[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by dchannell1

What's a good way to see or record things that I have to do every week or some variation? For instance some clients have weekly payrolls and other have payroll every other week. I would like to be able to view everything that needs to be done for the week.

I think you're probably going to want to have a single action list for each client that acts as the master scheduler, so to speak. Anything that wasn't part of another project would go in there — tasks specific to that client, but not necessarily part of one of the projects. This could be anything from an action to call them to ask about a bill, a reminder to yourself to check something in their file, a yearly action to set up the new year's projects, and so on. I could see going with an action in that project that tells you every appropriate interval to do the client's payroll work, or there could be a repeating action in the client's payroll project that drives it along. For my own stuff, I like to have such things in a single action list, so that there's never any question that I'm going to get each reminder, and nothing is going to be stuck behind some other sequential action that I didn't get done on time. If I have a set of weekly tasks I want to do every week, I usually prefer to set each one up as a separate repeating task instead of a group that repeats when all of the tasks have been completed. That prevents any problems with not getting the next week's tasks in front of me because some relatively unimportant task at the end of the group didn't get completed on time. Does that make sense, or do I need to make up an illustration?

[whpalmer4]

To actually see what is due for the week, I would use the Due perspective and the Forecast view on the iPhone. On the Mac, I would make a context mode perspective, grouped by due, sorted by due, showing remaining actions. You can close the groups that don't interest you (like further out in the future) and save the perspective with the Restore Expansion box ticked in the Perspectives window so that it will remember to present the window to you that way.

[dchannell1]

I understand. Thanks. I am sure this is simple and I'm just missing it.....I created a project named Payrolls. Under that I list the company names along with due date and frequency but when I am looking at the computer, I would like for it to be sorted by the due date as opposed to the order in which I created the action.

Thanks again and sorry for all the questions.

Oh and I'll be buying the program in February.

[whpalmer4]

When you want to sort/group the view by action, you need to be in context view. Otherwise, the view controls are sorting/grouping by project. A helpful rule of thumb is the project mode is for planning your work, and context mode is where you go to pick the next action to do.

[dchannell1]

Thanks for the tip. You all have been great for ideas and is one big reason why I am going to buy the program.

Thanks again.
David

[whpalmer4]

It's all an elaborate ruse. Once Doc JJW and I get our cut of your 80 bucks, we're outta here! :-)

[DrJJWMac]

Originally Posted by whpalmer4

It's all an elaborate ruse. Once Doc JJW and I get our cut of your 80 bucks, we're outta here! :-)

Disclaimer: I give my commission fully to charity and plan to stick around at least till the dust has settled on using v2 of OmniFocus.

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JJW

[DrJJWMac]

Originally Posted by whpalmer4

JJW, you lost me here. It seems to me that he has to individually set due dates on each project regardless of which folder scheme he uses.

I swear I responded to this last night. Must be the iPhone tether eating my data (and likely charging me for it too).

Anyway ... I just meant, one cannot set due dates on Folders. So, any plan to set up Payroll Tax Returns as a master container for holding everything with a specific due date would require that Payroll Tax Returns is a Project or an Action Group.

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JJW

[mu.weezlabs]

Desktop version of Omni Focus would be the best choice. I use it and worked well for me.