Manage your first task

This page explains what a task is and walks you through adding one to your project. You will see what each main field changes and how the task gets its price.

What a task is

A task is one piece of work in a project, such as a field survey, a lab analysis, or a report. Each task records who does the work, when, how long it should take, and what it is worth.

Tasks are where your team records its hours. Those hours, and the task's price, feed the project's budget, its invoices, and the dashboard. See Tasks for the full picture.

Open the New task form

Select your project in the Projects section of the left panel first, so the task belongs to it. Then:

Tasks›New›New task

With a project selected, the new task belongs to it from the start.

The form opens with the project and its rate schedule already filled in.

Fill in the task

Your firm sets up this form. In the example no field is required, but your firm may require some, such as the description or the labor category.

1. Enter the task name at the top of the form.
2. On the Basic data tab, fill in the fields below.

Field	What it changes
Assigned to	The person who does the work. The task appears in their task list, and they follow its updates.
Start date and Due date	Where the task sits on the schedule. After its due date, an open task counts as overdue on the dashboard.
Estimated time	The hours the work should take. With a calculated price, it sets what the task is worth.
Labor category	The kind of work, for example a senior consultant's time. It picks the hourly rate from the project's rate schedule.
Job phases	The phase of the project the task belongs to, so you can group tasks by phase.
Is billable	Whether the hours recorded on this task are billed to the client.

The project and its rate schedule come from the project you selected.

The other tabs hold the description, reminders, repeating tasks, subscribers, and subtasks. You can fill them in now or later. See Task fields for every field.

Choose how the task is priced

On the Financials tab, Price (Estimated revenue) sets what the task is worth:

• Calculated: the estimated time multiplied by the hourly rate of the task's labor category, plus the price of the budgeted expenses linked to the task. This fits time and materials work.
• Fixed Fee: you enter the price yourself. This fits fixed-fee work. The tab then also shows Earned value calculation method; see Task fields for its options.

With Fixed Fee, you enter the price the client pays for the task.

Save and find your task

1. Click Save.
2. The task appears in the Tasks tab of your project, grouped by labor category. Click its name to open it.

From the open task, you and the person assigned can record hours with Add worked hours or Start clock.

The task now appears in Denton Cannon's task list too.

What you can do next

1. Record your first time entry to log hours on your task.
2. Assigning and completing tasks to follow a task through to done.
3. Labor categories in daily use to see how labor categories set rates.