On Monday morning, Marta, the owner of an 11-person design studio, looks for answers to three questions: what's overdue, what's currently being worked on, and who's waiting for her decision. She doesn't need to know what time Kasia opened her laptop. Good software for managing employee tasks shows the state of affairs, not each person's private day.
A manager needs a picture of the work, not of the people
To lead a team, you need to see deadlines, task status and changes to arrangements. The time someone logged in or the content of a private note won't answer the question of whether the mock-up will be ready by Thursday.
| A question that helps you make a decision | Information that doesn't settle it |
|---|---|
| Which task is overdue? | What time did the employee turn on their computer? |
| Who's responsible for preparing the mock-up? | How many times did they open the task page? |
| When was the deadline moved and who did it? | What did they write in a private notepad? |
| Which item of work has been completed? | How long did they have the program window open? |
Start by working out which decisions you make every week. A broader way of organising work is described in the guide to managing tasks in a company.
Software for managing employee tasks should show four things
For every matter, set a due date, a lead person, a current status and a history of changes. This is a rule of team work, not a requirement of any particular program: you can start with a spreadsheet, but then someone has to make sure the entries stay up to date.
A due date distinguishes an urgent matter from one that just keeps coming up in conversations. Name a lead person even when several people are working on a task - that way you know who to ask about the whole thing. Status should be changeable as part of the work, not only when writing a separate report.
When Tuesday's deadline changes to Thursday, what matters isn't just the new date, but also information on when and by whom it was changed. So when choosing a task app for employees, check not the number of available charts, but whether you can find these four pieces of information right next to the matter itself.
The Monday review starts with deadlines
In Task Manager, Marta can start her review with the Overdue tile: its number shows how many tasks the filter covers, and clicking it narrows the list. The Due today tile works the same way; clicking an active tile again removes the filter.
Let's say that on Monday Marta sees 3 overdue tasks and 6 due today. A red bar means a deadline that has passed, blue means a task due today, green means a deadline in the coming days, and grey means no deadline or a closed matter. Completed and cancelled tasks don't add to the overdue count, even if their old date has already passed.
At the right edge of the card, a circle shows the number of days until the deadline or days past it. You'll see the exact date by hovering over it. If you enter a date without a time, the task stays "due today" until the end of that day. The ring next to the title shows the status, and an orange dot highlights high priority. The same rules for marking deadlines apply on the Board and in the Calendar's List panel.
However, colours alone won't tell you why work has stalled. That's what the task thread is for, where the team can leave notes instead of moving them to a separate report.
A moved deadline leaves a trace in the conversation
When someone changes a task's due date, Task Manager records the change in its thread along with the previous value. The conversation shows who moved the date and when, so you don't have to reconstruct that decision from several people's memories.
On Tuesday, the deadline for client ABC's mock-up moves to Thursday. Marta opens the task and sees a centred system entry with the time and the earlier deadline. Similar entries document changes to status, priority and task name, as well as people being added or removed.
One caveat: changing the description itself doesn't create such an entry. The label "(edited)" appears next to the author's name, and the new content is visible on the task card. If the reason for the change needs to make sense a month from now, ask the team to note it in a message. The change history will tell you what changed and by whom; explaining why requires a human's words.
Checklist progress is visible without asking for a percentage
The to-do list in the task description shows which items are done and how many remain. Participants tick them off directly on the task card, without opening the edit view and without the right to edit the whole task.
On Thursday, Marta opens "Website project" and sees "2 of 4 done". Mini avatars sit next to the ticked items; hovering over them shows the first name, last name and date. If Magda has finished the copy but the coding is still pending, Marta has a basis for a conversation about the next step, instead of asking everyone for an overall progress percentage.
Anyone who can tick off an item can also add another one via "+ Add item". The list therefore remains a shared record of work, not a document updated only by the task's author. You'll find more examples in the article on the checklist in a task.
An observer follows the matter but doesn't take ownership of it
The observer role allows reading the task and the whole thread without responsibility for its completion. An observer can write messages and receives mentions, but doesn't edit the task or change its status.
Jan manages part of the team but isn't preparing Friday's offer. Once he becomes an observer of the task, he can check the arrangements and reply if someone tags him with @. He doesn't get a notification for every new message, and the observed offer doesn't appear in his Today and Overdue counters or in the morning task digest. He'll recognise it on the list by the eye icon.
You set an observer in the task form in "Selected people" mode, next to a specific person. You can't assign this role to the task's author or to the administrator of a given workspace - they already have full rights by virtue of their role, and their "Observer" toggle is locked.
A private note doesn't become a report for the administrator
The Task Manager administrator doesn't see other people's private notes or AI Assistant conversation threads. If you use the Mail module in the Pro variant, someone else's inbox also remains private from the administrator.
