Projects & Tasks

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Projects group your work for a client. Tasks break that work into trackable pieces.

Creating a project

Go to Projects → New Project and fill in the details:

• Name: A descriptive project name
• Client: The client this project belongs to (required)
• Project lead: An optional workspace member who owns this project overall. Does NOT replace per-task assignees; individual tasks can still be assigned to different specialists. The field shows once there is more than one person in your workspace, including people you have invited, or when the current lead can no longer be assigned. When it is hidden, saving the form keeps the lead as it is
• Budget: The total project budget in your currency
• Hourly rate: The rate charged per hour for this project (used for billable amount calculations and invoicing from time entries)
• Start / End date: The planned project timeline
• Status: Planning, In Progress, On Hold, or Completed
• Notes: Internal notes about the project

The project detail page shows one money card, and what it shows follows the billing type:

• Hourly, with a budget and an hourly rate. A budget burn bar: how much of the budget the billable hours logged have consumed.
• Fixed fee. The agreed fee, and underneath it what the fee has earned per hour so far, the fee divided by every hour logged against the project. It reads high early and settles as hours accrue, so it is labelled “so far”. A flat fee can’t burn a budget in money, so there is no percentage.
• A budget but no hourly rate. The budget, and a note that an hourly rate is needed to track burn.

Either way, the Hours Logged card shows hours against the summed task estimates, so you can see how long a project took against what you expected. On a fixed-fee project it also repeats the fee earned per hour.

Client snapshot sidebar

When you pick a client on the new-project form, a Client Snapshot panel appears on the right. It always confirms the client’s default currency and primary contact. Below that, if there’s prior history, you’ll see the count and invoiced value of past projects, how their work typically runs against estimate, and the last 30 days of logged hours. The estimate-accuracy line only appears once at least two past projects have task-level estimates set; rows with no data yet are hidden. On mobile, expand it from the Client Snapshot toggle above the form.

Project statuses

• Planning: Work hasn’t started yet (default)
• In Progress: Actively being worked on
• On Hold: Temporarily paused
• Completed: All work is finished

Edit a project on its page

On the project detail page, you change a value by clicking it. These can all be changed in place:

• Name: Click the title, type, and press Enter to save.
• Status: Click the value and pick a new one from the list.
• Lead: Click it and pick a person, or choose no lead. The row shows once there is more than one person in your workspace, including people you have invited. It also shows when the project’s lead is someone who can no longer be assigned, so you can still see who it was.
• Start date and End date: Click the date and pick one from the calendar. Once a date is set, Clear in the picker removes it.
• Budget: Click it, type the amount, and press Enter. On a fixed-fee project this row is called Flat fee. You can type 1,500.50 or 1 500,50.
• Hourly rate: Click it, type the rate, and press Enter. Fixed-fee projects have no hourly rate, so the row is hidden.
• Notes: Click the notes, type, and click away to save. Cmd+Enter (Ctrl+Enter on Windows) saves too.

Press Esc while typing to cancel and keep the old value. A name can’t be left empty, an end date can’t be before the start date, and a budget can’t be negative. The client is a link, and the billing type is shown but doesn’t change here. For the billing type and milestones, click More fields to open the full form, where you can also move the project to another client. Move (see below) does the same with an impact summary first.

If someone else changed the project after you opened it, a change to the name, lead, dates, budget, hourly rate or notes doesn’t overwrite theirs. Kiaro shows “Couldn’t save. Someone else changed this project. Refreshed to the latest.” and reloads the page with the latest values, so you can make your change again. A status change doesn’t check whether someone else changed the project first.

Tasks

Each project contains tasks. There are several ways to create tasks:

Quick-add modal (keyboard shortcut)

Press T (or fn+T on Mac) from any page to open the quick-add task modal. Type a task name, pick the client and then one of its projects, optionally set a due date, and press Enter. It starts from the page you’re on: on a project’s page that project is picked, on a client’s page (or a list filtered by a client) that client is. Elsewhere it starts from the client you last worked with. The task is created without leaving your current page.

Inline creation on project pages

At the bottom of the task list on any project detail page, click the “Add a task…” input. Type a name and press Enter. The task is created in that project with default settings. The input refocuses automatically for rapid entry.

