A checklist in a task is the simplest feature in task management software, yet one of those that makes the biggest difference to everyday work. Instead of asking in chat, “Has the proposal been sent yet?”, you open the task and see that four of the five items are ticked off, while the last one has been waiting for Marek since Tuesday. We show you how checklists work in Task Manager, when they are better than separate tasks, and how a marketing team uses them.
Why five items in a task make such a difference
The best-known study on checklists was conducted in surgery: eight hospitals in eight cities across five continents - from Seattle to Ifakara in Tanzania - introduced a one-page list of 19 items, read aloud at three stages of an operation. Postoperative mortality fell from 1,5 to 0,8 per cent, while the rate of serious complications dropped from 11 to 7 per cent (7688 patients, “New England Journal of Medicine”, 2009).
The surgeons did not suddenly become better at operating. The list made the team stop for a moment and check the obvious things. Atul Gawande, one of the programme’s authors, explained in his book “The Checklist Manifesto” that the same mechanism works for pilots and in skyscraper construction.
In a small business, the stakes are different, but the mechanism is the same. A proposal is sent without an attachment. A new employee still has no access to email on their third day. A post goes live without a social media image. Nobody is incompetent - obvious things are the easiest to miss when there are ten of them to handle at once.
How a checklist works in a Task Manager task
In Task Manager, the checklist sits in the task description. Create a task (or edit an existing one), click To-do list in the description editor, and enter the items, each on a separate line. Save the task - from then on, the list appears on the task card at the top of the thread.
The most important things that are not immediately obvious:
- Tick items directly on the card. You do not need to open the editor or have permission to edit the task. Any participant can simply click the box.
- Everyone sees the same status. When Kasia ticks off “Copy ready”, Marek will see it too when he opens the task - without having to ask in chat.
- The progress bar below the list shows “2 of 5 completed”. The business owner can see the task’s status in three seconds without reading the thread.
- The avatar next to a completed item shows who ticked it off. Hover over it and a tooltip will display their first name, surname and the date. Unticking the item removes the attribution.
- The description itself does not change. The ticks are stored separately, so editing the task does not tick or untick anything.
In the screenshot below, the list appears in a message in the “Website project” task thread: after two messages from Ola Nowak and Magda Wiśniewska about the hero section layout, Ola adds “Here’s the list of what we already have:” with four items. Two completed items (copy and design draft) show her avatar, while two others (coding and launch) are still pending, and the bar shows “2 of 4 completed”. It works in exactly the same way as a checklist in the task description.
The same to-do list also works in thread messages (for action points agreed after a meeting) and in Notes (for a personal list that you do not share with anyone). For a team, however, a checklist works best in the task description because that is where everyone goes to check the status. Find out more on the Tasks page.
The AI Assistant creates a checklist from the task description
The biggest obstacle to using checklists is not technical: nobody wants to write them. You have a task with a half-page description - what the client wants, when they need it, and what materials they have provided. Open the task thread, click AI Assistant next to the reply field (the editor turns purple to indicate a private query) and type: “Turn the task description into a checklist I can tick off”. The Assistant can see the description, messages and attachments, so it responds with a list of specific steps and clickable checkboxes. The screenshot below shows what this looks like in the “Website project” task: five steps, from agreeing the structure of the pages with the client to final approval of the website, with the first one already completed and the bar showing “1 of 5 completed”.
Three things you need to know before you start relying on it:
- Only you can see the Assistant’s response in the thread. This is intentional - you can try out a few versions without any pressure. Once the list is ready, copy it (Copy content from the response menu), paste it into the task description, select the pasted lines, and click To-do list in the editor. From then on, it is shared with the team.
- The suggestion is a starting point. The Assistant usually provides a sensible framework, but you know that Michał always checks proposals before they are sent at your company. Add that step.
- Keep repeatable procedures in a note. If “new client onboarding” always has twelve standard steps at your company, save them once in Notes and select that note as a knowledge source in the AI Assistant panel using the Sources button below the conversation title. Then, whenever you ask it to “create an onboarding checklist for Meblex”, it will provide the same complete list, tailored to that task. We explain how to set this up on the Checklists from the AI Assistant and Company Knowledge pages.
