Using projects, tasks and time together

This post is for small teams that want one weekly routine for planning, doing and tracking work. It shows how Nubo Projects holds the team’s plan, Nubo Tasks holds your own day, and Nubo Time records the hours you bill.

Teams often use three kinds of tool for work: one to plan what the team is doing, one to manage the individual’s day, and one to record time. They are different jobs, and they work best when each one is kept simple and the names line up. This post describes a weekly routine using Nubo Projects, Nubo Tasks and Nubo Time. The routine itself would work with other tools.

Three tools, three questions

• Projects answers “what is the team working on, and where is each piece?” It is a board of cards in columns, with dates, assignees, milestones and a timeline.
• Tasks answers “what do I do today?” It is a personal and shared to-do list with due dates, priorities, subtasks and recurring reminders.
• Time answers “how long did it take, and who do we bill?” It is a timer and timesheet by client, project or task.

The trap is to use one tool for all three questions. A board of 200 cards is not a to-do list, and a to-do list is not a plan. Keeping them separate keeps each one short enough to read.

Set up once

Spend an hour on setup, and the rest is routine.

1. Agree names. Decide how clients and projects are named, for example Client - Project. Use the same names in Projects and in Time, so that a report in Time reads like the board in Projects.
2. Create a project per piece of shared work. A client engagement, a product release, an internal initiative. Not per week, not per person.
3. Pick columns that match reality. A reasonable default is To do, In progress, Review and Done. Mark the last as the done column so completed cards count as finished. If you want to limit work in progress, set a limit on the In progress column; the header shows the count against the limit without ever blocking you.
4. Add milestones for dated targets. A launch date, a delivery date, a review with the client. They show as markers on the timeline and as progress bars.
5. In Time, create clients and projects with their rates. Rates cascade: a rate on an entry beats the project’s, which beats the client’s, which beats your default. Set billing rules per client for rounding, minimum time and payment terms if you invoice from tracked hours.
6. Put the one-page brief on each project. What it is for, what done means, where the files live. Projects has a Markdown brief at the top of each project for this.

Monday: plan the week

Fifteen to thirty minutes, on your own or as a short team meeting.

1. Open the project board and look at the Review column first. Anything waiting for review is blocking someone else. Clear those before starting new work.
2. Move cards that are finished or stuck. Done goes to Done. If a card has not moved in two weeks, either it is not important or it is blocked; say which.
3. Decide what this week’s work is. Pick the cards you intend to move this week and give each a due date and an assignee. A card without a date is a wish.
4. Check the timeline for the next few weeks. Look for dates that collide and milestones that look at risk.
5. Turn your cards into your day. In Tasks, add the things you personally need to do this week, with due dates. A quick-add bar that understands plain phrases (“send draft to Maya friday”) saves typing. The Today view then shows only what is due today and overdue.

The point of step 5 is that the board stays about the work and your list stays about your day. A card might become three tasks for you. Do not put those three tasks on the board.

Every day: do and record

Start of day. Open Today in Tasks. If the list is longer than you can do, move things to another day now, not at 5pm. Check Today in Projects (a cross-project view of dated unfinished work grouped by overdue, today and this week) in case someone else’s card is waiting on you.

During the day. Work from the list. When you start a block of work you will bill or want to measure, start the timer in Time and attach it to the right client and project. If you forget, add an entry afterwards; Time accepts durations in forms like 1:30, 90m or 1.5h. Time also warns you about forgotten timers and double-booked days.

When a card moves. Update the board when something changes state, in the moment: In progress when you start, Review when you hand it over, Done when it is accepted. Add a comment when there is something the next person needs to know.

End of day. Close the timer. Tick off finished tasks. Spend two minutes on tomorrow’s list.

Friday: review

Fifteen minutes, alone or with the team.

1. Look at the weekly timesheet in Time. Is each day accounted for? Fill gaps while you still remember. The weekly grid, with projects down the side and days across, makes this quick.
2. Compare the hours with the board. Which projects took more time than expected? Which cards took longer than the estimate? Write the reason in one line.
3. Archive finished work. Move done cards to the archive so the board stays readable. Projects can archive tasks in a done column after a set number of days.
4. Check budgets and retainers. Time shows progress against a project budget or monthly retainer, with warnings at thresholds. If a project is at 80% of budget with half the work left, talk to the client now.
5. Write the next week’s three priorities on the project brief or in a team message.

Monthly: from hours to invoices

If you bill by time, the monthly step is turning tracked hours into an invoice.

• Review each client’s unbilled time and fix any entries that look wrong.
• Apply rounding and minimums as set for the client, and add any fixed fees or pass-through expenses as separate lines.
• Create the invoice from the unbilled time. Time locks the rates when entries are marked as invoiced, so a later change to your rates does not rewrite an issued invoice.
• Attach a printable timesheet to the invoice if the client wants to see the days and tasks.
• Track payment against the due date and send reminders for late ones.

If you keep the books in Nubo Accounting or send invoices from Nubo Invoicing, treat the link as partly manual. Nubo Invoicing can export every recorded payment as a CSV of income rows for Accounting to import, and Time prints its own invoice. Do not rely on a connection that has not been tested with your own data.

Habits that keep the system useful

• Keep the board honest. If it is not on the board, it is not planned. If it is on the board, someone owns it.
• Make cards small. A card should be something that can be finished in a few days. Break up anything bigger into a milestone with several cards.
• Limit work in progress. Finishing is worth more than starting.
• Name things the same way everywhere. One spelling of each client.
• Record time as you go. Reconstructing a week from memory is where the errors come from.
• Prune regularly. Archive, delete and merge. A tidy tool gets used.
• Use saved views. In Projects you can save a filter such as “overdue” or “my high-priority cards” so a common question is one click.

If you are coming from other tools

Projects can import a Trello board’s JSON export, and a CSV from Asana or any spreadsheet, with a preview of what will come across. Time can import history from Toggl, Clockify and Harvest CSV exports. See our migration plan for the order to do this in.