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I'm trying to figure out the best setup for a financial checklist. I'm a freelance web developer and every week I have a list of items that need to be done to get my books up to date. This includes things like updating invoices from time sheets, billing clients, transferring money from Paypal, etc.

I have a great checklist setup that I can follow but it has a few annoyances. The checklist is a project that repeats every Friday and all the tasks are in a specific order for optimum work flow. The annoying part is that I don't need to balance my checkbook or pay my credit card bill every week. These are monthly tasks. I'd still like to keep them in the order that they they need to be done within my checklist, but only have them appear once per month.

If my project is due every Friday, then those monthly tasks also show as due every Friday. Is there a better way to set this up?
 
How about not having the project repeat? Instead, have only the actions repeat inside a single action list. Arrange them in the order you want, and put start dates on them so you don't see them any earlier than you want to. Take advantage of the fact that repeating actions get replaced where they are.
 
If you need a sequence of actions for some reason, you can put an action group (nested actions) inside a single action list. You would set the action group to repeat, not the actions it contains.
 
Thanks for the reply. I think I tried this at one point, but it didn't work quite right...

Here is a specific example...I have a sequence called "pay bills" and each child item has a due date. I want to pay bills on Fridays, but not every repeating bill is due on Friday. I want bills to be in their own group and I also want them placed in my financial checklist after I reconcile my checking account and process a few other financial tasks. Here is my basic list

Project: Update Finances
-reconcile accounts (prefer to do this monthly, but do it weekly now)
--reconcile checkbook (prefer to do this monthly, but do it weekly now)
--reconcile paypal (prefer to do this monthly, but do it weekly now)
- transfer funds
-pay bills (weekly)
--pay credit card (monthly)
--pay contractors (weekly)

The sequencing of my list works out perfectly but I can't seem to have a top level task with a due date of Friday and a child that isn't due until sometime in the future. It's kind of an all or nothing deal unless I'm missing something.

My workaround is just to check it off each time, but this kind of gets confusing because I have to go back and check to see if I actually did pay it already for this month if I don't remember doing it previously.

I tried testing a scenario of adding a start date to the credit card bill so it wouldn't show up on today's date (a Friday). I set it to start April 1 with a due date of April 25. That removes it from my active list for today...

Now when I check everything off and look at the repeating future project that was created, that credit card bill is also shifting by a week. It now starts on 4/8 and is due 5/2. So in theory, I would never see it. Each time the project repeats, the future start/due dates also shift - so that doesn't work.

I suppose I can keep a separate list of "monthly" items, but then my checklist won't be in order. I suppose I could also insert a pseudo task that says "check monthly bills list" (with a perspective link) in my main financial checklist to keep the order, but that seems a bit kludgy and complicated just to track a couple of monthly tasks.
 
As a general note, as far as I'm aware, OmniFocus doesn't currently have a way to specify a repetition like "the last Friday of every month"; the month-based repeat options just go by day-of-month, and using an "every 4 weeks" repeat will gradually drift because some months have 5 weeks.


I think your best bet is, as whpalmer4 suggested, to remove any repetition from the project itself, and then just give appropriate repeat settings for the individuals actions. Weekly ones repeat every week (e.g., with a start time of Friday morning and due time of Friday evening). Monthly bills repeat every month, with a due date of whenever it's actually due, and a start date of either 1 week earlier (to make sure the action is active on a Friday) or the day on which you normally receive the invoice.

This way, the monthly items will appear in the weekly list when they're relevant but be hidden when they're not.

If you don't want any of these actions bothering you outside of your Friday routine, you could put the "Update Finances" project on hold, and create a weekly action (with a Friday start time) somewhere outside of the project that reminds you to go and perform that sequence of actions. Checking off that action will act as a stand-in for completing the project (which will never actually be "complete", because all its actions repeat on their own).
 
Thanks - I'll give this a shot.
 
 


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