Tasks (Basic): Create tasks & to-dos

Our Tasks feature helps you manage your to-dos to make sure everyone—including you—stays on point, which is crucial to any tax practice. Tasks not only lets you know what’s next on your agenda but also what’s being handled by the rest of your team. Plus, you can automate tasks inside pipelines; this way, they are automatically generated exactly when you need them to be.

Covered here:

• Creating tasks
  • Make a standalone task
  • Make a task for multiple clients
  • Add details to a task
  • Make a task from an email
  • Automate tasks inside pipelines
• Creating subtasks
• Adding files to tasks
• Creating recurring tasks

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Creating tasks

On TaxDome, we see tasks as steps you must take in order to complete a job. A job might involve a variety of tasks for both your team and the client—messages, invoices, time entries, proposals, and so on. Read more about the difference between our Pipelines, Jobs, and Tasks features.

Because there are so many moving parts to a tax practice, we’ve designed a system where you can automate tasks within your pipelines. This way, the tasks are automatically generated as a job moves from stage to stage within a pipeline. And if you want to manually create a task, you can also link it to a specific job. There’s lots of flexibility!

Tasks can be created by a firm owner, Admin, or any employee who has been given access to the account or access rights to view all accounts.

You can create tasks in several ways:

• Make a standalone task
• Make a task for multiple clients
• Add details to a task
• Make a task from an email
• Automate tasks inside pipelines

Make a standalone task

To create a single task, follow these steps:

1. Click the NEW button on the top left, then select Task in the slide-out.

2. Enter the name of the task in the required field.

3. That’s it! Click the Create task button.

Make a task for multiple clients

If you need to create the same task for a bunch of different clients, use our bulk feature:

1. Go to Clients > Accounts, select the checkboxes next to the client accounts, then click More actions and select Create Task in the dropdown.

2. Enter the name of the task (e.g., Prepare 1040) in the required field.

3. That's it! Click the Create task button.

Add details to a task

Add more details to the task if needed. You can...

1. Account(s). Add a client account or leave the Client field blank if the task isn’t for a specific client.

2. Job. If you have selected only one account on the previous step, you’ll be able to select a job you would like to link the task to. One task can be linked to one job only.

3. Template. Populate the task with one of your previously saved templates. Click the Template list to select a template (read more about task templates here).

4. Assignee(s). Assign the task to a team member or several if the project requires more than one. When you assign a task, it automatically becomes visible to the assigned team members. Read more on assignees in the article.

5. Priority. Choose the priority level: LOW, HIGH, MEDIUM, or URGENT. The default priority is MEDIUM.

6. Task name. Filling in this field is required and it will be the name you see in the task list and inside the job.

7. Status. Statuses help you keep track of what stage a task is in. Once the task is completed, you or the assigned team member can change the status to COMPLETED.

8. Description. Use the description to document current progress or open items. This way, when you open the task list, you’ll be able to see what kind of shape tasks are in. You can use text formatting, emoji, bullets, numbered lists, and also insert links. You can also mention your team members to get them notified of the task without having to assign it to them.

9. Tags. These help categorize your tasks and sort them. To learn more, go to Using Account and Task Tags.

10. Start date, Due date. Setting dates is optional but can be a helpful time-management tool. You’ll receive an email reminder three days before the task’s due date. And you’ll be able to identify which tasks are overdue by the exclamation mark icon next to their names in the tasks list.

11. Repeat. Make your task automatically repeat (to see how, go here). For example, create a “Don’t forget to pay the electric bill!” task for yourself. While you can still set a task to recur every month, you’ll get even more out of incorporating tasks into jobs (see Automating Tasks Inside Pipelines).

12. Link Account Notes. Link account notes that could help your teammates in completing the task. Once the note is linked, you can see it under the Account Notes. (details in the article).

13. Attach Documents. Your task may include documents you or other team members need to work on (details below).

14. Subtasks. Your task may include smaller to-dos (details below).

15. Comments. Write helpful reminders about the task. When it’s no longer relevant, delete it.

Make a task from an email

You may find that you want to create a task from an email you received from a client. This is easily done from your Inbox+ notification center. Here’s how:

1. From the Inbox+ page, click on the email notification bar to expand it, then click on the Create task link. If the email address is linked to several accounts, you will be able to select the one you want.

2. The Create task page will open. The fields will already be populated from the client’s email:

• Client: the client who has sent the email.
• Task name: the email’s subject line.
• Description: the email body.

3. Click the Create task button to save the task. After the task is created, the notification automatically moves to the Archived tab in Inbox+.

Automate tasks inside a pipeline

To find out how to automate tasks inside pipelines, go here on the Tasks in Jobs page.

Creating subtasks

A task can have subtasks. These look like to-do checklists. Your subtasks will need to be done in order for the overall task to be completed. You add subtasks while creating or editing a task.

1. Once you turn on the Subtasks toggle, a checkbox with a field for a to-do item appears. Fill in the the name of the subtask, or the to-do.

2. Click Add subtask to create more items on the checklist.

3. Click CREATE TASK or SAVE to keep your changes.

Once a subtask is completed, you can check the box beside it.

You’ll see the number of completed subtasks and the total number of remaining subtasks in the SUBTASKS column of the task list.

Adding files to tasks

You will need a folder with the private access level to attach files to a task for a specific client (you cannot do it for more than one client at a time).

• To attach files from your desktop, click ATTACH DOCUMENTS, select From My Computer, then locate the files you want to upload. You can upload PDFs, Word files, Excel files, or images. For more details, go here. The files attached to tasks are saved to the selected folder under the Docs tab in the Private subtab.
• To attach files from TaxDome, click ATTACH DOCUMENTS, select From TaxDome, then click the folder and select the files. You can add any files that are already uploaded to TaxDome.

Creating recurring tasks

For more helpful how-to videos, visit TaxDome Academy, our free online hub for
viewing and learning everything you need to know about TaxDome.

Recurring tasks are ones that you regularly perform: For example, making a phone call to a client once a week, checking the mail every three days, preparing certain tax forms annually.

When you create a recurring task, the following attributes are copied from the first task:

• The name of the client
• The name of the task
• The description of the task
• The task’s tags
• The task’s history
• The assignees for the task
• The subtasks (with all checkboxes cleared)
• The repeat schedule (number of repetitions chosen minus one)

Note! Status, comments and attachments are not copied from the first task.

To set up a recurring task, follow the same steps as creating a task—but turn on the Repeat toggle. Then you’ll be able to create a task schedule.

1. Select how often you want the task to repeat. By default, a task is repeated once a week. It can be repeated every x amount of days, weeks, months, or years.

2. Decide when you want the task to expire. You can select a specific date or the number of times you want it to recur.

Once a recurring task is set up, you’ll see the start and due dates for it and how many are in your queue.

You’ll also be able to identify which tasks will recur by the clock icon next to the names in the tasks list.

Note! The starting times for recurring tasks are affected by your timezone setting.