How to Use ClickUp Recurring Tasks
A walkthrough of ClickUp's recurring tasks feature, covering setup, settings options, and workarounds for complex scheduling. Learn how to automate repeating work and what the limitations are.
ClickUp Recurring tasks are an amazing feature inside of ClickUp that helps you automate the creation of tasks that happen on a recurring basis. But despite it sounding pretty easy, there's a lot of complexities when it comes to the recurring settings in ClickUp that you need to know about to make sure you set them up correctly. So in this video, I'm going to walk you through all of that. I'm going to go over how to actually set up your recurring settings, things you need to know, and best practices when it comes to setting up these tasks in ClickUp. Let's get started. So let's jump to click up here and talk about how we can set up a recurring settings in our tasks. So the first thing you obviously need to do is go and set up a task inside of ClickUp just like this. I have one build out. We have recurring tasks. I also have these other ones. Don't worry about those for now, we'll get to them later. But this will be my example that I'll use for these settings. So in order to get to your recurring settings, all you need to do is either a click into this task and go to dates and you'll see recurring settings down here. Or your other option is to go into the due date column right here. Click on it to go like you're setting a due date, but then you go down here to the bottom and click Set recurring. So once I'm here, this is my menu for my recurring settings. As you'll see, it says recur. Over here there is an ellipsis. This is for our legacy recurring settings. This is going away at the end of April 2024, so we won't even worry about that. So go ahead and ignore it. Don't go and click here. We don't want to set those up because you're going to have to remap it to these new recurring settings at the end of April. So within this, the first section here that we have available to us is the ability to kind of choose when we want a task to recur. So you see, I have options of daily, weekly, monthly, all the way down to custom. So you can see if I do daily. Here I have the option to make a task recur every single day. We'll see this by our little light blue squares that show up. That shows me when this task is going to recur. As we'll see, today's date will be shown by this pink circle. If I choose this to be my due date, that's going to highlight that into the blue circle. And if I want to, I can go ahead and skip the weekends as well. As you can see, this pops up down here. When I choose daily, as you can see, it disappears on weekly. Pops up on daily. I can go ahead and skip the weekends. That way. This task only recurs on the weekdays, just like that, which if I don't want to work on the weekends, then this is how I want to set it up. After daily, you then have weekly. As you can see here, nothing super complex. It's just going to recur every single week depending on my due date. So if I switch the due date, that'll change that up as well. After that, when we get a little bit more complex in these recurring settings is going to be monthly. As you can see, you have a bunch of different options here. From same day each month, second Friday, which will actually be changed based off of your due date, you have first day of the month and last day of the month. So same day each month. Essentially what that means is if I change that to the sixth, that's. That's going to show up on the sixth every single month like that. As we can see our future recurring tasks. However, as you realize here in April, this is April, it's showing up on a Saturday. So unfortunately in these recurring settings, there's no if then logic that says if the task ends up falling on a Saturday or Sunday, push that to a Monday or back to a Friday. So that's a bit of a downer here. In these settings, I'm not able to to do that. Unfortunately, I can also do the first Tuesday. As you can see, this will adjust based off of my original due date. So if I switch that to the Wednesday, we have first Wednesday. If I push that back here, that's first Friday. So you also have that option to use as well and again the first day of the month and the last day of the month. Only downside to this is I can't choose for this to push off the weekend. So as you can see here, April 31, fall falls on a Sunday. Unfortunately, I can't push that to either the 29th, if I need that to be the 29th, or push that to the Monday either. So the only workaround for those teams that need tasks to fall maybe on the last weekday of every month, the best workaround I've seen that is to basically instead of using the recurring settings, you just go ahead and set those tasks up regularly. So as you can see here, whether you build that with a parent task and subtask Structure we or just a bunch of parent tasks. You'll see here. If I need those tasks to fall on those last days of the month or those last weekdays of the month, I'm going to have to build those out like this. So I have February 29, I have March 29, I have April 30. So that's kind of your way of doing that. You'll want to set that up. I can just build that out for the whole year if that's what's helpful. Or the six months or whatever you need. Again, that's really the one sort of 95, 96% of the time you can go ahead and use the recurring settings, but that's probably your one time that you can't is if you need something to fall on really the last weekday of the month. That's the only thing I've seen that's a downside to these recurring settings. So going back here, let's continue our conversation into yearly. Yearly gonna be pretty much the same thing. Nothing super complex here. It's just gonna recur once a year. You