Learn more about admins and owners.

Outside Collaborators 

This person doesn’t work at your company. They can collaborate on projects with you and see everything posted in the projects they've been added to like Employees, but they won’t be able to create projects, invite people to the account, add people to projects, be admins, or automatically join All-Access Projects.

NOTE: In accounts created before September 14, 2022, Outside Collaborators have the same permissions as Employees. They can also be Admins or Owners.

Clients 

Clients have a similar experience as other users in Basecamp. They'll be able to post messages, upload files, complete to-dos, etc. just like an employee user or outside collaborator. Essentially, clients can contribute to the work going on inside the projects they're part of, but they'll only see the items (messages, lists, etc...) that you share with them.

There are a few things clients can't do:

  • They don't see any badges or flags indicating who's a client or which items are shown to them. 
  • They don't see certain features like Hill Charts, Templates, All-Access Projects, or the public share option. 
  • They can't create new projects or add/remove people to their projects. 
  • They can't change a projects name, description, archive it, or place it in the trash. 

Learn more about working with clients in projects.