Does anyone have any workaround for automations only being applied to a single task type per automation (or for setting the billing type)?
We have about 20 custom item types per space and are running 5 spaces. Each space represents an individual client. 99.9% of tasks need to be billable in each space.
Tasks are created either by request form or directly into a kanban view of our workflow.
(The kanban view lives in the space overview).
In order to ensure that we are able to set the billing type of each task to billable, we must move each task from the space overview and into a project that has the billing type set to billable ... this took me a while to figure out!! I can tell people to use the billable project to create tasks in, but they don't always remember!
The problem doesn't end there. Moving tasks does not make them billable because they are not created within the billable project. If a task is created by a request form, we can move the task or item type into the billable project using the automations available within the request (this is great, thank you!) ... However, the job, of course, does not end up as billable.
The only in order to catch everything we need to create an automation.
But the problem here is two-fold.
- Automations only work on one single task type at a time....do I really need to create 20 automations to do the single task?
- There is no automation to change the billing type.
If anyone has any workarounds here I would really appreciate hearing them.
Thanks.
Hello Benjamin Rodd, thank you for sharing your question with us. In this case, you'd need to either create an automation rule for each custom item type or, create a rule that would apply to all the tasks gathered in one specific location. I believe this would be the easiest way.
In case you still wish to request users to make the changes manually, you can create a rule to @mention the item's author and ask them to make sure they are using the billable project.
Please, let us know if you have any additional questions!
We also have this problem: automation rules and request forms cannot currently modify the Billing Type field.
When we run our monthly hourly billing reports, we have some clients that operate on retainer where tasks should be Billable by default, and others that are project-based flat rates where tracked time should be "Not-billable" because the bill has already been paid.
However, when our account managers create Social Graphic or Video tasks using request forms, they are all created as "Not-billable" by default. This requires our account managers to manually check all the tasks to make sure that they are correctly marked as Billable before they run their reports, and this has caused us to get inaccurate information.
We would like to set up an automation rule that automatically sets all new tasks created in a Client folder to be Billable. Alternatively, we would like request forms to be able to set a task to be billable.
Meanwhile, we found a workaround: We create a duplicate blueprint task with "Billing Type" set to "Billable." Account managers can then select either "Social Media Graphic" or "Social Media Graphic - Billable" from a "Project Type" dropdown box on the request form. This field replaces the the task with a blueprint that has the correct settings in the Billing Type field.
We don't like this workaround because it doubles the amount of options in the dropdown list and requires us to maintain two separate blueprints. It also makes more logical sense to be able to apply these billing automations at a folder level so that "it just works" for account managers and they don't need to take an additional step.
Austin Hines, your workaround is probably the best way for now. You could set up follow up questions in your request form to ask billable or non-billable after selecting 'Social Media Graphic" and then have the billable blueprint replace the project at that point. It would be just as much work as having the 2 types separate since you would have to do a follow up for each option and still maintain 2 sets of blueprints, but it would eliminate having everything on the dropdown twice.
Alternatively, since there is no option to change billing with automations but there is an option to use it as a trigger, you could set up an automation where if a project lands in a client folder and is marked as non billable, someone is @mentioned to change the billing type. Not ideal at all, but could work as a check to make sure it is changed.