The Eight Task Types
Every task on the Tasks board carries a type. The type is not a category somebody picked. It records where the task came from, and that is the most useful thing to know about a task you did not raise yourself.
There are eight of them. You create exactly one of them by hand. The other seven appear on the board because something else happened: a guest booked a service, a guest sent a request, an automation fired, housekeeping planned a clean, or an order was placed.
1. The Eight Types at a Glance
| Type on the board | Where it comes from | Do you create it? |
|---|---|---|
| Manual | Somebody on the team raised it with Create Task | Yes - this is the one |
| Service | A service on a reservation that requires work | No |
| Automated | An automation in the platform raised it | No |
| Guest | A request that came in from the guest journey | No |
| Food and Beverage | A food & beverage order placed by a guest | No |
| Shop order | An order from one of the property's shops | No |
| Departure cleaning | Housekeeping - the clean between two stays | No |
| Stayover cleaning | Housekeeping - a clean during a stay | No |
The Task Type group in the board's filter modal lists exactly these, so you can pull one kind of work to the front (for example, showing only shop orders during a quiet hour to clear them in a batch).
2. Only Manual Tasks Are Created by Hand
There is no "type" field in the task form, and that is deliberate: anything you raise with Create Task is a Manual task. Title, due date, priority, assignee, links, subtasks and attachments are all yours to set. The type is not, because a manual task is by definition the one a person decided to create.
The practical consequence: if you find yourself wanting to create a Service task or a Shop order task by hand, that is a sign the work belongs somewhere else: a service on the reservation, or an order in the shop. Raise it there and the task appears here on its own, correctly linked.
3. Service Tasks Come from Booked Services
When a guest books a service that needs somebody to do something, the service produces a task. Two details matter on the floor:
- A service can produce more than one task. A service booked for several days can be set up to produce one task per day, and where a service is booked several times over, the task shows the quantity so the person doing it knows whether that is one towel set or four.
- Some service tasks are a request awaiting your confirmation. Those open with a notice at the top of the task: "This task is tied to a time-sensitive service request. Make sure to confirm this request in the reservation details page." Marking the task Done is not the whole job in that case: the request itself is confirmed on the reservation. These arrive at Urgent priority, so they surface at the top of a priority-sorted board.
4. An F&B Order Arrives as a Task
This is the connection most teams do not expect: on properties that run food & beverage, a guest's order lands on the Tasks board.
When the order is ready for pick-up, a task appears:
- One task per point of sale, so an order that draws from the kitchen and the bar becomes two pieces of work for two teams rather than one ambiguous job.
- One subtask per item ordered, each carrying the item name and the quantity. The task doubles as the pick list.
- The delivery destination on the task: a table in the venue, or the room number for an in-room order.
- The order number, so the task can be matched against the order in your F&B system.
Marking the parent task Done reports the order as delivered. That status travels back to the guest's order. Closing the task is what tells the guest their order has arrived, so it is worth doing at the door rather than at the end of a shift.
F&B order tasks are created with a short due time, which is intended: they are meant to be worked immediately, and they show up under Today and then Overdue quickly if they are not.
The Food and Beverage type only appears on properties where food & beverage is switched on. See Food & Beverage.
5. A Shop Order Arrives as a Task
Shop orders reach the board the same way, and in the same shape: one parent task for the order, one subtask per item with its quantity.
Each kind of shop produces its own task: a minibar, an amenities shop, a loyalty shop, additional services, a self-pouring station. Which of them exist depends on what the property runs; see Shops Overview.
Unlike an F&B order, a shop order task is due relative to the stay rather than immediately. An amenity ordered for arrival is due for arrival, not within the hour.
6. Guest Requests and Automated Tasks
Guest tasks come from what a guest does in the guest journey: asking for a luggage pick-up, leaving a note at checkout. The guest's own wording is carried into the task, so the person picking it up reads what the guest actually wrote rather than a summary of it.
Automated tasks are raised by the platform's automations rather than by a person (for example a document or identity check that needs a human look, or a form a guest still has to complete). What is automated on your property is set up in Automated Actions and PDF Forms.
Both arrive with an assignee group rather than a named person where one is configured, so the work routes to a team and whoever is free picks it up.
7. Cleaning Tasks Are Not on the Board by Default
Departure cleaning and Stayover cleaning are the two housekeeping types. They exist as tasks, but the Tasks board leaves them out of the view it opens on, because cleaning is planned and worked in the Housekeeping View, where a board built around rooms and turnovers makes more sense than a flat list.
You can still bring them in: tick Departure cleaning or Stayover cleaning under Task Type in the filter modal. That is worth doing when you are chasing one specific room rather than running the cleaning round. A housekeeping task and the maintenance task for the same room then sit next to each other in one list.
8. Why Priority Matters More on Some Types
Priority runs Low → Medium → High → Urgent on every type, and tasks that arrive on their own are given a priority by the configuration behind them rather than by a person.
Urgent is the one to use with intent: an urgent task also shows up as an action required on the reservation it is linked to, so it is visible to somebody working the reservation who never opens the Tasks board. Setting Urgent is therefore not just a sort order. It pushes the task in front of the front desk.
9. Conclusion
The type on a task tells you its origin, and the origin tells you what "done" means. Manual is yours. Service, Automated and Guest come from a reservation, an automation or a guest. Food and Beverage and Shop order are real orders that turned into work, complete with a subtask per item, and for an F&B order, closing the task is what tells the guest it arrived. Departure cleaning and Stayover cleaning belong to housekeeping and stay out of the board's default view until you ask for them.