On Monday, Marta, the owner of an eight-person studio, hears for the second time: "Who's actually doing the offer for Nord?". Task management in a company starts exactly at this moment - when the plan is in your head, but not in one place accessible to the team. To change that, you need five elements for every matter, not another meeting about who remembered what.
Why does "everyone knows what to do" stop being enough?
A verbal agreement stops being enough once several people work on the same matter at different times. A single task record lets you check who's responsible for the outcome, what was agreed and what deadline applies.
With three people, you can still ask at the desk. In Marta's eight-person studio, the offer passes between sales and the person preparing the quote; someone adds a detail over the phone, someone else sends a file. By Wednesday everyone remembers a different fragment of the conversation. This isn't proof of a lack of discipline, just a result of keeping one matter in several places.
You'll recognise this moment by the questions: "Who's doing this?", "Where's the latest version?" and "Was the deadline Thursday or Friday?". If these sound familiar, start with the rule of one place for agreements. The software itself won't decide what needs to be done. But it can store the answer where the team will look for it.
Task management in a company starts with five elements
A good task has a responsible person, a deadline, a description of the outcome, a conversation about the matter and a place in the view of the whole workload. This method works even without software; Task Manager makes it easier to maintain as the number of matters grows.
| Element | What breaks down without it | Where you'll find it in Task Manager |
|---|---|---|
| Responsible person | No one knows who to ask about the outcome | Assigned people |
| Due date | "Urgent" means something different to everyone | The Due date field and the due date marking on the card |
| Description of the outcome | A task can be considered done in different ways | The Description field with a to-do list |
| Conversation | Decisions stay in a separate chat or email | The thread under the task card |
| View of the whole | You see individual matters, but not the whole plan | List, Board and Calendar |
You don't need to write a long brief for every task. But if the outcome is phrased as "prepare the offer", ask what documents need to be created, who should receive them and by when. From that answer you can build the description and the list of points to tick off.
One person is responsible, the others can observe
In Task Manager you can assign several people to a task, but within the team, agree on one person responsible for the outcome. The others don't need to receive the same task as their own work just because they want to know the progress.
On Tuesday, Marta creates the task "Offer for client Nord", assigns it to Kasia and adds Ania as an observer, as she only needs to know the progress. This works in "Selected people" mode; the task's author or the workspace administrator can't become an observer - they already have full rights by virtue of their role. Ania sees the task and the whole thread, can write in it, but doesn't edit the task or change its status. She only receives notifications for @ mentions. The observed offer doesn't add to her "Today" counter.
Responsibility for the outcome isn't the same as permissions on the task. With assigned people, the Administrator and Change status toggles let you separate the two. Someone can work on a task and have the right to change its status, while someone else only follows the matter. You'll find more examples in the article on how to divide tasks within a team.
The deadline should be recorded, not remembered
A due date in Task Manager can contain just the date or the date with a time. If you enter only the day, the task will stay marked as "today" for the whole of that day; it will only turn red the following day.
On the list, the Board and in the Calendar, the colour of the due date shows whether a task is due today, on time, overdue or closed. On the card in the list you'll also see a circle with the number of days until, or past, the due date. Done and cancelled tasks aren't counted as overdue, even when their old date has already passed.
On Wednesday, Marta doesn't scroll through the whole list to find backlog. She clicks "Overdue" - one of four tiles above the list that act as both counters and filters - and sees only the tasks that need attention. Clicking it again removes the filter.
The description should say what "done" means
A task's description should define the outcome, not just name the activity. The to-do list in the Description field lets you break that outcome down into points the team can tick off without opening the task for editing.
Kasia notes down four things for the offer: gather the scope of work, calculate the quote, prepare the document and send it to the client. Once the first two points are ticked off, the list in the task card shows everyone the same state and a "2 of 4 done" bar; next to a ticked point, a mini avatar lets you check who did it and when.
The team can add items with the "+ Add item" button and reorder them by dragging. This doesn't require permission to edit the whole task, as long as you can tick off list points. This is a good choice for stages of a single matter; if a separate stage needs its own owner and due date, record it as a task. The example builds on the text about the checklist in a task.
The conversation has to stay with the matter
The task thread keeps the conversation under its card, next to the description and attachments. So when someone asks about a change of deadline, you don't have to recall it from memory or search another messenger.
On Thursday, the client asks Marta to push back the offer deadline. Someone with edit rights changes the date in the task, and a system message in the thread records the change along with the previous value. The thread likewise records changes to status, priority and name, as well as adding or removing people. Changing the description alone does not create such an entry; an "(edited)" marker appears next to the name.
