# How to work with external clients you don't want to see everything? **URL:** \ **Category:** Asana In Practice\ **Created:** [6 September 2023 09:41 UTC](https://forum.asana.com/t/how-to-work-with-external-clients-you-dont-want-to-see-everything/528995 "2023-09-06T09:41:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Magasul](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/asana/user_avatar/forum.asana.com/magasul/32/194525_2.png) [@Magasul](https://forum.asana.com/u/Magasul)\ **Post date:** [6 September 2023 09:41 UTC](https://forum.asana.com/t/how-to-work-with-external-clients-you-dont-want-to-see-everything/528995/1 "2023-09-06T09:41:38Z")
Hi! I’ve been browsing forums and the web to find an answer for this, but so far, no luck. How am I supposed to work with clients on a project, where I want to invite them on the project to approve, comment etc, but don’t want them seeing certain internal information like budget, cost, time tracked, time estimated etc. And no, I don’t want to create a parallel project each time and double book-keep, that’s a no-no. I want a single project, with the client invited, but being able to hide internal information. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![Rosario\_Messina](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/asana/user_avatar/forum.asana.com/rosario_messina/32/105419_2.png) [@Rosario\_Messina](https://forum.asana.com/u/Rosario_Messina)\ **Post date:** [6 September 2023 10:19 UTC](https://forum.asana.com/t/how-to-work-with-external-clients-you-dont-want-to-see-everything/528995/2 "2023-09-06T10:19:28Z")
Hello @Magasul , Welcome to the Asana forum. To my knowledge, the only option is to create an additional dedicated shared project where you have only the custom fields you want them to see. The tasks can be automatically multi-homed in that shared project (trigger can be a Custom Field or a Section in your main project) if the shared project does not feature your “tracking” Custom Fields, they won’t see them. So no double bookkeeping or additional efforts. Marking as a solution, but please let us know if you still have questions or you feel like this is not solving your issue. Cheers, Rosario ---
**Author:** ![Magasul](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/asana/user_avatar/forum.asana.com/magasul/32/194525_2.png) [@Magasul](https://forum.asana.com/u/Magasul)\ **Post date:** [6 September 2023 10:20 UTC](https://forum.asana.com/t/how-to-work-with-external-clients-you-dont-want-to-see-everything/528995/3 "2023-09-06T10:20:31Z")
> [@Magasul](#): > > And no, I don’t want to create a parallel project each time and double book-keep, that’s a no-no. Thanks, but to quote myself: “And no, I don’t want to create a parallel project each time and double book-keep, that’s a no-no.” ---
**Author:** ![Magasul](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/asana/user_avatar/forum.asana.com/magasul/32/194525_2.png) [@Magasul](https://forum.asana.com/u/Magasul)\ **Post date:** [6 September 2023 10:42 UTC](https://forum.asana.com/t/how-to-work-with-external-clients-you-dont-want-to-see-everything/528995/4 "2023-09-06T10:42:14Z")
Let’s say I would use parallel projects and exclude fields and want to not-share a few tasks, only the important ones. I made a rule where if a task moves to a certain section, it adds it to the section of the other project, which works, but now I have to re-write the rule for each section, each time I create a pair of projects from templates. I believe there is no way to automate this, which is… ugh… Or am I missing something? ---
**Author:** ![Micah\_B](https://luna1.co/8d76cd.png) [@Micah\_B](https://forum.asana.com/u/Micah_B)\ **Post date:** [6 September 2023 19:15 UTC](https://forum.asana.com/t/how-to-work-with-external-clients-you-dont-want-to-see-everything/528995/5 "2023-09-06T19:15:50Z")
@Magasul Right now do you currently have that information that you want to keep private (budget, cost, etc.) in custom fields for that information? ---
**Author:** ![Magasul](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/asana/user_avatar/forum.asana.com/magasul/32/194525_2.png) [@Magasul](https://forum.asana.com/u/Magasul)\ **Post date:** [6 September 2023 20:23 UTC](https://forum.asana.com/t/how-to-work-with-external-clients-you-dont-want-to-see-everything/528995/6 "2023-09-06T20:23:03Z")
Yes, those are in custom fields. ---
**Author:** ![Micah\_B](https://luna1.co/8d76cd.png) [@Micah\_B](https://forum.asana.com/u/Micah_B)\ **Post date:** [6 September 2023 22:12 UTC](https://forum.asana.com/t/how-to-work-with-external-clients-you-dont-want-to-see-everything/528995/7 "2023-09-06T22:12:26Z")
I’ve been doing a bit of research of my own and it seems like this is a [popular feature request](https://forum.asana.com/t/the-ability-to-hide-custom-fields-applied-to-a-task-that-dont-belong-to-the-project-in-which-the-task-is-being-viewed/79740/13), but this is specific to multi-homing tasks. I also discovered [this video](https://forum.asana.com/t/be-careful-with-sensitive-information-in-custom-fields/287986), which seems to have a workaround dealing with adding a field to your org’s library, but I also know you don’t want to have multiple projects 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Magasul](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/asana/user_avatar/forum.asana.com/magasul/32/194525_2.png) [@Magasul](https://forum.asana.com/u/Magasul)\ **Post date:** [6 September 2023 22:14 UTC](https://forum.asana.com/t/how-to-work-with-external-clients-you-dont-want-to-see-everything/528995/8 "2023-09-06T22:14:17Z")
