Tasks

Add, activate, assign, tag, brief, review, and track Tasks inside a Job. Tasks are the billable units of agency work.

A Task is a single unit of billable work inside a Job. Two hours of account management, a round of copy amends, the animation on a social campaign, the design of a brand identity package.

Because Agencydesk was built exclusively for agencies, a Task carries the full commercial picture rather than just a state of done or not done. Every Task knows its rate, its estimate, who is working on it, who signs it off, how much time has been tracked against it, and whether it is billable. That is what lets one system run scope, schedule, and billing without a spreadsheet sitting in the middle.

Tasks are costed on the Job Costing, scheduled on the Resource Planner, worked from My Desk, measured on Timesheets, and billed through Invoices.

Draft Tasks and active Tasks

Tasks appear in two places inside a Job, and the difference matters.

• Job Costing tab — every Task on the Job, including Draft Tasks. This is the build view where you scope and price the work.

• Tasks tab — only Tasks that have been activated. This is the delivery view for the people doing the work.

The Tasks tab appears to the left of the Job Costing tab the moment the first Task on the Job is activated. Before that, the Job only has a Job Costing tab.

Great for pitch work. Build a full costing of Draft Tasks to price a campaign, send the Estimate, and activate nothing until the client approves. The studio never sees speculative work in their queue, and the Resource Planner stays clean.

Adding a Task

Tasks live inside Groups. You need at least one Group on the Job Costing before you can add a Task.

1

Open the Job Costing tab and find the Group the Task belongs to.

2

Click + Add Task at the bottom of that Group. The Task detail slider opens.

3

Select a Task Type. This pulls the department, the rate for the Job's Billing Tier, the default estimated time, and the default description from your Task Types on the Rate Card.

4

Add a Task Name if the Task Type needs more context. This is the only optional field.

5

Check the Rate / Hour and Estimated Time. Both carry a padlock icon showing whether the value is locked to the Rate Card.

6

Set Billable on or off, and edit the Description if this Job needs wording different to the Task Type default.

7

Click ADD DRAFT TASK. The Task lands in the Group with a Draft status.

How Tasks are named

A Task label is built from two parts:

Task Type + Task Name

The Task Type is inherited from the Rate Card. The Task Name is what you type when creating the Task. Together they read as one label:

• Animation - LinkedIn Post Animation

• Account Management - Internal Review

• Web Development (Front-end) - Home Page Styling Update

Some Task Types carry enough meaning on their own, which is why the Task Name is optional. Account Management or CI Moodboard Design reads fine with nothing after it. Others need the context: Animation tells you the discipline, Animation - Agencydesk Story Logo tells you the deliverable.

Great for monthly retainers. Six animations in one month all share the Animation Task Type, so the rate and the department stay consistent, while the Task Names keep the deliverables apart for the traffic manager and on the Invoice.

Activating a Task

A Task can be activated in two places:

• The toggle in the Status column of the Job Costing line.

• The Activate Task toggle at the bottom of the Task tab in the Task slider.

Activating a Task moves it onto the Tasks tab, makes it bookable on the Resource Planner, allows users to be assigned to it, allows a reviewer to be added, and allows time to be tracked against it. It also inherits the Job's start and end dates. Activating the first Task on a Job also moves the Job itself from Draft to Active.

A Draft Task shows only its Estimated Time, Additional Time, Rate/Hour, Billable state, and the Activate Task toggle. Start and Due dates, assigned users, reviewers, and tracked time all appear once it is active.

A Task can only be toggled back to Draft if no time has been tracked against it and it has not been invoiced, even partially. This stops work that has already consumed time or money from being quietly reverted.

The Tasks tab

The Tasks tab is where the Job's live work sits. Tasks are listed inside the same Groups used on the Job Costing, and each Group can be collapsed with the minus control on its header row.

Above the list

Every Job tab carries the same header, so the Tasks tab opens with the Job's context already in view:

• The Job's Account Executive.

• Time Recon — tracked time against estimated time for the whole Job, as a percentage and as figures, for example 152:32 used / est. 293:30.

• Task Recon — how many Tasks are complete out of the total, for example 2/15, with the percentage.

• The Timeline strip with the Job date range, the next milestone, and + Add Milestone.

