I hear Asana is good — haven't yet tried it myself, but from reading the docs it looks like it does most of what you're after.

http://asana.com/

I was sick of using the PM systems out there and decided to make one which would really help my team to be fast and efficient and make it easy to see how long we've spent on a project and the importance of the tasks within it.

http://i45.tinypic.com/vrx3f5.png

It's been in use for about 2 weeks now and the guys love it - having the development in house means that if it needs any changes, I pop them in overnight and when we come in the morning after it's good to go.

Unfortunately, as it's in house only, I can't release it to the public (despite having coded it entirely in my own time) - all I can do is link this image.

My point is: maybe try making your own? All the functionality you need and nothing else, cut out the middle man. It's so much more satisfying to use your own program.

Your tool looks interesting, pity you can't release it!

I'm so tempted to do that. But it seems like a rabbit hole that I could spend a lot of time exploring all the while not actually working on paying projects :)

LiquidPlanner does it right. It tracks date drift and the estimated number of hours over time. You can comment on tasks through the web interface or through email. You can have it track both your bill and pay rates. It has a simplified portal interface to give clients access.

Affiliate link: https://app.liquidplanner.com/signup_a/161/516fb8abc586ae567...

I've started developing a kanban-style project management tool (http://www.octoberswimmer.com/about/) based on huboard, but I still recommend LiquidPlanner to everyone.

Asana is great but it doesn't have reports, estimates, etc. My guess is you'll have a hard time finding the "perfect" tool you describe with all these features. I didn't find it myself but Asana was definitely the best out there.

We needed some scrum-like, easy to use, and a little hands-off most of the time.

We started using OnTime (ontimenow.com). It's not bad, there are a ton of things that could be better, but their customer service has been absolutely excellent any time we've had an issue.

We had assembla for the longest time and it was absolutely horrid, and their customer service was even worse.

We ultimately would have stuck with Github issues if it weren't for the fact we wanted a more scrum-centric tool and that our non-technical (and even one of technical co-workers) didn't really GET it.

Sounds like you want JIRA (http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/)

Each issue has an assignee, original estimate, remaining time, etc.

JIRA requires a bit more setup at the start than other systems (e.g. Basecamp), but you can really custom tailor it to your business needs. I've been using it to run Scrum in our organization for 3+ years now and I can't say enough good things about it. It's totally changed the way we work and we haven't outgrown it in any way.

+1 for Basecamp http://basecamp.com/

I love the flexibilty and ease of use of trello. There is a scrum chrome extension as well.

I use http://TeamBox.com and I'm very happy with it! Simply great tool. It has Gmail integration, makes it easier to add new tasks from new mails.

i use producteev (http://www.producteev.com/) its pretty good for gtd in a small team, but as far as i know, there is no way to enter rates or get reports of spent time per task.

i also used activecollab (http://www.activecollab.com/) which can do a lot and therefor probably needs more than just a look.

Try Breeze (http://letsbreeze.com). It's like Trello but with time tracking and reports.

There is http://weekplan.net which have some similarities with Trello (lists of tasks).

I use Productiv.io - though it's in development so a little buggy.