Daily tasks

The daily tasks panel is the kitchen’s intention for today. Open the Work in Progress page and the top half of the screen is the checklist — every prep the kitchen plans to make, every reminder the chef wrote down, every leftover from yesterday that didn’t quite finish. A row for each. A status chip on each. As the morning runs, rows tick over from To do to In progress to Done, the counter at the top of the panel climbs, and by the end of prep the list is mostly green.

It’s the planning view, deliberately separated from the live batches board sitting underneath. The checklist answers what should we make today?. The work in progress (WIP) board below answers what’s cooking right now?. The same row can appear in both at the same time — once you start a recipe task, a card appears below and the row above flips to In progress with a small “live below” hint. They’re two views of the same shift, one zoomed out, one zoomed in.

This page is for two readers. If you’re the owner, “Why this page exists” is for you. If you’re the head chef, jump to “How a task gets onto the list” and skim down to the worked example.

Why this page exists

Most kitchens already make a daily prep list. The default is a whiteboard, a notepad, or the chef’s memory. The cost is forgotten items, double work, and no answer when someone asks at 11am what’s still left to do? The checklist replaces all of that with one shared screen that anyone can open from their phone.

The other reason it exists is continuity. A task that didn’t get finished yesterday — the stock that didn’t reduce enough, the dough that was started but not weighed in — stays open on yesterday’s list, visible to anyone scrolling back a day. The morning crew opens the previous-day view at 7am, sees what’s still in progress, finishes it, logs it to stock, and only then moves to today’s list. The list dates don’t auto-merge; the kitchen does, by looking at both.

The rule

The checklist is what the kitchen intends to make; the board below is what the kitchen is making. Ticking a row never moves stock — only logging a batch from the board does. The two views stay in sync because the system carries the link both ways.

How a task gets onto the list

A row arrives on today’s checklist by one of three paths.

Auto-applied from a saved template. The most common path. The head chef saved a template last month — Morning prep weekday, for example — and attached a schedule that says apply this every weekday at six in the morning. The morning crew walks in at seven, opens the page, and the list is already there. Eight or nine recipe tasks, pre-filled with the planned quantities the template carried, ready to start.

Added manually by the chef. The night before service, or first thing in the morning, the head chef taps + Add task and writes a row by hand. Useful for one-off catering orders, an unexpected delivery that needs prepping immediately, or anything the template didn’t cover. The dialog asks whether the task is a recipe task (pick a recipe, set a quantity) or a freeform task (just type a short title — check walk-in temperature, defrost guanciale, order from the butcher).

Open from yesterday. If a recipe task was started yesterday but the batch was never logged to stock — maybe the dough ran late, maybe the cook went home before weighing the stock — the row stays on yesterday’s date, status In progress. It doesn’t auto-move forward to today; the kitchen handles continuity by scrolling back one day and finishing the row from there. The live batch (the card on the WIP board) is what carries forward — it’s still on the board until completed or cancelled, regardless of which list date it originated from.

A row is one of two kinds. A recipe task points at a specific batched recipe and a planned quantity, and ties into everything downstream — starting it spawns a live card, logging that card to stock auto-ticks the row. A freeform task is a plain reminder with a checkbox; tap it, the row goes green, done. The chip on the row tells you which kind it is. Recipe tasks are the bridge to inventory; freeform tasks live and die on the checklist.

The four statuses

Each row carries a coloured chip.

To do — grey, the default. Nobody’s touched it yet. The action buttons are Start for recipe tasks (which spawns a live batch), a checkbox for freeform tasks (which ticks it directly), and Skip with a reason prompt for either kind.

In progress — amber. Only ever on a recipe task whose batch is live below. The row carries a ”↓ live below” hint pointing at the matching card on the work in progress board. The row stays in progress until the batch is either logged to stock or cancelled.

Done — green. Finished. For recipe tasks, set by logging the batch to stock (the system ticks the row in the same save). For freeform tasks, set by tapping the checkbox.

Skipped — rose. The chef decided not to do it today, and a reason was captured at skip time. The reason shows inline on the row, so the rest of the team knows why. A skipped row can be re-opened later if circumstances change.

How to use it

Open Back of House → Work in Progress in the sidebar. The checklist sits in the top half of the page. The header shows the date you’re viewing, a done/total counter, and three controls — ‹ Prev and Next › to step day by day, Today to snap back, and a date picker to jump anywhere. Templates opens the saved-list dialog; + Add task opens the new-row dialog.

A typical run-through. The morning crew opens the page, glances at the counter — 0/11 — and works top to bottom. The pizzaiolo finds the dough row, taps Start, sets the planned quantity and an optional time-to-ready, confirms. The row flips to In progress with the live-below hint; a card appears on the board underneath. The pasta cook does the same with the bolognese. The pastry chef ticks Defrost the brioche dough — a freeform reminder, no batch involved, the row goes green. The counter climbs to 3/11 and keeps climbing as the morning runs.

Mid-morning, a delivery falls through. The chef can’t make the planned tiramisu because the mascarpone didn’t arrive. She taps Skip on the tiramisu row, types no mascarpone delivery, postponed to tomorrow, confirms. The row turns rose with the reason inline; the rest of the team sees it and knows not to start it.