Great for a standing WIP meeting. Time Recon at 52% against a Job that is two thirds through its date range is the conversation you want to have before the overrun, not after it.

Filtering the list

Above the Tasks are two status tabs with live counts:

• Active — Tasks still in production.

• Completed — Tasks whose master Complete control has been set.

A Search field on the right finds a Task by name within a long list.

The columns

Column	What it shows
Group and Task	The Group heading, then each Task beneath it
Status	The Task's progress state, for example In Progress, Overdue, or In Review
Assigned to	Profile pictures of assigned users, stacked when there is more than one. A grey add user icon shows when nobody is assigned
Date Range	The Task's start and due dates, with a flag beneath it
Time	Time tracked against estimated time, for example 04:28 / 15:00, with a progress bar

The flag under the Date Range counts down to the due date, showing something like 3 days in orange while there is still time, then switching to Overdue in pink once the due date has passed.

Reading a Task line

Next to the Task name:

• Paperclip icon with a number — documents are attached to the Task. The number is how many.

• Speech bubble icon with a number — Notes have been added to the Task.

• Pencil icon — appears on hover, to edit the Task.

Underneath the Task name:

• Task Brief — shows only when the Task has a Brief filled out.

• Amendments — each Amendment is listed by its label, with its time allocation next to it, for example More Time 05:00.

An Amendment with no time shows 0:00, which means it has to fit inside the time already estimated.

Great for spotting scope creep early. A Task showing three Amendments stacked under its name is a Task that has grown since it was quoted. An Account Executive can see that from the list without opening a single Task.

The Task slider

All of a Task's detail lives in the Task slider. It opens when you click:

• A Task line item on the Job Costing tab

• A Task on the Tasks tab inside a Job

• A Task on the Resource Planner

• A Task on your My Desk

The header carries the Task label with a link icon for copying a direct link to the Task, the Job reference beneath with a copy icon for copying the reference, any Global Tags on the Task, the current status tag, the master Complete control, and a ... menu.

The slider has five tabs: Task, Brief, Notes, Time, and Reviews.

Task tab

The Task tab is the working view of the Task.

Field	What it shows
Start and Due	The Task's date range. Active Tasks only
Estimated Time	The hours costed for the Task
Additional Time	Hours added by Amendments, on top of the estimate
Rate/Hour	The rate pulled from the Rate Card
Billable	Yes or No
Total Time Tracked	Time tracked across everyone assigned, against the estimate. Appears once the Task is active and has users assigned

Beneath that sit two sections. Assigned to lists everyone doing the work, and Reviewed by lists the reviewer, if one has been set. Each person shows their own status tag, their own tracked-against-estimated figure, their own progress bar, and a ... menu.

Progress bars are green while a user is inside their estimated time and turn pink once they reach or pass it, so an over-run is visible at a glance rather than at month end.

Assigning users

Users can be assigned from two places:

• From the Tasks list — click the grey add user icon when nobody is assigned, or click the existing profile pictures.

• From the Task slider — click + Assign a User, or click an assigned user.

Either opens the Add User popup.

The Add User popup

The popup is headed with the Task label and the Job reference, with a Search field on the right. It lists your team in two columns:

• Assign To — the user's name, with their department beneath it.

• Capacity — how much capacity that user has left. Users already assigned to the Task also show their booked time against the Task, with a progress bar.

Toggle a user on to assign them, toggle them off to remove them.

Users who belong to the same department as the Task Type sort to the top of the list, so the people who actually do this kind of work are the first ones you see.

Capacity is colour coded, and it reads as available time rather than workload:

• Green, 50% and above — plenty of capacity left. Book the time.

• Orange, below 50% — filling up. Check what else they are carrying first.

• Pink, below 10% — effectively full. Assigning more work here will push something else out.

Capacity comes from each user's Working Hours profile under Users, the same figures the Resource Planner calibrates its capacity bars against.

Great for a traffic manager balancing studio load. Assigning a designer to a Task and seeing them sitting in pink while another designer in the same department shows 82% green makes the decision for you before the booking happens.

Tagging a Task

The + control beneath the Job reference in the Task slider adds Global Tags to the Task. Tags are chosen from the same shared pool used across the account, and a Task can carry as many as you need. Tags show as coloured pills on the Task slider and on My Desk cards.