Currently my biggest gripe with multi-homing in multiple projects - besides having two places for each project - is that while you can create a rule to move stuff around, you can’t remove tasks. So once they appear, you can’t rule them out, you have to manually do that. ---
**Author:** ![Rosario\_Messina](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/asana/user_avatar/forum.asana.com/rosario_messina/32/105419_2.png) [@Rosario\_Messina](https://forum.asana.com/u/Rosario_Messina)\ **Post date:** [8 September 2023 08:39 UTC](https://forum.asana.com/t/how-to-work-with-external-clients-you-dont-want-to-see-everything/528995/9 "2023-09-08T08:39:01Z")
If you are on Enterprise, you could use [Bundles](https://help.asana.com/hc/en-us/articles/14309313756827-Bundles) to create a predefined set of rules that you can apply to any new project. Of course, if the shared project is always different, you’ll have to replace the project name each time. Alternatively, you can have the rules in your templates, so that you won’t need to recreate the rule, but just the destination project in the rule. It is a manual step, but not as much work as recreating the rule. What I do in these cases, I add to the template a “set-up” task, which contains information about the manual steps that need to be taken upon creation of a project out of that template. The task usually is the first in the list. ---
**Author:** ![Magasul](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/asana/user_avatar/forum.asana.com/magasul/32/194525_2.png) [@Magasul](https://forum.asana.com/u/Magasul)\ **Post date:** [8 September 2023 08:40 UTC](https://forum.asana.com/t/how-to-work-with-external-clients-you-dont-want-to-see-everything/528995/10 "2023-09-08T08:40:50Z")
Not enterprise, no. We are 2 people. 🙂 Sadly rules don’t save pointing to another project. As in if I create a client and internal project pair template, each time I create projects for them I have to manually go and connect everything up. ---
**Author:** ![Rosario\_Messina](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/asana/user_avatar/forum.asana.com/rosario_messina/32/105419_2.png) [@Rosario\_Messina](https://forum.asana.com/u/Rosario_Messina)\ **Post date:** [8 September 2023 08:49 UTC](https://forum.asana.com/t/how-to-work-with-external-clients-you-dont-want-to-see-everything/528995/11 "2023-09-08T08:49:43Z")
As far as I am aware, Multi-homing is your only option right now, but If you haven’t already, vote for the feature request mentioned above. Can you briefly expand on the specific reason “why” you need to remove the task from the shared project? A specific real-life use case example would be of help. Also, taking one step back, and moving away from multi-homing. Do you know that if you create a sub-task for your customer approval, and the customer has no access to the project and is not a collaborator of the (main) parent task, they won’t have access to the main task and just see the sub-task content? This might require you to duplicate info from the main task to the sub-task, but it will solve your issues of: - having 2 projects - needing to update rules for new projects - needing to remove people from the shared projects Cheers, Rosario ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_Jones3](https://luna1.co/8d76cd.png) [@Steve\_Jones3](https://forum.asana.com/u/Steve_Jones3)\ **Post date:** [10 September 2023 10:11 UTC](https://forum.asana.com/t/how-to-work-with-external-clients-you-dont-want-to-see-everything/528995/12 "2023-09-10T10:11:10Z")
I have a very simialr use case, I wonder if you could advise a newbie on We also use customer facing projects and do not want the duplciate project scenario My use case is I would like to estimate a time for a task and then as time is expended add it to the actual time spent - so this means the actual time would be increased periodically However we bill on a weekly burndown basis so is there some reporting that would enable us to bill the time spent Or (more likely!) a better solution. We don’t want live task time tracking as that leads to unsder charging since we factor a PM % uplift to cover the overhead Thanks in advance ! ---
**Author:** ![system](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/asana/user_avatar/forum.asana.com/system/32/276370_2.png) [@system](https://forum.asana.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [30 May 2025 18:55 UTC](https://forum.asana.com/t/how-to-work-with-external-clients-you-dont-want-to-see-everything/528995/13 "2025-05-30T18:55:03Z")
Closed on 30 May 2025 18:55 UTC