Tomorrow’s list is built by the same actions, on tomorrow’s date. The date arrows step forward; the chef adds rows the night before or lets the auto-apply schedule seed them at six.

What happens behind the scenes

Each row is one record scoped to a calendar date in the venue’s local time. The list loads every task for that date — open and closed — and sorts active rows first (To do then In progress), terminal rows at the bottom (Done and Skipped). The counter in the header reads the same data.

Tasks never touch inventory directly. The only paths that move stock are the Log to stock action on a live batch, and a manual waste entry. Ticking a freeform task changes the chip and nothing else. Skipping a task changes the chip and stores the reason. Starting a recipe task creates a live batch row and changes the chip to In progress — still no stock movement.

When a recipe task’s batch is logged to stock down on the board, the task above ticks itself in the same save, stamps who completed it and when, and goes green. When a batch is cancelled, the task above flips back to To do so the chef can retry — cancelling a batch is scrap and try again, not skip the intent.

The auto-apply schedule runs in the background. When the schedule fires for a saved template, the system stamps a copy of the template’s rows onto the target date — quantities, kitchen assignments, notes and all. The first time someone opens the page that morning, the list is already there.

A row that was started yesterday and never logged stays exactly where it was — on yesterday’s list, status In progress. The board doesn’t auto-roll it forward; what carries forward is the live batch on the WIP board, which is still cooking until someone logs it or cancels it. To check what’s still open from a previous day, scroll the date picker back one day. Most kitchens make a habit of opening the previous-day view first thing every morning before adding to today’s list.

Worked example — a Monday morning with eleven tasks

It’s Monday, eight in the morning at your venue. Marco walks in, makes coffee, opens Back of House → Work in Progress. The counter at the top reads 0/11. He scrolls the list.

Eight rows from the Sunday-night auto-apply. The Morning prep weekday template fired at six. He sees:

Bolognese base, 12 kg, Cucina
Pizza dough, 50 balls, Bakery
Tomato sauce, 8 L, Cucina
Chicken stock, 5 L, Cucina
Fresh tagliatelle, 4 kg, Cucina
Tiramisu, 1 tray, Cucina
Bread rolls, 60 pieces, Bakery
Pesto, 1 kg, Cucina

Two rows Marco added manually after Saturday’s stock count showed two preps running thin:

Salsa verde, 500 g, Cucina (added Sunday evening)
Carrot-celery base, 3 kg, Cucina (added Sunday evening)

One row open from yesterday — Sunday’s Beef stock didn’t reduce enough by closing time, the night cook left it on the lowest heat overnight, and it never got logged. It’s not on today’s list — it’s still on Sunday’s, status In progress. The chef notices this from the WIP board (the live batch is still simmering there with Started Sun 14:30 on the card) and finishes it from there: scrolls the daily-tasks date picker back to Sunday, weighs the now-reduced stock, logs it. The Sunday row flips to Done; the chef then comes back to today’s list.

Marco’s first move is the carried-over stock. He walks to the stove, tastes it — perfect, after twelve hours on minimum. He scrolls back to the page, finds the live card underneath the checklist (the batch was started yesterday, it’s still there with started 17h 30m ago), advances it to Ready, taps Log to stock, weighs the pot at 4.2 L, logs it. The card clears, the row at the top of the checklist ticks itself green, the counter reads 1/11.

Next he triages. The tiramisu can’t run today — the mascarpone delivery is late. He taps Skip on the row, types no mascarpone delivery, postponed to Tuesday, confirms. The row goes rose with the reason inline. Counter is still 1/11, but the done/total now reflects an intentional skip — 1 done, 1 skipped, 9 active.

By 9am the kitchen is in flight. The pizzaiolo started the dough; row in amber, card on the board with an ETA chip counting down. The pasta cook started the bolognese; same. Marco started the tomato sauce himself. Three cards live, three rows in progress, the counter at 1/11 but the In progress count says 3.

By 14:00 the counter reads 9/11 — eight green plus the carried-over stock. One row is rose (the tiramisu, with its reason). One row remains amber (the bolognese, still simmering, four-hour batch). At 15:30 Marco logs the bolognese; the last row ticks. 10/11 and Skipped: 1. The kitchen is ready for service.

Work in progress board — the live batches view that sits underneath this checklist, where started recipe tasks appear as cards
Start a prep batch — what happens when you tap Start on a recipe task (and the alternative entry point for off-checklist batches)
Log to stock — the only action that moves inventory; auto-ticks the task above when it fires
Structured recipes vs freeform notes — the two kinds of row, side by side, with examples
Checklist templates — saving today’s list as a reusable plan, and applying a saved plan to another day
Auto-apply schedule — making a template land on its target date automatically, so the morning crew walks in to a pre-seeded list
Prep kitchens — the filter tabs at the top of the page that narrow the checklist to one area (Cucina, Bakery, Bar)
Prep — overview — the entry to the whole back-of-house workflow this page is part of
Inventory — overview — where every logged batch ends up; the destination of every ticked recipe task