Great for cutting across the Job structure. Tagging every Task waiting on client feedback, everything flagged as a bug, or everything tied to a single media buy gives you a view of the work that Groups alone cannot express.

Completing a Task

Completion works at two levels: the whole Task, and each user's portion of it.

The master Complete control

The circle with a check mark in the top right of the Task slider is the master control for the whole Task.

• Clicking it marks every assigned user complete at once.

• Unchecking it marks every assigned user active again.

• When every assigned user has been individually marked complete, the master control flips to Complete on its own.

A Task can therefore sit Active while one person on it is already marked complete. That is normal. It means their portion of the work is finished while someone else is still going.

Great for split deliverables. On a brand identity package with two designers, the one handling logo refinement can close out their portion while the other is still working through co-branding guidelines. The Task stays open, but the finished work leaves the Resource Planner.

A Task marked complete also counts in full toward the Billable figure on the Job's Financial tab, even where no time was tracked against it.

The user menu

Each assigned user in the Task slider has a ... menu with two options.

Mark Completed

Once clicked, this becomes Activate Task. Marking a user's portion complete does the following:

• Adds a Complete tag above that user's progress bar.

• Removes the Task from the Resource Planner, so it cannot be booked in again and does not take up space.

• Moves the Task into the Completed column on that user's My Desk.

The Completed column on My Desk only shows completed Tasks from active Jobs. Once a Job is closed, its Tasks drop out of that column so it does not build up over time.

Deactivate User

Once clicked, this becomes Activate User. Deactivating a user does the following:

• Dims their profile picture and progress bar, so the Task reads as inactive for them at a glance.

• Removes the Task from the Resource Planner.

• Removes their profile picture from the Tasks list view.

• Sets their estimated time to exactly what they tracked, and carries the remaining time over to the other active users on the Task.

• Removes them from the Task entirely if they have tracked no time at all.

The time redistribution is the part worth understanding, so here it is worked through.

A Task is estimated at 5:00 with two designers assigned, so each carries 2:30.

Both track an hour. Each now sits at 01:00 / 02:30, with 1:30 remaining.

The first designer is deactivated. Their estimate drops to 1:00, exactly what they tracked, and their remaining 1:30 carries across to the second designer, who now sits at 01:00 / 04:00 with 3:00 remaining.

The Task total stays at 5:00. Nothing is lost and nothing is invented.

This is what you want when two people were put on a Task and it becomes clear that one of them is going to carry it. The estimate follows the work rather than the original guess.

Editing a Task

The ... menu in the top right of the Task slider holds Edit and Delete. A Task can also be edited from the pencil icon that appears on hover on the Tasks list, or from the pencil, duplicate, and trash icons that appear on hover over its line on the Job Costing.

Edit mode opens the Task's fields in place:

• Task Name

• Rate / Hour and Estimated Time, each with a padlock icon

• Billable

• Start Date and Due Date, each with a date picker

• Adjust Job Dates — tick this when the Task's dates fall outside the Job's own date range and the Job should move to accommodate them

• Description

• Assigned to, with a toggle per user

• Reviewed By

Rate and estimate lock on activation

Once a Task is activated, Rate / Hour and Estimated Time lock. Both show a closed padlock in edit mode and cannot be changed.

To change either one, put the Task back into Draft. If time has already been logged against the Task, that time has to be removed first. See Deactivating a line item.

This is deliberate. The rate and the estimate are what was approved when the Task was activated, and quietly editing them afterwards would break the link between what the client agreed to and what the Job is measured against. Where more time is genuinely needed, add an Amendment so the increase is recorded with a reason and an author.

Deleting a Task

A Task can only be deleted if no time has been tracked against it and it has not been invoiced. Where a Task has already consumed time, deactivate the user instead so the tracked time keeps its record.

Reviews

A Review is a formal sign-off step on a Task. Rather than approvals happening in a chat thread that nobody can find later, the request, the response, and the outcome are recorded on the Task itself, and the reviewer's time is tracked like any other work.

Great for agencies that want creative direction and QA time accounted for. A Creative Director spending fifteen minutes checking a set of social posts is real studio time. The review workflow puts it in their time logs instead of losing it.

Who can be a reviewer

Only users with Can review work checked on their profile under Users appear in the Reviewed By dropdown. Everyone else is filtered out.

