When I talk to Táve users on the phone, one of the most important features that they want to learn about is setting up their workflow. They are surprised when they find out how easy it can be! Our product editor is a cornerstone of the application and definitely worth digging into, especially with the recently released Cost of Goods Sold feature (which was recently updated to show your profit margin percentage as well).
Product-based automation
The first step in setting up your workflow is to create a product. Let’s assume that you’re creating an album. For your album, you have 4 steps – to design the album, send the client a proof, order from your vendor, and deliver the album once it arrives. This is easily set up in the brown box labeled “work to create when ordered.”
You can set which job phase you want the tasks to start in – Booked, Processing, Presentation, Fulfillment, or Completed. In this case, I chose for some tasks to start in the Presentation phase and one in the Fulfillment phase. When editing each task, you can also set more precise due dates if you prefer. It just depends on what you are comfortable with in your workflow!
Quickly creating similar products
When creating similar products that have the same tasks, I’ve found a really great tip. On the Products page, we include a “duplicate” button for each product. It’s the one that you see below that looks like two boxes, a blue one on top of a white one.
If you click this button, it will duplicate the product and all information inside of it, including your workflow tasks. This will save you some time for items that are similar, as you’ll simply need to click on the copied item and edit it to be a separate product.
Not only is this helpful for your workflow tasks, but if the items are very similar but just differ in price, then adding all of the options or add-ons is one less thing you’ll have to do to set up the next item on your product sheet!
Job-specific tasks with Deliverables
The next time a client books a quote with this product, a Deliverable will be created for the product inside the Job’s task module. As you progress through the job phases, the tasks will automatically appear.
As clients request special work for the album, just click on the New Task link to create a new task for the deliverable to keep it all organized.
I hope this little tutorial helps as you set up your products and workflow a bit faster!
Since configuring your products can be a time consuming process, and one we’d rather you not have to revisit later, we’ve added a “Cost of Goods” field to the Product editor so you can get a head start as we add these exciting new tools. Already you’ll get a sense of things as we show you the base profit for any product configuration, and soon we’ll use this to help you build more profitable packages and quotes.