The AI Assistant uses your own key from your chosen provider (OpenAI, Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude or xAI Grok), so the task content is sent to that provider - just like with any other query. The software also works without a key, but in that case you write the list yourself.
Checklist, separate tasks or a note - which to use when
The most common mistake is using one format for everything: twenty “call X” tasks clutter the list, while an entire campaign squeezed into a single forty-item checklist does not show who is responsible for what. A simple rule:
| Situation | Format | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Steps within one task, one assignee or one day | Checklist in the task description | Progress is visible on the card, while the task list remains easy to scan |
| Each step has its own due date, assignee and conversation | A separate task in the Workspace | The due date is colour-coded on the list, in the Calendar and on the Board; it also has its own thread and files |
| Actions agreed after a meeting, to be completed within a few days | A to-do list in a message within the thread | It stays with the conversation context, and each participant ticks off their items |
| A procedure that repeats every month | A note (as a template) + a checklist in the task | The template stays in one place, while a copy is used in a specific task |
| A private “for today” list | Note | No one can see it until you share it |
A simple test: if someone might ask about this item in chat, “when is it due?”, it is not a checklist item but a task. A checklist item has no due date or assignee - and that is its strength, because it keeps things lightweight. When you need due dates and owners, create tasks - one sentence to the Assistant is enough: “Create a task: Campaign copy, due Thursday, assign Kasia”.
Five checklist templates for a small business
Lists ready to paste straight into a task description. Save them as notes and select them as a source for the Assistant - it will adapt them to the specific situation. They are deliberately short: after a week, people stop reading a twenty-item checklist.
1. Onboarding a new employee
Task: “Onboarding: Ania Zielińska, starts 6 October”. Assigned to someone in HR or the business owner.
- Contract signed and scanned to Files (Pro plan) or added as an attachment in the task thread
- Email account and access to software set up
- Task Manager account set up with the correct role and Workspaces
- Equipment prepared and checked
- First day: who will show them around, what time and where to have lunch
- Meeting after the first week added to the Calendar
This is where avatars are most useful: IT ticks off access, the office team handles equipment and the owner handles the meeting.
2. Publishing a blog post or social media post
A task for each post, with the same checklist every time.
- Copy edited (typos, headings, links)
- Main image and social media graphic
- Meta title and description
- Checked on a phone
- Published, with the link pasted into the thread
- LinkedIn post scheduled
3. Sending a proposal to a client
Task “Proposal for client Nord”, assigned to the salesperson, due on the date it is to be sent.
- Scope and pricing included in the task description
- Checked by a second person (for us: Michał)
- PDF generated and added as an attachment to the task
- Sent, with a copy in the thread
- Follow-up reminder set
You can hand the last item over to the AI Assistant: “remind me about this task next Tuesday at 9:00”. The Assistant will show a confirmation with the date and time - once you click “Yes, do it”, the reminder is saved and an in-app notification will arrive at the specified time. If you also want an email, add “and send it by email too” (sending it while the app is closed requires a cron job configured by the administrator).
4. Month-end close
One task each month in the Finance workspace. This is where missing something costs the most.
- All sales invoices issued
- Supplier invoices collected from the team (due date: 3rd day of the month)
- Overdue payments checked, payment reminders sent
- Documents sent to the accountant
- Income and expenses report added to the task thread
5. Preparing for a trade show
Major items (stand, materials) are separate tasks with due dates; smaller items from the final week go on a checklist in the task “Trade show: one week to go”.
- List of people staffing the stand and rota
- Printed materials, roll-up banners, cables and chargers packed
- Contact collection form tested
- Task “Trade show follow-up” created with a due date
Example: the marketing team and “September campaign”
Pixelo, a nine-person agency from Poznań. A campaign for a furniture industry client: copy, graphics, a landing page, adverts and an email campaign. Before: Ola (account manager) writes in the chat, “what is happening with the copy?”, Kasia replies an hour later, “it has been ready since yesterday, it is on the drive”, Marek asks, “which one?”, and that evening the owner reads forty messages to work out whether the campaign will launch on Monday.
