So I run a sheetmetal shop. I’ve got Asana set up with quickbooks online and it’s working pretty cool so far… I want to explain my workflow and see if you guys can help me use Asana the way it was meant to be used.
Right now, when a customer calls me and I make an estimate, Asana makes a task for the sales team (just me right now) and puts it in the project “pending invoice.” When the customer approves it, I go in to QBO and approve it, then go to Asana, change the assignee from me to my shop foreman, and drag it over to the production team, into a project called “Foreman Approval.” In the future when Zapier can update Asana when an estimate is updated, then I won’t have to change the status manually on Asana.
I upload all necessary documentation to google drive and paste a link in the memo, and that makes it’s way to Asana so my foreman can view everything and make sure he has no other questions before he drags it over to the “shop production” project.
I guess if my foreman looks at the “shop production” project and assigns dates, he will be able to see all the tasks for that day in his “tasks” list, but I dont know how that works yet, as I haven’t tried it. When he’s done with it he can change the assignee to someone else who I will task with keeping inventory, and he can drag the task over to the “awaiting pickup” project. In that project I have 2 sections: “Not invoiced” and “invoiced.” So basically I can go in and invoice all the finished projects each day.
When the item is picked up, then the person tasked with inventory marks the “completed” button.
I have a few issues with this system. For one, that “COMPLETED” button is right there every step of the way, waiting to be pressed on accident. If that happens and someone doesn’t notice, then I lose track of a whole task! Second, I have to manually change the estimate from pending to accepted, which I think may change in the future. Third is that I have to manually invoice them once they’re ready for pickup, but I may be able to make an invoice from an estimate using zapier one day… who knows. And finally, I feel like I’m missing out on a lot of features Asana offers, just because I’m honestly overwhelmed by it’s capabilities. I wonder if there is a way to automatically set an assignee when a task is moved to a different project, and so on.
If anyone has any suggestions, I’d love to hear them. I really want to base my shop off of Asana.