Full task form

Go to a project and click New Task for the full form with all fields:

• Name: What needs to be done
• Status: To Do, In Progress, Blocked, Ongoing, or Done
• Priority: Urgent, High, Medium, or Low
• Estimated hours: How long you expect the task to take
• Assigned to: The person responsible. This field shows once there is more than one person in your workspace, and people you have invited count
• Due date: When the task should be completed
• Notes: Additional context

When you create a task from Tasks → New Task, you first pick the client and project it belongs to. If the project does not exist yet, type its name in the project picker and choose Create ”…”. The project is created and selected on the spot, so you never have to leave a half-filled task form to set one up first.

One-click task completion

Every task row has a circle checkbox on the left. Click it to mark the task as done. The row gets a strikethrough and a confirmation toast appears with an Undo button (visible for 10 seconds). No need to open the task or change a dropdown.

Edit a task on its page

On the task detail page, you change a value by clicking it. There is no Edit button and no separate edit form. These can all be changed in place:

• Name: Click the title, type, and press Enter to save.
• Status and Priority: Click the value and pick a new one from the list.
• Assignee: Click it and pick a person. People you have invited are marked Invited. The row shows once there is more than one person in your workspace, including people you have invited. It also shows when the task is assigned to someone who can no longer be assigned, so you can still see who it was.
• Due date: Click it and pick a date from the calendar, or use a shortcut: Today, Tomorrow or Next Monday. Once a date is set, Clear in the picker removes it.
• Estimate: Click it, type the hours, and press Enter.
• Notes: Click the notes, type, and click away to save. Cmd+Enter (Ctrl+Enter on Windows) saves too.

Press Esc while typing to cancel and keep the old value. A name can’t be left empty. The client and project show in a Project row, and each is a link. To move the task to another project, use Move (see below).

If someone else changed the task after you opened it, a change to the name, priority, assignee, due date, estimate or notes doesn’t overwrite theirs. Kiaro shows “Couldn’t save. Someone else changed this task. Refreshed to the latest.” and reloads the page with the latest values, so you can make your change again. A status change doesn’t check whether someone else changed the task first.

The old /tasks/<id>/edit address now opens the task page.

Tasks activate themselves when you start working

A task in To Do moves to In Progress automatically the first time you log time against it, whether you start its timer or add a manual time entry. You never have to change the status by hand to record that work has begun. Tracking time is the signal that it has. Tasks already In Progress, Blocked, Ongoing, or Done are left as they are.

Ongoing tasks

Some work never finishes. Marketing, research, meeting prep, admin, app testing, these have no due date or completion. They are buckets you log time against week after week.

Set those to the Ongoing status. Create the task once, then assign time to it whenever you work on it, instead of creating a new task every time.

Ongoing vs In Progress:

• In Progress: work with a due date that will be finished at some point
• Ongoing: continuous work with no end date, kept around so you have somewhere to put the time

What Ongoing changes:

• Ongoing tasks are excluded from the daily digest, so recurring buckets never crowd out work that has a deadline. See the daily priority digest
• Logging time against an Ongoing task leaves it Ongoing. It is not promoted to In Progress like a To Do task would be
• Ongoing tasks get their own Kanban column, so they stay visible without sitting in your active work column

You can still mark an Ongoing task Done when you stop doing that work for a client. Time already logged against it is kept.

Overdue task rescheduling

In the task list, a task past its due date shows its due date in red. The whole due cell is the target, click it to open a date picker with one-tap shortcuts at the top:

• Tomorrow
• Next Monday

Or pick any date from the calendar. One click reschedules the task, right from the list, without opening it. It works exactly like editing the due date on any other task, so there is nothing special to hunt for.

Kanban board and list view

Tasks can be viewed in two ways:

• Kanban board: Cards organized by status columns (To Do, In Progress, Blocked, Ongoing, Done). Drag and drop tasks between columns to update their status, or reorder them within a column. Each card shows the assignee’s profile photo, or their initials if they have none; hover it to see their name.
• List view: A table of all tasks with inline editing for status, priority, assignee, and due date. A value highlights when you hover it, which shows you can click it to change it. Click a row to open the task detail page.

If Kiaro can’t save an inline edit, it shows why and puts the old value back. Inline edits follow the same rules as the edit forms: a project’s end date can’t be before its start date, a budget can’t be negative, and a task can only be assigned to an active teammate or someone you’ve invited.

Switch between views using the toggle at the top of the tasks section.

