Internal deadlines now live in Pixie

We know how important external deadlines are for accounting and bookkeeping firms...

If you miss them, it can be costly to both you and your clients.

But as well as the importance of external deadlines, we also realise the importance of internal deadlines.

Internal deadlines are targets you set internally to have jobs completed before the external deadline is due. For example, a client might have a deadline for submitting a VAT return at the end of the month, but you might want it prepared a week or two earlier so that you're not working up to the deadline.

Internal deadlines let you create a buffer between when you want jobs to be done, and when the external deadlines say they need to be done. Which ultimately let's you run your practice the way you want too.

Let's see it in action below...

In the screenshot below, you can see how the tasks in the to-do list are prioritised based on the internal deadline, whilst also giving you visibility over the external deadline.

Now, when we click into the task, let's see what those deadlines look like on the actual job.

On the image above, you'll see in the top right the overall job deadline - this will be based on deadlines set on the clients record or ones directly synced up using our Companies House integration. You'll see on the left-hand side of the image, the different subtasks to complete including an internal deadline for when the VAT return needs to be prepared by.

When creating tasks and job templates, you can have multiple internal deadlines for the same job. For example, on the payroll job template below, you will see that there are 3 separate internal deadlines based on the date the task is created - which is configured to run 1 week before a clients payroll date. 

What this means is that the deadline you or your team see in your task manager will be based on the next upcoming internal deadline vs. the overall external deadline - allowing you to accurately prioritise which tasks to work on.

For existing customers, this new feature is available in all Pixie accounts now. The eagle-eyed amongst you will realise it's been renamed from milestones to internal deadlines. If you have any questions, please reach out to our support team in-app and we'd be happy to help you.

This release is part of a series of new feature releases and updates in July. Keep an eye out for more releases in the coming weeks.