On Wednesday, Kasia can jot down draft ideas in Notes and share the note only once she decides to. She can also ask the AI Assistant about a task without opening her conversation to her boss. A reply from the AI Assistant triggered in a task or chat thread is marked "FOR YOU ONLY" and isn't visible to the other participants.
The privacy boundary doesn't mean the administrator can't see shared work. They see tasks and chats, but don't get automatic access to personal drafts. If you want an arrangement to be available to the team, save it in the task or share the note - don't assume a private draft replaces a shared decision.
You set project access separately in each workspace
Assign a specific person to a chosen workspace to set their project access. A user only sees the workspaces they've been assigned to.
Marta wants Kasia to run work in the "Projects" workspace but not have access to "Sales". She assigns her to the first space and gives her the workspace administrator role there; she doesn't add her to the second one. A workspace administrator can manage its participants and settings and edit other people's tasks and chats, but only within that space.
A global administrator sees all workspaces, tasks and chats and manages them, so permissions for a single space won't limit their view.
You set the right to add tasks and chats separately. Lacking the "Tasks" permission doesn't remove Kasia from tasks she's already been added to: she can still see them and write messages in them, she just can't create new ones. You invite a new person by email, and they set their own password. When someone leaves, deactivation keeps their data and frees up a licence seat. You'll find a detailed breakdown of roles in the description of task and workspace permissions.
The Calendar helps plan work, but it doesn't measure hours
Task Manager gathers tasks, events, reminders and team absences in the Calendar. However, there are no time-tracking reports or workload charts, so it won't replace a tool you need for billing hours.
On Friday, Marta checks deadlines on the Board, where workspaces form columns. Then she checks the Calendar to see the team's absences. An employee sets their status to Available, Holiday, Sick or Absent; for an absence they give a "From" date, and may leave the "To" date blank. Once they give an end date, the absence stops applying after it passes. The administrator sees the list of absent people and can set a status on someone else's behalf.
The AI Assistant can warn Marta when she tries to assign a task to someone who's absent. It can also filter the list with a command like "show only overdue tasks", but it only sees data available to the person using it. AI is optional: without your own key for OpenAI, Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude or xAI Grok, the program still works. When you do use it, the query with context goes to the chosen model provider; you pay them directly, with no mark-up from Task Manager.
If you need automatic rules to keep track of deadlines, check out the Pro variant with the Automations module. In the Standard variant, you review deadlines using the list, Board, Calendar and - if you connect AI - the AI Assistant's digest.
The fee is one-off, not a subscription per person
Task Manager has a perpetual licence with a one-off fee based on the number of seats, with no per-user subscription. The price includes 12 months of updates, and the later annual renewal is optional.
For Marta's office of 11 people, the Classic plan fits, covering up to 20 people. The Standard variant in this plan costs 1,490 PLN as a one-off payment. If the company adds two more people and still stays within the purchased seat limit, no new monthly fee appears because of them. Seat availability can be checked when adding a user.
The application runs on the company's server; ordinary shared hosting with PHP and MySQL is enough. The application's data is on the client's server, rather than within a per-employee account subscription. When comparing the cost with other solutions, also factor in hosting and any AI usage - this is covered in more detail in the cost breakdown of a task program over three years.
Tomorrow morning, open your task list and select Overdue to check outstanding matters. Then review open tasks without a due date. After that, pick one team task and make sure it clearly shows the person in charge, the status and a place for arrangements. If you run a company that wants to keep its data on its own server and pay for seats without a per-person subscription, see such a setup in the Demo.
Frequently asked questions
Does software for managing employee tasks show the manager how many hours someone spent on a task?
No, Task Manager doesn't have time-tracking reports. It shows the task's due date and status, the history of selected changes in the thread, and to-do list progress with the name of the person who ticked off each item.
Can an administrator look into someone's mail or notes?
No, another person's mailbox and private notes aren't visible to the administrator; Mail is a module of the Pro plan. A note only becomes accessible to others once its author shares it, and conversations with the AI Assistant remain private.
How can I check who moved a task's due date?
Open the task's thread and find the system entry about the due date change. You'll see the previous value there, along with who made the change and when.
Can I follow a team task without being responsible for it?
Yes, you can become a task observer if you're not its author or the administrator of the given workspace. An observer sees the thread and can write messages, but doesn't edit the task or change its status; they only receive notifications about mentions.
Can I give an employee access to just one project?
Yes, assign the user only to the relevant workspace and set their permissions within that space. Don't give them the global administrator role, as that covers all workspaces, tasks and chats.
Sources
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.
