Setting Up Production Tasks/Costs

A production schedule for a single title is made up entirely of individual tasks that may have a start date, a duration, a completion date and a cost attached. Within production tasks/costs, you may create all the tasks that need to be completed in order for a book to be published. This is also where you can differentiate tasks that have costs attached to them too.

1) Navigate to: Production --> Production Admin --> Tasks/Costs 

Here is where you will add different elements of your production schedules that will then appear in drop-down menus in Schedule Templates and the Costs Tab, enabling you to assign those tasks to different members of your team or set deadlines for them.

 2) Click on Create new, and the following will appear:

• Label: Name your task/cost, for example: Proofreading

When you click on Task? or Cost?, more fields will become available above each item, as shown in the screen shot.

• Task? Tick this box if the label relates to a specific task.

• Checkbox Label: This field allows you to add and additional check box beside each task as they appear in the first two tabs of Book Production. All tasks will automatically have a 'complete' checkbox, but you can add another one using this field. For example you may wish to add a checkbox to signify if the work has been 'Received'.
  
• Department: Select Department (you previously configured) in charge for this task from the drop -down menu.  
• Colour: Set a colour to represent the task on the Production Scheduling grid. To do so, click on the small box and adjust the colour by dragging the cursor up and down:

• Click OK when you are finished.
• Cost? Tick this box if the task has a cost attached to it. The following blank fields will show up:

• Account Code is where you can store the relevant account code if your organisation has separate budgets for different departments. 
• Cost type: Select a cost type from the drop-down menu. This is another way of differentiating department costs.
  

Then check the following boxes if applicable:

• Indicates Printing? Tick this box if the task is a printing task, for instance: Send to printer.
• Editorial Print Date? Tick this box if you want the task to indicate the item is specifically an editorial deadline within Editorial --> Editorial Schedule. 
• Indicates Setting? Tick this box if this task indicates a typesetting task.
• Assignable? Tick this box if a member of your team is assigned for this task.
• Output? Tick this box if this task creates a product or a component of a product, like a chapter of a book or the book itself. e.g: printing.
• Shipping? Tick this box if this task involves shipping, so you can connect production dates with order dates.
• Date in checklist? Tick this box if you want this task to show up as a date in the checklist screen (rather than a checkbox).
• Notes: Add any notes you might have about the task.

3) When creating tasks in Production, the Production toggle on the right hand side will automatically be selected. However, if this is also a task that you would like to sit in Editorial, you can select the Editorial toggle as well.

4) When you are finished, click the Create button and your Production task will appear on your list of tasks and also within all the relevant drop-down menus.

5) Do this again for all tasks associated with your production schedule(s).

Now all your tasks are available in the list on the main Production tasks page. Here you can also search your tasks by typing in the task into the search box.

Further Information:

• To edit your Production task, click on the item so you can change the information already there.
• Once you are finished with editing, click the Update button and you will be back on the main Tasks/Costs page.  
• To remove tasks from the system, click on the box beside the relevant label and then click the Remove Selected button.