Karbon makes work easy! You can create work in several ways, depending on where in Karbon you are, create single ad-hoc work items or use work templates to make it easier to create work for those standardized processes.

Learn how you can view your own work items, work across your entire team, and drill into specific jobs.

Once you have created a new piece of work, you will be presented with the work overview details in the header, and shown the Timeline. You can explore full details of the project by clicking the tabs below the work header (Timeline, Tasks, Time & Budget and Details). Every work item has:

You get a quick snapshot of details about the Work item within the header such as;

Each detail in the Work header has a clickable link that will allow you to take some sort of action. You can click on each one to make changes or you can use the options menu '...' to the right of the Work header.

The timeline for a piece of work is populated with all communications added to the work from Triage, as well as any notes taken and associated with the piece of work. Any email that is added to work will have all its subsequent communications (replies) automatically added to the work timeline. Thus, threads of communication are always added to the right timeline to minimize the effort required to manage work.

If speaking to a client, contact or colleague about a given piece of work, it is best to capture the conversation as a note directly in the timeline, to eliminate the steps of associating the note to the appropriate timeline. Simply do this by clicking 'Post a note'.

For most practitioners, checklists are heavily used so that work can be completed on time and at quality without missing a step. The tasks tab within a piece of work is the place where those checklists reside.

You can create ad-hoc task lists, copy task lists from other pieces of work, and have pre-created task lists when creating a piece of work from a work template.

To view the Time & Budget tab, you will need to turn on this feature within your Settings.

If you are using QuickBooks Time, in order to track time in Karbon you will need to turn on Time & Budgets. Before doing this, we recommend reviewing our QuickBooks Time integration setup guide. Once you've turned this on, the Time & Budgets tab will appear and allow you to view existing time entries as well as create new ones. These time entries will be available and synced between both Karbon and QuickBooks Time.

As well as bringing together all emails, notes, and tasks, all files and documents relating to a piece of work can be stored against the work item.

Furthermore, all files attached to an email that’s linked to a piece of work will be automatically stored against it in the work item's Documents tab.

Files attached to comments on client tasks will also appear in the work item's documents tab (however files attached to regular task comments will not be). Additionally, documents can be shared, saved and organized using an outside Document Management System.

The Details tab holds all the remaining information on the work item. This includes information captured when the work was created like work description and work type.

In addition, you can see and edit the Work team and Privacy. The work team is displayed based on who has had involvement in the timeline (notes and emails), tasks (any assigned to a team member), and/or a team associated via the privacy settings.

When creating work items, you can choose to create a single ad hoc work item or you can choose to create a work item based on a work item template that you've set up. Templates are great for work items that you use all the time with similar tasks for multiple clients. You can also set a work item up on a repeating schedule if the work item is something that reoccurs on a frequent basis such as monthly, quarterly or yearly.

To create a piece of work, you can go to the Global Add menu '+' and select Work.

The main details for your piece of work are created when you create new work. Upon creation, you can specify the work title, work type, work owner, associated client, start date, due date, work description, and deadline date.

When creating a single ad-hoc work item, fill out the name of the work item and the client the work is for. You can also add additional details such as start date, due date, which team member will be responsible to see it through, a brief description, and a deadline for the work if desired.

You can also add work directly from an email, note or a client's work tab.

You can link an email to work directly from an email by clicking 'Add to timeline' within the email, 'Add to Timeline' under Timelines in the information tray or the email's options menu '...' then selecting 'Create work'.
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From the modal select 'Create Work' and assign the job to a client (you can assign it to a person, organization, or client group).

Once the email has been linked to the Work, the conversation will show as part of the Work.

Once that work item is created, you can then begin to build out your workflow by adding in sections and tasks within the Tasks tab as well as other related work details.

Creating work from a client's timeline is super easy. Simply click on the contact you wish to create work for and then navigate to the work tab. Click 'Add Work' and fill in the details of the work you wish to create, then click 'create'.

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If you have standardized processes saved as work templates, you can create work from this. When you create a new piece of work, choose 'Use a template'.

You can then search for the template you want to use. You’ll also be able to select start and due dates and an assignee like you normally would for any new piece of work.

When you choose 'Create', your new piece of work will include the same tasks, details, descriptions, and documents that are saved in the template.

You can also add a work item straight from the template that you've created or updated.

Just go into the main menu of Karbon, open up settings and choose work templates. There you will be able to create a new work item off of the template within the options menu '...' from the work header. You will only be able to access work templates if you are an admin user.

If you assigned tasks in the template to job roles, you'll be given the option to assign all tasks that have been allocated job roles, to colleagues.

Once it has been created, the new piece of work will become ‘divorced’ from the template. This means that if any future changes are made to the template, these won’t flow through to any created pieces of work. If you've made changes to tasks, these will only flow through to future work items where the tasks have not yet been created.

When you assign all tasks for a particular job role placeholder to a colleague, that job role placeholder will be removed from the work team and replaced by your colleague. The colleague will also inherit any time and budget estimated for that job role placeholder.

If you decide not to assign the placeholder roles to a team member, the job role will be put on the work team, along with any estimated time and/or budget for it.

Later, if you reassign just one of several of the placeholder's tasks to a team member, that team member will be added to the work team, but the placeholder will also remain on the team along with all of the time estimates for it.

Finally, if you reassign the last of the placeholder's tasks to a team member, that team member will be added to the work team and inherit the placeholder's time. The placeholder will be removed from the work team entirely.

Suggested articles:

Managing Work Items and teams

Setup repeating work on a schedule

View work and manage Work views

Manage Files & Documents on work items

Manage budgeted fees on work

Connecting to your Document Management System