Now the Marketing workspace has a task called “September campaign”, assigned to Ola and due on 1 September. The description contains the client brief and a checklist that the AI Assistant created from it, which Ola edited in two minutes:
- Ad and landing page copy approved by the client
- Graphics in three formats attached to the task
- Landing page published and checked on a phone
- Advertising campaign set up, budget confirmed
- Email campaign scheduled for Monday at 8:00
Kasia ticks off the copy on Wednesday - her avatar appears next to the item. Marek ticks off the graphics on Thursday. On Friday morning, the owner opens the task and sees “3 of 5 done” and two empty checkboxes: the landing page and adverts. They ask about them in a single message in the thread. The campaign files are under the paperclip in the thread header, so no one asks, “which drive?”.
It works the same way in every other task. The screenshot below shows “Website project” open in the New website workspace: in the task list on the left, it appears alongside “September campaign” and “Proposal for client Nord”, while in the thread on the right Ola Nowak has left a list with four steps - copy and the design draft are ticked off, coding and deployment are not yet done, “2 of 4 done”. The owner does not need to read the messages to know where the website stands.
The number of tasks and people has not changed. What has changed is where the current status of the work lives: it has moved out of people’s heads and the chat into the task card.
A few rules to stop your checklist being abandoned after a week
- No more than 5-8 items. Anything longer is usually several tasks, not one.
- An item should be an action with an outcome, not a topic. “Graphics attached to the task”, not “graphics”.
- Tick items off straight away, not at the end of the day - the avatar and date are only useful when they reflect what really happened.
- Final item: “Status changed to Done”. A completed task gets a grey label and its colour-coded due date stops demanding attention.
What next
A checklist is no substitute for talking to your team or preparing a good brief. What it does is remove questions from the conversation that no one should have to spend time answering: what is done, what is not and who did it. If you want to see this with one of your own tasks, request a Demo - we will get in touch and send you login details.
Frequently asked questions
Can everyone on the team tick off checklist items?
Yes. Any task participant can click items directly in the task card, without opening edit mode or having permission to edit the task.
How can I tell who ticked off an item?
Each ticked item shows a small avatar of the person who clicked it. Hovering over it (or tapping it on a phone) displays their first name, surname, date and time in a tooltip. If someone unticks the item, the attribution disappears.
Is a checklist created by the AI Assistant immediately visible to the team?
No. Only you can see your question to the Assistant in the thread and its response. To make the list available to the team, copy it and paste it into the task description as a to-do list.
Can a checklist item have its own due date or assignee?
No - and that is what distinguishes a checklist item from a task. If a step needs a due date, an assignee and its own conversation, create a separate task for it.
What happens to checked items when I edit the task description?
Nothing. The checked state is stored separately from the description, so editing the text or adding an item does not untick or reset anything.
Sources
- Harvard Gazette, “Surgical safety checklist drops deaths and complications by more than one-third” (14.01.2009)
- Haynes A.B. et al., “A Surgical Safety Checklist to Reduce Morbidity and Mortality in a Global Population”, New England Journal of Medicine 2009; 360: 491-499
- WHO, “Safe surgery: Tool and Resources” (WHO Surgical Safety Checklist, 19 items across three phases)
- Atul Gawande, “The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right”
- Task Manager, user guide: Tasks (section “To-do list in the task description”)
- Task Manager, user guide: AI Assistant (section “Tickable checklists”)
The Task Manager Team - we write about teamwork, AI in business and keeping tasks organised, using examples from Task Manager, software installed on your own server. Task Manager has been developed by Blue Creation Group (Piotr Łącz) since 2013 and is used by organisations including Neonet, the Military University of Technology and Polpharma - read customer reviews. We check our articles against the user guide and the latest version of the software.
