Add a Monthly Working Days calendar link

We use Asana for month end task tracking, and would like to set our month end tasks up as recurring tasks that fall due on a specified working day (WD1, WD2, etc…), which will automatically assign the correct calendar date of each months task.
The working days actual calendar date will vary month on month so we currently have to manually adjust each of our tasks, each month, to ensure they fall due on the correct date of the month.

Is there already a way we could set this up?

3 Likes

Hi @Rhys_Briers - good question! It looks like you’ll be able to do this using Asana’s current functionality. I suggest that you set the task to repeat weekly at an interval of every 4 or 5 weeks on X day like so:

OR each month on the X day of the month.

Lastly, you could do this periodically, but I’m not sure it’s the best option for you.

Would the first option above work for you? If none of these work for you, please explain why and we’ll see if we can help you find a better solution. :slight_smile:

Thank you for the suggestions @Alexis, much appreciated.

Unfortunately these wont work for us.

The 1st working day of a month is not always going to be the 1st day of the month (due to weekends and holidays), so we would ideally like to be able to assign a recurring tasks due date as the 1st working day of the month which would always apply it to to first day of the month that is not a weekend or holiday.

As an example, working day 1 of June 2017 is the 1st of June, but working day 1 of July is the 3rd of July because the 1st and 2nd of July fall on a Saturday and Sunday.

4 Likes

I see. Yes, we’re not able to set specific working days for recurring tasks. I can see how this would be useful, though! Our team will keep in mind your suggestion. In the meantime, I hope you’re able to fiddle around with the current functionality to find something that works for you!

I personally have found success setting something as recurring on the 1st of the month because if the 1st occurs on a weekend I’ll see it as an overdue task when I return to the office on Monday. Alternatively, you could set a task due date as the 28th of the month for an item that is actually due on the 1st. That way you’ll have a few days wiggle room to complete the task in time for the 1st of the month and the weekend won’t impeded your ability to complete the task. Maybe this could be the trick for now!

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Hi @Alexis, thank you for the assistance, I will find the best fit for us from the suggestions you have offered.

But if at some point in the future development process, you do incorporate some enhancement to the calendar, could I suggest something like a custom calendar option that lets us select ‘Custom Calendar’ from the list of optionos when setting up a repeating task, and this opens up a yearly calendar view where we can now select all the days we want the task to repeat.

2 Likes

We are running into the same problem. We have many committees and groups that have recurring meetings that happen, (for example) monthly on the 2nd Tuesday and 4th Thursday? or Quarterly on the 2nd Wednesday. We had to set up 12 (or 24) different meetings and set the due date exactly on each but they can’t even repeat yearly because it must be a day of the month, not a date. Please consider more calendar options for us!

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Up! Please add more calendar options (e.g. every 3rd Wednesday of the Month etc.).

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I have a similar scheduling problem as well. For example My non-profit board meets every month on the fourth Thursday I have to print and prepare packets including agenda and minutes the day of the meeting. Stuff like this is common for groups and can be scheduled in Outlook and other tools like Gtasks (a phone app that syncs with google tasks).

@Alexis I just wanted to add my vote for added “repeat task” functionality to the calendar so that a certain day of a week or month could be chosen - for example the 3rd Tuesday of each month. I use Asana for meeting reminders and many of our monthly meetings are set up to reoccur on the same day of a certain week in the month. Adding this functionality would be very helpful! Thanks

Hi folks! Thanks for your thoughts. Don’t forget to add your vote using the “vote” button at the top of the thread! cc @Steve_Dunn :slight_smile:

Hi folks! Thanks for your thoughts. Don’t forget to add your vote using the “vote” button at the top of the thread! cc @Steve_Dunn :slight_smile:

I agree. This would be helpful to add more functionality to recurring tasks.

New user and just run in to the same issue trying to schedule recurring weekly, monthly and quarterly meetings. Working days would solve this issue.

Another vote for more functionality in the calendars. We need to set up a reoccurring project for reporting financials and need it to be working days (monday - friday) and not calendar days.

For example: We close the books on the 5th working day of the month.

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Hi -

Couldn’t agree more on how important and necessary this feature is. A lot of businesses plan gates off of “business days of the month” vs. “calendar days”, making it tough to line up reminders.

Especially if you work in Finance / Accounting, our entire processes align to business days (typically).

Hopefully this can be an added feature to the product in the very near future.

Best,
Brady

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How is this still not an option. Will you please add?

Thank you.

Same here. It was manageable for few tasks but as they grew I had to move away from asana and use spreadsheets to maintain it. Very practical feature and even better if takes into account national holidays

1 Like

I agree with these comments. I’m an accountant and nearly everything we do is based on business days. I haven’t been able to find any workflow product that addresses this need for the finance/accounting community. Even Microsoft’s Outlook still doesn’t allow recurring tasks by business days.

Bump. Same issue as the above. Please incorporate 1st Business day of the month task deadlines.

Hello, accounting for business days, calculating business days or repeating activities based on the date in relation to the month (e.g., 3rd Thursday) is a feature that would greatly enhance all PM activities and really benefit users and make the program that much more worthwhile. Please consider adding this to your features.