7 easy steps to get started with todo.vu & on your way to beautiful billing
5 minute read.
We know you’re busy (that’s why you’re looking for a way to boost your productivity, right?), so we’ve put together a quick guide to help you make the most of todo.vu from day one.
todo.vu works best for freelancers, consultants and teams who need to organise, track, and bill for their time. If that sounds like you, you’re in the right place.
If you need more help, make sure to get in touch with us.
1. Customise your workspace
Personalising your workspace to your business or brand is an easy way to love working in todo.vu every day. It also means you can add branding to any billing reports you provide clients. (But more on those later.)
Let’s get crackin’! What do we do?
You’ll see the name you first assigned to your workspace in the top left-hand corner. Click it, and navigate to “Workspace style” in the drop-down menu.
2. Set up your billing rate
Why is this important?
Not only can you organise and track your time in todo.vu, you can also create time billing reports. These provide your clients with a detailed breakdown of hours completed on a project and at what cost. We need to set your billing rate, so your billing reports are accurate and you get paid properly.
Sounds great for my cash flow! How do I do it?
Head back to your workspace name. This time, after you’ve clicked on your name, select “Time & billing settings”.
Here, you can change your default billing rate and currency (and don’t worry if you have different billing rates for different clients, we can change these too).
You can also set up your taxes,
and here’s how your final billing report would look when you have logged time and are ready to invoice.
3. Add your unique todo.vu email to your contacts’ list
Why is this important?
Your todo.vu workspace has its own email address. By adding that address to your contacts’ list in say Gmail, you can create todo.vu tasks directly from your Gmail inbox. When you send or forward emails to your todo.vu email address, a task is automatically created in todo.vu.
That’s convenient! How do I set it up?
Easy. Hit the plus button in the bottom right-hand corner of your todo.vu workspace. This is how you’ll create a task, but we’ll do that later. For now, just take note of that email address in the message below the task; it’s highlighted.
4. Invite others to todo.vu
Why is this important?
If you work with a team (and even if you don’t), you can invite others to todo.vu, too. That way, you can easily collaborate with more people, see who’s doing what across your team, and never miss another deadline.
The more the merrier! How do I invite my team or contractors?
You can invite anyone to todo.vu by clicking the plus sign at the top left-hand corner of your workspace.
Initially, we recommend inviting just one trusted colleague to todo.vu.
5. Download the mobile app
So you can take your todo.vu workspace wherever you go! If you need to assign a task to a team member on the go, or retrieve any detail at any time, you can do so straight from your mobile phone.
I’m app-solutely in. Where can I get it?
You can download the todo.vu app for Android devices here, and for IOS devices here.
6. Create a task
Tasks are where the todo.vu productivity magic begins. Tasks help you easily manage your clients, projects, workload, time, and billing.
Let’s do it! What’s the easiest way?
Hit that plus button in the bottom right-hand corner of your workspace again. That’ll bring up a blank task.
You can create Clients and Projects directly within the task, or do this later.
Then, add a title, a description, a checklist and any files to your new task.
If you’ve already completed this task, you can log the time the task took you here, too.
Don’t forget to hit “Create task” at the bottom left-hand corner of the task when you’re done.
Tip! To help you stay on track once you have many tasks, we’ve added a filter for you. Navigate to “Your tasks” or “All tasks” on the left-hand side of your workspace, and you’ll see the option to filter your tasks just underneath your name.
7. Track your time
By tracking the time you spend on tasks, you can easily see how long tasks take, and who’s doing what (and when) in your team. In todo.vu, your logged time can quickly translate into time billing reports for accurate invoicing, which means a better cash flow for you.
Okay, so it’s time to get tracking. How?
When you’re ready to get to work, simply hit the “Start timer” button up the top of your workspace, and off you go!
Now, when you’re ready to invoice your client, you can create a detailed billing report and get paid accurately for your time.
Head to your workspace to get started with todo.vu now, or learn more about time billing here.