Tasks and Time Entries Are the Same Thing

Most practice-management tools make you keep two separate lists: a list of things to do and, separately, a list of time you’ve spent. You write “call the client about discovery” on your to-do list, do the call, and then go to a different screen and re-type “called client about discovery, 0.3 hours.”

Outlaw doesn’t work that way. A task and a time entry are the same object at two points in its life.

A Task Starts as Planned Work

When you add a task, you’re describing a unit of work you need to do, for example, “phone call to the client about the deposition schedule.” It isn’t necessarily something you’ll do this minute, so a task carries a due date to tell you when it needs to happen.

At this stage the task lives on your list as something planned: it has a case, a description, maybe an assignee, and a due date, but no time on it yet.

Starting the Task Turns It Into a Time Entry

When you’re ready to actually do the work, you start the task. From that moment:

• the task becomes a time entry: the clock is running on it;
• it is permanently assigned to you, the person who started it;
• all the context you already captured (the case, the description, the planning notes) comes along with it automatically.

That’s the whole idea: a time entry in Outlaw is just a task that someone started, with a lot of useful context already attached. You never re-type what you did, because the thing you planned is the thing you’re now timing.

Why This Matters

Because there’s no second list, there’s no double-entry and nothing to reconcile. The work you planned, the time you spent, and the line item that eventually lands on the client’s invoice are all the same record moving through its life. Plan it once, do it, bill it.

It helps to see what the two-list approach actually costs you. In most systems you create a task like “Draft documents for Jones,” and then, when it’s time to work, you create a separate time entry, re-type a nearly identical title, associate it with the client and case, and hit start. When you finish you stop the timer, then go back to the task and mark it complete. That extra dance causes three real problems Outlaw avoids:

• Duplicated data. Nearly every task turns into work, and each one needs a matching time entry with the same title and overlapping invoice notes. You’re entering the same thing twice.
• Nothing keeps the two in sync. Because the task and the time entry aren’t linked, you have to remember to go back and mark the task complete by hand. Finishing the work should finish the task, and in Outlaw it does.
• You lose the planning numbers. A task carries an estimated time and a case association, and that’s what lets you look at the week or month ahead, predict how much work each client will need, and warn them in advance about the bill that’s coming. It also lets you compare each person’s estimate against the time they actually spent. If someone consistently underestimates, you can see it and coach them, on estimating better or on working more efficiently. Split tasks and time apart and all of that foresight disappears.

By keeping tasks and time entries as one record, Outlaw gives you a single source of truth for your time, from the moment a task is conceived through the moment it’s billed.