Job dates

A job is a collection of tasks and every job in Senta has a job date in which all of these tasks revolve around. The job date can be as the start or end of the job or even in in the middle. You can then use this job date to set up task start and due dates, as well as key dates used for deadlines.

Task dates and key dates are calculated relative to the job date using date offsets. For example, if a task needs to start 3 days before the job date, you can use -3d (minus 3 days).

When a job kicks off for a client (automatically as part of a service or manually using Start ad hoc job), the job date used depends on how it has been kicked off:

  • When you start an ad hoc job, you set the job date manually.

  • When a one-off job has kicked off as part of a service, the job date will the date it kicked off.

  • When a repeating job has kicked off as part of a service, the job date will be taken from the service set up. This could be based on a fixed date, a date filled in on a form or last day/working day of the month. Go to our services guide for information on how to set up the job date for repeating jobs.

How to choose the job date

You may find that there are various dates you could choose for your job date, but usually there is a date that makes most sense to use.

Often, a workflow is a series of tasks that have to be done before some deadline, so it makes sense to use the deadline as the job date. However, for jobs such as Accounts or Tax returns, where clients will have different year end dates, it is recommended to use the year end date.

See below for examples on when deadlines should be used and when they shouldn't:

Use the deadline

For example, suppose you are having a birthday party. You know when that date is, and you know that everything has to be ready for the party, so it makes sense to use the birthday as the job date. Then, you can start your various tasks however many days before. If everything goes to plan, your party goes ahead on the correct day.

Task no. Task Task start date
1 Invite your friends 1 month before birthday
2 Bake a cake 4 day before birthday
3 Buy some food and drink 3 days before birthday
4 Pick up glasses 2 days before
5 Decorate your house 1 day before
6 Have party On the birthday

As you can see, with your birthday as the job date, and tasks with their date offsets, Senta knows exactly when everything has to be completed.  

Date offsets don't have to be before the job date only. Here's an alternative workflow for your birthday party:

Task no. Task Task start date
1 Invite your friends 1 month before birthday
2 Bake a cake 4 days before birthday
3 Buy some food and drink 3 days before birthday
4 Pick up glasses 2 days before birthday
5 Decorate your house 1 day before birthday
6 Have party On the birthday
7 Return glasses 1 day after birthday
8 Write thank you notes 3 days after birthday

In this case, some of the tasks are set to take place after the job date.   As you can see, there's a lot of flexibility and choosing a logical job date does make things simple to work with.

When the deadline isn't suitable

Sometimes, the deadline isn't the right choice for a job date. For example, suppose you want to do a job where there are fixed and variable dates in it, like a partnership tax return. In this case, the partnership's year end can be any date, and yet the tax return needs to be completed by the same date every year.  

In the UK, that date is 31st Jan following the end of the tax year in which the partnership's year ends.  

In this case, it might seem that because the deadline is 31st Jan it would make sense to make that the fixed job date. Certainly that would work:

Task no. Task Task start date
1 Warn client about upcoming tax return due 2 months before 31st Jan
2 Ask client to upload books 1 months before 31st Jan
3 Complete accounts 2 weeks before 31st Jan
4 File return 1 week before 31st Jan
5 Instruct client that return filed  

However, it may be better to set the job date to be the client's year end date. This gives you the ability to write to them about that and get them to do some immediate tasks, and use a key date for the 31st Jan filing date instead:

Task no. Task Task start date
1 Tell client that their year end has finished 1 day after year end
2 Ask client to get their documents together 1 month after year end
3 Warn client about upcoming tax return due 2 months before 31st Jan
4 Ask client to upload books 1 month before 31st Jan
5 Complete accounts 2 weeks before 31st Jan
6 File return 1 week before 31st Jan
7 Instruct client that return filed  

This option gives more flexibility however, this comes at the expensive of slightly more complex date offsets.