In the conversation you can use @ mentions, quote messages and add attachments. The "Files" icon in the thread's top bar collects attachments from across the whole task, including older messages. The file stays with the conversation about the offer, instead of requiring a separate search.
You view the whole thing in three layouts
List, Board and Calendar show the same work from different angles. List helps you narrow down tasks with filters, Board groups them by workspaces, and Calendar shows them alongside the team's events and absences.
A workspace is a space grouping tasks and chats, for example Marketing or Sales. When Marta wants to review all matters, she selects "All"; when she wants to see them in columns, she opens the Board. There, each workspace gets a column with Favourites, Tasks and Chats sections. Cards and columns can be rearranged, and the layout is remembered.
On the list, Marta can select the "Today" tile. On Friday, she switches to the Calendar: she sees tasks alongside events and can drag a task she has edit rights to onto a different date.
The Board has its own filtering settings, independent of the list. So if on the list you're only viewing today's matters, don't assume the Board will show the same narrowed view. See also how to plan the week in the team Task Calendar.
Is the AI Assistant needed to run tasks?
No, Task Manager works without AI. The AI Assistant is optional: it can open the new task form with fields filled in, change a status or filter the list based on an instruction written as a plain sentence.
Marta can type "show only overdue tasks" instead of selecting a filter manually. The AI Assistant only sees content the user has access to, and recognises watched tasks as watched, not as their own work. It can also warn when a task is assigned to someone who is away.
To enable AI you need your own key from OpenAI, Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude or xAI Grok. You pay the model provider directly, with no intermediary markup. The query, together with the necessary context, goes to that provider - installing the program on your own server does not mean the content of AI queries stays solely on it.
What won't Task Manager do for you?
Task Manager won't plan a project on a Gantt chart or set "task waits for task" dependencies. If your company needs such mechanisms, the list, Board and Calendar won't replace them; if what you need above all is an owner, a deadline and a conversation for a matter, you can work without them.
There are two priorities to choose from: normal and high. You won't build a detailed urgency scale from them, but you can highlight matters that need attention without deciding what a third or fourth level would mean. Email notifications while the app is closed require a CRON job on the server, i.e. a schedule that triggers server tasks; reminders within the open app work without it.
How much does the program cost for 5, 15 and 30 people?
For 5, 15 and 30 people, you choose the Starter, Classic or Max plan respectively, in the Standard variant. You pay once for the number of seats, not every month per user.
| Team size | Standard plan | Licence price |
|---|---|---|
| 5 people | Starter, up to 8 people | 690 zł |
| 15 people | Classic, up to 20 people | 1 490 zł |
| 30 people | Max, up to 35 people | 2 290 zł |
The licence is perpetual. It includes 12 months of updates, after which renewal is optional; not renewing doesn't block the program. If an employee leaves, you can deactivate their account: the data stays, and the licence seat is freed up. Choose the plan price based on the number of people, not the number of tasks. You can check the current variants in the Task Manager pricing.
You install the application on your own server; a regular shared hosting with PHP 8.x and MySQL or MariaDB is enough. The Pro variant adds five modules to Standard: Mail, Files, Automations, AES-256 content encryption and an AI knowledge base (RAG). This distinction matters when you're comparing price against the features you actually need.
What to record tomorrow morning?
Tomorrow, pick three matters that today are circling between email, conversation and your memory. Give each one an owner, a due date and three to-do list points; add arrangements straight into its thread. Then open "Today" and see what's missing from the plan. Check out this setup in the Demo.
Frequently asked questions
From how many people does task management in a company require software?
There's no single number: the signals are vanishing agreements and the recurring question "who's doing this?". Task management software helps record responsibility, deadline and the conversation on the same matter.
Can a task be assigned to several people?
Yes, a task in Task Manager can have several people assigned. For clarity, set one person responsible for the outcome, and give anyone who only needs to follow the matter the observer role in "Selected people" mode.
How do you quickly check what's overdue?
Click the "Overdue" tile above the task list - it works as both a counter and a filter. The red due date marking also shows the backlog on the Board and in the Calendar.
How does the task list differ from the Board and the Calendar?
These are three layouts of the same tasks: the list has filters, the Board has workspace columns, and the Calendar has a grid of days with due dates. Dragging a task in the Calendar changes its due date, if you have the right to edit it.
Do you need to turn on AI to manage tasks?
No, Task Manager works without AI. The AI Assistant is optional, and once you connect your own provider key, it can create tasks, change their statuses and filter the list on command.
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.
