Creating your first Cashboard project
In addition to being a great billing platform, Cashboard is also a full featured project management system.
Our Project Bulletin Board allows you to manage tasks, group them into lists, and communicate with your entire team. Tasks can be organized in multiple ways, giving you maximum flexibility.
This interface works in real-time, and is designed for productivity. Updates are shown immediately to all team members viewing a bulletin board, and we've put in keyboard shortcuts to make using it a breeze.
To make a new project, go to the Create menu, then select Project.
Once you've filled in a project name, set a client, and selected a project billing type you'll be taken to the bulletin board.
Organizing projects with lists
Tasks inside the project bulletin board are
organized into lists.
Lists are simply containers that allow you to organize projects in
a way that makes sense to you.
These lists could represent sub-projects, steps in a process (to-do, doing, done), or something more involved.
To create a list, use the NEW LIST button in the toolbar at the top of the screen.
Working with tasks
After you've made a list, you can now create tasks.
Tasks can be created by clicking the NEW
TASK button inside a list, or by pressing N on your
keyboard.
Tasks can be discussed with comments, and worked on by logging time entries against them.
Due dates
If you're on a time schedule, stay on point by using due dates. Due dates will be shown while viewing a project, with overdue tasks shown in red.
Label colors
Tasks can be labeled with 6 different colors.
What these colors mean is entirely up to you - but we tend to use
them to indicate a task's status
Assignment to users
Tasks can be assigned to your employees - which helps when
working with larger teams.
By using the Filter Tasks button, you can view all tasks
that belong to you, or someone else.
Assigning a task to someone is simply another way to help you stay organized - it doesn't give it any special behavior. All employees are free to log time and comment on tasks for any project they're assigned to.
You can assign tasks by either using the drop-down while editing a task, or by dragging and dropping their picture from the sidebar onto a task.
Hourly estimates
For those of you working on a budget, tasks can contain low and high hourly estimates.
If you create a project from an estimate your estimates will be copied over - but you can also estimate directly from the project bulletin board.
When a task has estimates specified, you'll see a progress bar that shows you how you're performing compared to your estimate on a per-task basis. An overview for the entire project will also be shown in the sidebar.
Completing tasks
When your work on a task is done you can mark it complete and hide it from view by either...
- ...opening the task view by clicking on it, then click the Complete & close task button
- or - by using the arrow keys to highlight the task, then pressing the ENTER key on your keyboard
Completed tasks will be hidden from view, and will no longer appear in any task selection menus when logging time.
Filtering and searching tasks
You can quickly find tasks inside your project by using the FILTER TASKS button.
Clicking this button will reveal a menu that enables you to search tasks by name, show completed tasks, and more. You can also use the filter menu to show tasks with certain label colors, or tasks assigned to specific people.
Tracking time from the bulletin board
You don't have to open our timesheet to actually track time. Time tracking is also available from Cashboard's project bulletin board.
To track time for tasks within your project, open a task by clicking on it, then select the + TIME ENTRY button.
You can also log new time entries for tasks by using the key commands noted below.
Keyboard shortcuts
As mentioned previously you can also use your keyboard to drive
the bulletin board interface.
There's a list of keyboard shortcuts that you can show by mousing
over the keyboard icon shown here.