Quick menu on tasks and projects

Every task and every project in a list, on a board and on a phone card has a quick menu, so you can change a value without opening the record. On a computer, right-click the row or card. You can also use the ⋯ button: it appears when you hover a row or card or tab to it with the keyboard. On a phone or tablet it is always shown. Press Enter on the button to open the menu.

A task’s menu has:

• Status and Priority: pick a new value.
• Assignee: pick Unassigned, Me or a teammate. It shows once there is more than one person in your workspace, including people you have invited. It also shows when the task is assigned to someone who can no longer be assigned.
• Due date: Today, Tomorrow or Next Monday. Clear appears once a date is set. For any other date, use Open and the date picker on the task page.
• Open: go to the task page.
• Delete: asks you to confirm, then removes the task with its time entries and comments. A task with invoiced time can’t be deleted. You stay on the page you were on, including a project’s Tasks tab.

A project’s menu has Status, End date (same shortcuts as a task’s due date) and Open.

Choosing an item never opens the record. On a board, dragging a card still moves it between columns, and the ⋯ button is never a drag handle. If Kiaro can’t save a change, it says why and puts the old value back.

Drag-and-drop reordering

On the Kanban board, drag tasks to reorder them within a column or move them to a different status column. The sort order is saved automatically.

Searching and filtering

Use the search input at the top of any list page to find items by name. On the tasks page, you can also filter by:

• Client: See tasks across projects for a specific client
• Assignee: Filter by team member, yourself (“Me”), or Unassigned to spot tasks that still need an owner (Team plan only; defaults to “Everyone”). The Assignee column in the list is separate from this filter: it shows once there is more than one person in your workspace, including people you have invited
• Status: Show only tasks in a specific status
• Priority: Filter by urgency level

Saved filters

Kiaro remembers your filters, sort order, and board/list view choice for the projects and tasks lists, per browser, so leaving the page and coming back reopens where you left it instead of resetting to the unfiltered list. The search box is never remembered: it always starts empty.

A link with its own filter in the URL (for example, one shared by a teammate) always shows that filter and does not overwrite what you had saved.

To go back to the full list, remove a filter chip shown above the list, or click Clear all to reset every saved filter at once.

Creating a task

Pick a client first, then pick one of that client’s projects. The project list stays scoped to the selected client so project names that repeat across clients (for example, “Payroll and Time Tracking”) stay unambiguous.

The form starts from where you are:

• From a project’s Tasks tab, the client and project are already filled in.
• From Tasks filtered by a client, that client is selected. On the Team plan, filtering by a teammate (or Me) also assigns the new task to them.
• Otherwise the client you last worked with in this browser is selected: the last one you picked on a task, invoice or knowledge base article.

Cancel takes you back to the page you started from, and so does saving: the new task shows up in the list or project you were looking at.

Moving a task to a different project

To move a task without losing its time entries or history, open the task detail page and click Move in the top-right action bar. Search for and select the destination project. The combobox groups projects by client, so you can spot cross-client moves at a glance. If the move crosses client boundaries, changes billing type, or involves invoiced time entries, a warning appears before you confirm. Click Move task to complete the move. Time entries, assignee, status, priority, and notes all carry over automatically.

Moving a project to a different client

To reassign a project to a different client, open the project detail page and click Move in the top-right action bar. Select the destination client. Review the impact summary carefully: portal access changes take effect immediately (the new client gains access, the old client loses it). If the clients use different currencies, uninvoiced time will use the new client’s rate going forward. Type MOVE in the confirmation field and click Move project to complete the move. Tasks, time entries, deliverables, and milestones all follow the project automatically. Open proposals addressed to the original client are not updated automatically; review them after moving.

AI features on project pages

The project detail page includes contextual AI actions:

• Estimate Time (Tasks tab): AI-calibrated time estimates based on your historical task data
• Extract Learnings (Knowledge Base tab): Capture reusable knowledge from completed projects

Knowledge Base

Each project detail page includes a Knowledge Base tab where you can view and create articles linked to that project. Use it to document project-specific processes, meeting notes, decisions, and reusable content.

Time tracking on tasks

The task page lists the time entries logged to the task. Until there are any, it reads “No time logged yet. Start the timer to track time on this task.” Time is tracked from the timer bar at the top of every page. Pick the task, click the play button to start, and click stop to save the entry. To log past work, click the + button on the timer bar and fill in the manual entry form.

Tasks track estimated hours and logged hours so you can compare planned vs. actual effort. See Time Tracking for the full details on timers, weekly timesheets, and invoicing from time.

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