An example: a web agency with six developers and one project manager works for about twenty clients. Requests arrive by e-mail, by phone, in messages and at meetings. The manager writes them into a spreadsheet, the developers into their own notes. At the end of the month it turns out that one request got stuck in an inbox, another was done twice, and nobody knows who has the third.
This is an illustration that many agencies will recognise. Below is how to organise such a team in NodiTeam: every client has its own project, every request becomes a task with an assignee and a due date, and nothing stays only in someone’s inbox.
What was getting in the way
- ✓Requests were scattered across e-mail, chat and meeting notes.
- ✓It wasn’t clear who was doing what and by when.
- ✓To know where a project stood, the manager had to ask each developer separately.
- ✓Hours were logged from memory at the end of the month, so invoices didn’t match the work done.
One project per client
Under Work → Projects the manager creates a project for each client and adds the client when editing it. Larger clients can have subprojects, for example the website and the online shop. When a client accepts a quote for a bigger job, the Create project with tasks button turns every quote line into a task, and lines in hours become the task’s hour estimate. Nothing is retyped.
Every request becomes a task
When a new request comes in, the manager moves it straight onto the project board:
- 1They add a task to the project board with a clear title, for example “Enquiry form on the Contact page”.
- 2They choose the assignee (there can be several), the Start and Due date, and the priority: low, normal, high or urgent.
- 3They enter the Estimated hours and attach the files the client sent.
- 4A bigger task is split into subtasks, and progress shows right on the card.
- 5When the developer is done, they move the task to the In review column. The manager reviews it and closes it or sends it back.
The board has the columns Ideas, Open, In progress, In review and Completed. Questions and answers about a task stay in the task’s comments, not in e-mail, so a colleague who takes the task over later can find them too.
A request that arrives in chat doesn’t get buried in the conversation: a task can be created directly from a message in Chat. With @ and a name, the manager mentions a colleague, who then gets a notification.
Due dates on the timeline
Under Work → Projects, the Timeline button shows every task as a bar from start to due date. The view for 2 weeks, a month or 3 months can be grouped By project or By person. Overdue tasks have a red border, and a red vertical line marks today. Before agreeing a date with a new client, the manager can see who will be free in the coming weeks and where work overlaps.
Each developer sees their own work on the dashboard, and the manager sees the tasks waiting for review. Nobody has to be asked one by one where a project stands.
Smaller client wishes through the portal
Clients submit smaller wishes themselves. Under Work → Client wishes the manager clicks Invite client and sends them a link to the client portal. On the portal a client sees only their own wishes, the replies and the status, never the agency’s tasks or other clients. With Plan the manager enters an hour estimate, a quarter and a project, a task is created, and the client gets an e-mail whenever the status changes.
Hours on tasks and invoicing
Developers log their hours under Work reports → Work log and pick the task when they do, as they go or at the end of the week. Once the admin turns on invoicing from tasks, at the end of the month the manager opens Finance → Tasks to invoice, picks the client and sees lines per task and person with hours and hourly rate. They check them and click Continue to invoice. Each logged entry is invoiced only once, so next month only the new hours remain.
What changed
Client requests have one place to live. Every task has an assignee and a due date, and the manager spots a delay on the timeline before the client does. Invoicing no longer involves guessing how many hours went to which client, because hours are logged on tasks in that client’s project. The task reports also show which projects took more hours than estimated, which helps with the next quote.