A reviewer can only be added to a Task once it has been activated.

Adding a reviewer

1

Open the Task slider and choose Edit from the ... menu.

2

At the bottom, open the Reviewed By dropdown and select the reviewer.

3

Set the Estimated Time for the review itself, for example 00:15.

4

Set the Reserve Time toggle, which decides how that time behaves. See How review time is handled below.

5

Click SAVE.

A Reviewed by section now appears on the Task tab beneath Assigned to, showing the reviewer, their status tag, and their tracked time against the review estimate.

How review time is handled

The toggle beside the review estimate has two states, and they do different things.

Toggle off, shown as Add to Task

The review time sits outside the Task altogether. It is non-billable, it does not change the Task's Estimated Time, and it does not appear as Additional Time. It shows on the review allocation only, as an indication to the reviewer of how much time they have.

Use this when the agency is absorbing the review. The time is still visible and still tracked, it just does not touch what the client is being charged.

Toggle on, shown as Reserve Time

The review time is reserved out of the time already allocated to the people doing the work. The Task's Estimated Time does not move. What changes is how that estimate is divided between the team.

A Task is estimated at 2:00 with two users assigned, so each carries 1:00.

A reviewer is added with 00:30, and Reserve Time is switched on.

Each assigned user drops to 00:45, and the Task's Estimated Time still reads 2:00.

The thirty minutes has been carved out of the allocation rather than added to the Job.

Great for fixed-price deliverables. When a website build is quoted at a number the client has already signed off, the Creative Director's review time has to come out of that number rather than growing it. Reserve Time keeps the quote intact and still puts the review hours where they belong.

The reviewer menu

The ... menu next to the reviewer holds two options:

• Mark as Reviewed — close the review off directly.

• Remove Reviewer — take the reviewer off the Task.

Sending a Task for review

1

With a reviewer set, commit your time on My Desk and tick Send for Review.

2

The Task moves into your In Review column and its status tag changes to In Review.

3

The Task lands in the reviewer's For Today column under a For Review heading, highlighted so it stands out from their own work. It stays there until they review it.

Submitting a review

The reviewer, and anyone else who can review work, sees a blue Review button on the Reviews tab where everyone else sees a Pending tag.

1

Open the Task's Reviews tab and click Review. The Task Review popup opens.

2

Choose Feedback or Approve. Feedback shows an orange icon, Approve shows a green thumbs-up, so the outcome is clear before anything is sent.

3

Type the message. On an approval you can also tick Mark task complete for me, which closes out your portion of the Task at the same time.

4

Click Submit Review.

The Task's status tag returns from In Review to Active, and the Task leaves the reviewer's For Today column.

Feedback and approval can only be given from the Reviews tab.

A reviewer can track time against the review from the For Today column using the timer icon, and can add a note when committing that time, but committing time does not submit the review. The Task stays in review until they open the Reviews tab and submit an outcome.

Reading the Reviews tab

The Reviews tab is the full review journey of the Task, stacked chronologically with the most recent at the top. Each entry shows:

• The requester's profile picture, name, and the date and time the review was requested.

• The message they sent with the request.

• The outcome tag on the right.

• The reviewer's reply nested beneath, as Response by with their name, date, and time.

Outcome tags read:

• Pending — requested, not yet reviewed.

• Feedback — reviewed with changes requested.

• Approved — signed off.

Because each round is a separate entry, a Task that went through three passes shows all three, with what was asked and what came back each time.

Great for defending scope on a fixed-price deliverable. When a client insists a fourth round was always included, the Reviews tab shows exactly what was requested, when, and what was approved.

Review time

Time a reviewer tracks against a review is added to their time logs, the same as any other tracked time, and appears on their Timesheet. The review Task appears in their For Today column in light orange, so review work is visually distinct from the work they own.

Brief tab

The Brief tab holds the instruction for the Task and every change to that instruction since.

A new Task starts with no Brief. Briefs are not saved with Job Templates, so a Brief is always written fresh on the Job it belongs to.

The tab starts with two options, + Add Brief and + Add Amendment. Both are optional, and an Amendment can be added without a Brief existing.

When a Task is referenced from the Job Brief using the % shortcut, a link back to that section of the Job Brief appears here automatically.

