Managing Jobs

Manage the full life of a Job in Agencydesk: create it, brief it, activate it, close it, archive it, duplicate it, save it as a Template, or delete it. Built around how agency projects actually run.

A Job is the container for a piece of agency work: a campaign, a monthly retainer, a website project or a brand identity project. Because Agencydesk is built exclusively for agencies, a Job carries everything a project needs in one place: its Client, Billing Tier, Account Executive, costed Tasks and Costs, Estimates, Invoices, and Recon for profitability.

This page covers the operations that move a Job through its life cycle. The individual Job tabs are covered in their own guides: Job Costing, Tasks, Costs, Estimates, Financial with its Invoices and Purchase Orders sub-tabs, Timeline, Central and Recon.

The Jobs list

Jobs are managed from Jobs in the left-hand navigation. The list is grouped into tabs:

• Active — Jobs with at least one active Task or Cost.

• Draft — Jobs still being planned, with nothing activated yet.

• Closed — Jobs fully billed and closed off.

• Archived — Jobs shelved before completion.

• Watchlist — your personal shortlist of Jobs (see Adding a Job to your Watchlist).

Each row shows the Job number, Client, Job name and status, Account Executive, tracked-vs-estimated progress, and the due date with a countdown or overdue flag.

The Job menu

Most Job operations live in the same context menu, available in two places:

• From the Jobs list. Hover a Job row and click the ellipsis (three dots) on the right.

• From inside a Job. Click the ellipsis next to the Job number in the top-right.

The menu gives you Edit Job, Add Job Brief, Duplicate, Save as Template, Close Job, Archive Job, and Delete Job.

Creating a Job

1

Open the Create New Job slider

On the Jobs page, click + New Job in the top-right.

2

Name the Job and pick a Category

• Job Name — what the work is, for example Herotel x Maziv Co-Branding or Williams-Lane SEO Retainer – May.

• Category — select a Job Category. Categories are set up under Settings > General > Job Categories and drive service-line reporting later, so a Retainer, a Website, and a Campaign can be compared as groups.

You can start from a saved structure instead. Click + From template next to Job Name, search your Job Templates, and pick one. The Job is created with that Template's full Job Costing already in place.

3

Select the Client (and Brand, if applicable)

Choose the Client from the dropdown. Their Billing Tier, currency, and payment terms come with them.

If that Client has sub-brands set up, a Brand dropdown appears alongside. Pick the Brand this Job belongs to. This is how an umbrella client with several brands keeps one billing entity while still tracking work per brand. See Brands.

4

Set the Contact and Billing Tier

Contact populates from the Client's contacts. Billing Tier defaults to the Client's assigned tier and can be overridden here if this particular Job is priced differently.

5

Set the Start Date and End Date

Both dates are required on every Job.

Why the End Date matters more than it looks. A Task sitting in Job Costing doesn't have a date range yet, but it needs one to become active. Because the Job carries a start and end date, Tasks can inherit them automatically the moment they're activated. That's what makes one-click actions like Approve All on an Estimate or Invoice possible: every Task activates and gets a workable date range without anyone setting dates one by one.

6

Add the Description, Account Executive, and Budget

• Description — optional context for the Job. This flows through to Estimates.

• Account Executive — only users marked Is Account Manager on their profile under Users appear here.

• Budget — optional. See the note below.

7

Save

Click Save. The Job is created in Draft status, ready for you to build its Job Costing.

Setting a Budget

Entering a Budget changes what the Financial tab reports against. Instead of measuring billable progress against the Job Value, the Billable card measures it against the Budget you set:

Billable R304.50 5.00% of Est. R6,090.00

This is useful when a client has agreed a fixed spend up front, a monthly retainer ceiling, or a capped ad-spend management fee. You see how much of the agreed number has been earned rather than how much of the internal Job Value has been used.

Adding a Quick Client mid-flow

If the Client doesn't exist yet, click + Add Quick Client next to the Client dropdown. An inline panel opens for the essentials: Client name, Billing Tier, Contact Name and Surname, Email, Contact Number, and a Set Default Tax toggle.

