Chapter 9: To Do’s

Stores information on the “To Do” items you’ve created throughout the system.

You can create “To Do” reminders for yourself and others from several places in the system. There are also some instances when the system will automatically create “To Do’s” for you.

When you sign in to TourTools™, a list of “To Do” activities assigned to you that fall within the range specified will appear on the main screen.

To create a new reminder, click on the button labeled “To Do”, which will open a window similar to the one shown. Fill in the “what”, the date on or by which the task needs to be completed, and possibly a “Fudge Factor”. Applying a fudge factor will give you a “heads up” in advance of the actual due date in cases where meeting the deadline is absolutely critical.

Example
You are holding a block of rooms at the Fairfield Inn for two nights, beginning October 28, 2018. The first deposit is due two months prior, on August 28th. Entering a “Fudge Factor” of 7 days means the reminder will start to appear a week prior to the critical August deadline.

Once you’ve created the record, open it up to review and possibly add to it. The record will be tagged with your name but can be assigned to someone else by simply clicking in the “Staff Member” field. If the record was created as a payment reminder, enter the amount due in the field so labeled if appropriate. If any additional notes are required, there is a place to record those as well.

Note that if the task is associated with a Vendor, you will see the Vendor, the Ops, the TM, etc., referenced. If it has to do with a Booking, the Client and TM may be referenced, and so on. Note also that the records will color code, based on the

due date relative to “today”. Reminders for tasks more than a week out will be green; those that fall with “this week” will be yellow, and deadlines that have passed will turn red/pink.

As you deal with each task, mark the “To Do” record as completed and once again use the Notes field to make any further remarks. Any records that do not have to be kept once completed can be deleted by clicking on the “Delete” button.

To retrieve your “To Do’s”, click on “To Do Reports” from the Reports menu. From there, several choices are available to you:

To Do List: When you make this selection, the “To Do” layout will appear as a “find” prompt. If you want to see all tasks for the week of August 10, 2018, by example, your entry in the Date Due field would be “8/10/2018…8/17/2018”. You might otherwise want to find all the activities assigned to one staff member by picking that name from the list. If you choose to not enter any criteria and simply click “Continue”, a list including all “To Do’s” for all staff will compile.

My Today List: If you select this report, the system does the “find” for you, acting on your name and today’s date. Any “To Do’s” assigned to you that have not been marked as completed will be included on the report. If there are no items assigned for today’s date, you will see all to do entries in a list view format.

This Week/Next Week To Do List: This report will reflect all “To Do’s”, in other words assigned to all staff, for action within one week from “today” or assigned for action next week.

Uncompleted To Do List: If you want a look at all reminders in the system that have not been marked as completed, use this report.

Purge Orphans: This script will delete any reminders that were attached to records that are no longer in the system.

Note: Upon calling any of these reports, you will be asked if you want to include or not any reminders that are completed. Typically, your response would be no as you’re generally only interested in what still needs to be done, not what has already been taken care of…but the choice is there.

If you have any questions that are not answered here Contact TourTools Support for assistance.