Briefs and Amendments

They are essentially the same thing, with one difference that matters commercially.

• A Brief assumes the time already estimated on the Task covers the work described.

• An Amendment can carry additional time, which is added to the Task's overall estimate and shown as Additional Time on the Task tab.

An Amendment left with no time is set to 0:00, meaning the extra work has to fit inside the existing estimate.

Great for keeping scope honest on a retainer. When a client asks for a second round of home page styling that was never quoted, add it as an Amendment with the hours attached. The estimate moves, the studio sees the reason, and the conversation about the extra time happens now rather than at recon.

An Amendment is also the correct route when a Task needs more hours, because the rate and estimate lock once the Task is active.

Adding a Brief

1

Open the Brief tab and click + Add Brief.

2

Write the Brief in the editor. Formatting includes bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, bulleted, numbered and checklists, text alignment, tables, links, and an info block. Inline images can be pasted in, which is how colour palettes and reference visuals usually get in there.

3

Drop files into the Documents area, or click to select them.

4

Click Add Brief.

Adding an Amendment

1

Open the Brief tab and click + Add Amendment.

2

Give it an Amendment Label, for example More Time or Additional Hours. This label is what shows on the Tasks list.

3

Enter Add to Estimated Task Time if the Amendment carries extra hours. Leave it blank if the work must fit the existing estimate.

4

Write the Amendment and attach any documents.

5

Click ADD AMENDMENT.

How the stack reads

Amendments stack chronologically with the most recent on top, and each one can be collapsed. The newest is expanded by default and the rest sit collapsed beneath it.

The Task Brief always sits at the bottom of the stack, so Amendments sit above it. The original instruction stays where you would expect to find it, and the latest change is the first thing you read.

Each card in the stack shows:

• Its label, Task Brief or the Amendment label.

• Estimated Time on a Brief, or Additional Time on an Amendment.

• The date it was Added.

• A ... menu.

• A footer line recording who created it and when, or who last edited it and when.

Documents

Documents can be dragged into the drop area on a Brief or an Amendment, or selected from your machine. Each attached file shows its name, the date and time it was added, and its size, with icons to delete, preview, or download it.

Documents attached anywhere on the Task count towards the paperclip icon on the Tasks list.

Notes tab

Notes are for putting information on a Task where anyone opening it will see it.

Click + Add a Note to write one. Each Note shows the author's profile picture, their name, and the date and time it was posted.

• Type @ to direct a Note at someone. It then appears in their notification panel, which opens on the right of the screen anywhere in Agencydesk via the bell icon in the top right, just left of the profile picture.

• Anyone can reply to a Note using + Add a Comment. Replies always attach to the main Note, so there are only ever two levels: the Note, and the replies to it.

• Notes appear as a speech bubble icon with a count on the Tasks list.

• Notes also surface under Task Notes on the Job's Central tab.

Tagging someone in a Note does notify them. Tagging a user in the Job Brief does not, since that is a visual cue rather than an alert.

Notes work best as information rather than conversation. Recording the client's feedback wording, flagging that assets are still outstanding, or tagging the person who needs to supply something. Long back-and-forth belongs elsewhere.

Time tab

The Time tab lists every entry logged against the Task, grouped by day. Time reaches it from the timer and Commit Time popup on My Desk, and rolls up into Timesheets.

Click + Add Time to log time manually.

Column	What it shows
Source	Timer or Manual, showing whether the time was tracked with the timer or entered by hand
Time	The amount of time tracked or submitted
When	When the timer was last stopped or paused

Each entry shows the user's name and the note they saved with the time.

When is worth reading carefully. It records the moment the tracking actually stopped, not the moment the user got around to committing it. Someone who stops work at 2pm and commits the time at 5pm still shows 2pm.

That distinction is what makes the Time tab usable as an audit trail. Time reads against when the work happened, so a Task queried weeks later can be reconstructed accurately.

Adding or editing time manually requires permission. It is granted per user by checking Can add and edit tracked time on their profile under Users.

With that permission, hovering over a time entry reveals an edit pencil and a trash icon for editing or deleting the entry. Without it, the log is read only.

Deleting time entries is also the first step in unwinding a Task back to Draft, and in deleting a Job that is already in progress.