A Quick Client is created as a Prospect Client. Prospects can't be invoiced against, so you'll need to activate the Client before raising an Invoice on this Job. See Converting a Prospect to an Active Client.

The Job Brief

The Job Brief is the written brief for the whole Job: what the client wants, what's being delivered, and who's doing what. It sits at Job level rather than on any one tab, so it's the shared reference point for everyone working on the Job.

Open it from the + Brief button next to the Job number, or Add Job Brief in the Job menu.

Writing the brief

The brief uses a full rich-text editor. You can apply bold, italic, underline, and strikethrough, build bulleted and numbered lists, insert tables, add links and callouts, align text, and expand the editor to full screen for longer briefs. Pasted HTML and tables are preserved, so you can bring content straight over from an email or a client document.

Checklists

Insert checkboxes to turn the brief into a working list of deliverables. Anyone on the Job can tick them off as work is completed, which keeps a long brief readable at a glance.

Referencing with shortcuts

Three shortcuts let you pull the rest of Agencydesk into the brief as you type:

Type	To reference	What it does
@	A user	Tags a team member inline
%	A Task on this Job	Links the brief to that Task
$	A Client	Links to the Client record

Tagging a user is a visual cue, not a notification. No email or alert is sent. It's a fast way to write who is doing what against each line, for people already on the Job, without typing full names.

This is different to tagging someone in a Task Note, which does notify them.

How Task references connect back

When you reference a Task with %, Agencydesk creates a link in the other direction too. That Task's own brief gets a reference back to the Job Brief, anchored to the relevant section.

So a designer opening their Task sees a direct link to the exact part of the Job Brief that describes their piece of work, rather than having to read the whole thing to find it.

Great for a multi-discipline Job. Write the brief once at Job level, reference each Task inline as you describe the work, and every team member lands on the paragraph that concerns them when they open their Task.

Attaching documents

Drop files into the Documents area, or click to browse. Typical attachments are the client's brief, brand guidelines, logo packs, reference material, and signed approvals.

Each attached document can be viewed in-browser (for common formats), downloaded, or deleted using the icons on its row. They also appear as Job documents on the Central tab.

Click Save Brief when you're done.

Adding a Job to your Watchlist

The Watchlist is your personal shortlist of Jobs, useful when you're working across dozens of active Jobs but only a handful need your attention day to day.

1

On the Jobs list, hover over a Job row. A star icon appears to the left of the Job number.

2

Click the star to add the Job to your Watchlist. Click it again to remove it.

3

Open your Watchlist from anywhere in Agencydesk using the star icon in the top-right of the screen, just left of the notifications bell.

Watchlisted Jobs also appear under the Watchlist tab on the Jobs page, and your Watchlist panel shows each Job's number, status, name, and Client.

Great for an Account Executive juggling a large book. Star the three retainers under review, the pitch that's about to land, and the campaign going live this week, then jump to any of them from any screen without scrolling the full Jobs list.

Activating a Job

Job status is dynamic in Agencydesk. There's no separate activate button:

• Activate a Task or a Cost, and the Job moves from Draft to Active automatically.

• Deactivate everything back to draft, and the Job returns to Draft.

The Job status simply reflects whether any work has been approved to proceed. Activation itself happens on the Job Costing.

Because status follows the work rather than a manual flag, you can have an issued Invoice on a Draft Job. That's a normal scenario for a deposit or an upfront placement fee billed before production starts. The Invoice appears on the Finance page as usual.

Closing a Job

A Job can only be closed once all Tasks and Costs have been billed in full. This is deliberate: it stops unbilled work from being quietly closed out and lost.

Closing a Job also marks all its Tasks and Costs as completed.

There are two ways to close:

From the Job menu

Open the Job menu and click Close Job. This works once everything on the Job has been fully billed.

By raising a final Invoice

When creating an Invoice, choose the Invoice Type Bill All Remaining & Close Job. In one step this:

• Bills all outstanding units on Costs and all outstanding hours on Tasks

• Marks every Task and Cost completed

• Creates the draft Invoice

• Marks the Job closed

A closed Job can't be edited. To make any change, you'll need to reopen the Job first.

Closing a Job also clears its Tasks out of everyone's My Desk Completed column, so that column stays current rather than growing indefinitely.

Archiving a Job

Because closing requires everything to be billed in full, Archive exists for the Jobs that never get there. It shelves a Job mid-production, removing it from active Jobs and from reporting, without forcing you to reconcile outstanding Tasks and Costs.

Any Job can be archived at any time, from the Job menu or the Jobs list.

This is the realistic option when:

• A client goes quiet mid-project and stops responding

• A contract is terminated part-way through

• Work is delivered and the client never pays, so you shelve it rather than close it

• A pitch-related Job is abandoned when the pitch is lost

Archiving does not erase effort. Time your team committed against the Job stays on their Timesheets. The work still counts toward their tracked time and productivity, even though the Job itself is off the active board.

Deleting a Job

Deleting is intentionally hard to reach, because a Job in progress carries financial and time records that shouldn't vanish.

A Job can only be deleted when all three of these are true:

1. All Tasks are in draft (no approved or active Tasks)

2. There are no Invoices, draft or issued

3. There are no Purchase Orders

To delete, use Delete Job from the Job menu, either inside the Job or by hovering the Job row in the Jobs list and clicking the ellipsis.

Deleting a Job that's already in progress

In practice, unwinding a live Job to the point where it can be deleted takes several steps:

• Delete all time entries on Tasks, from each Task's Time tab, so the Tasks can be deactivated back to draft.

• Mark all POs unpaid, so they can be deleted, so their Costs can be deactivated back to draft.

• Void all issued Invoices and delete all draft Invoices.

If that sounds like a lot of work, that's the point. For a Job that's genuinely underway, archiving is almost always the right move. It shelves the Job without destroying the billing history, the Invoice numbering, or your team's tracked time.

Duplicating a Job

Duplicate a Job from the ellipsis menu, either on the Jobs list or inside the Job.

When a Job is duplicated, only the Job Costing carries over. The structure, Tasks, and Costs come with it; the delivery history does not.

1

Open the Job menu and click Duplicate. The Create New Job slider opens.

2

Fill in the details for the new Job: Client, Brand, Billing Tier, dates, Account Executive, and so on. You can pick a different Client, and you can override the Client's default currency here.

3

Click Save. The new Job is created with the original's Job Costing, repriced for the Billing Tier you selected.

Duplicating across currencies

Duplicating a Job into a different Billing Tier often means changing currency, for example taking a ZAR retainer structure and setting it up for a USD client. Agencydesk handles the two sides differently, and the distinction matters:

• Tasks are transposed. Each Task takes the rate entered for the newly selected Billing Tier on its Task Type (under Settings > Rate Card > Task Types, in the Billing Tiers fields). So a Task priced at R950/hr on the Default Rate becomes $55/hr if that's what the USD tier specifies. Your deliberate pricing per market is preserved.

• Costs are converted. Supplier Costs are converted using the live exchange rate between the two currencies, pulled via API at the time of duplication.

Tasks transpose, Costs convert. Your labour is priced by the rate you set for that market, while third-party spend follows the real exchange rate, because that's what the supplier will actually charge you.

Saving a Job as a Template

Once a Job has been costed and structured the way you want it, save it so the next one starts from the same place.

1

Open the Job menu and click Save as Template.

2

Enter a Job Template Name and a Description. Both are required.

3

Click Save. The Template is available under Settings > Templates and from + From template when creating a new Job.

See Job Templates for managing Templates once they're created, and Recurring Jobs for generating them automatically on a schedule.

Task Briefs are not saved with a Template. The costed structure carries over, but briefs are always written fresh on the Job they belong to.

Great for the work your agency repeats: a monthly SEO retainer, a standard brand identity package, a campaign rollout, a website build phase structure. Cost it properly once, then reuse the shape instead of rebuilding it from memory each time.