also have days after which essentially I can just say, hey, when I finish a task, make this recur one day, two days, three days, whatever it is after I complete it. But again, no if then logic to say three days after. If it ends up falling on a Saturday, Sunday, push that to a Monday. I can't do that, unfortunately. And then the most complex one in terms of how you can set these recurring settings up is going to be custom. So with this, it's super cool because I can say maybe I want something to be on Mondays and Fridays or Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays. I could do that. I could also adjust days to say I want this to recurrent every three days like that. I can skip the weekends here. So you do have that option, which is great. So I can do that. I can also choose months and I can make it fall on a certain day of the month like this, kind of similar to my just basic monthly recurring settings. So there's a lot that you can do here, a lot that you can explore. I would say just test out your custom ones. If you have a specific sort of use case for sort of certain dates that you're trying to get a task to fall on, look into the custom to see if you can't do it. See if you can do it. If you can't do it, you might just have to build out those tasks like I have here. But if you have any questions about that, leave in the comments below. We can help you with any specific use cases to see if it's possible here inside of ClickUp. But custom will probably be your best friend in terms of trying to get it to fall on specific days. So let's go back to daily and let's just say I want this to recur every single day. Let's start this on the 6th or today and we'll skip the weekends. So after the sort of time slots that you want a task to recur, the next thing is when you want the task to like actually create the next task. And so for this case you have three different options. We have when closed, when done and on schedule. So the first two are relatively the same. It just depends on if you use that done status here inside of ClickUp. Most often I would just say use when closed. This is probably the most popular one on schedule can be helpful too. But if you use that done status, you can use this one. But essentially what these both mean is when the task is closed or when it's done, then the next task will occur and show up here inside of ClickUp. So essentially what that means then is if a task falls overdue and I don't close it out, the new task will not pop up for me until I go and close that. So just take note of that. Another task is not going to pop up unless all those tasks are are closed out. In addition, you have on schedule. The difference with this is it doesn't matter if I close a task, even if it falls over due, once I hit that due date and it passes by that, then it's going to go ahead and open up another task for me. So in some cases, if you were to have a time that you can actually add a time to your due date if you haven't done this ever. But let's say I had a task that was due today at 7:00am and I were using the on schedule settings here. Essentially what that would do is at 7:01am today this task would the old one will fall overdue, but it's still going to create a new one for me versus the when closed, it's not going to create a new task until I close that out. So those are just the differences between the two. So if you want that task automatically created and shown, even if the other one is overdue, then you can use the on schedule setting there. Let's go back to one close for this and I'll get rid of that 7am due date like that. Let's do the sixth today. So after that Once you get through these settings, the next one is going to be creating a new task versus not creating a new task. I always recommend you go ahead and create a new task. This is going to be important for sort of reporting abilities as well as getting a fresh new sort of area for you to track time on that task. If I don't create a new task, essentially what happens is that task will just be closed and then reopen, be closed, reopen, close, reopen. It's going to be the same exact task. It's not going to be a new task for me to work on. So what that does, it brings everything with it. It brings the time tracked, it brings all the activity on, it brings all the comments, which in some cases you want some of that. But you do have the option, as you can see, if I go into options here, I can bring all of that work with me here. So I can bring the comments. Say you wanted to keep a log within that task of sort of what you've done, you're leaving communication on there and you want that to continue with a new task, you can bring that information. In addition, you can bring descriptions. So if you have a nice task description or a link to something and link to a template that can come with a new task. Assignees, watchers, tags, subtasks, which will be important if you use a parent task subtask structure and then things like custom fields, checklists, subtasks, assignees, activities, so on and so forth. So a lot that you can bring with the new tasks. That's why I always recommend just create a new task because it's going to help you with reporting in the future as well as it's going to give you a fresh new place to track your time instead of adding time to that other one that was already tracked on. And it's just going to create a fresh new task for you instead of keeping the old one opening and closing. After that you also have the options to recur forever. Or I can choose to repeat for a certain amount of time or end on a certain date. So depending on maybe you know, this task will. We don't need to do it come March or April, a specific date, you can have it end on a specific date and I can also make it repeat maybe 1 times, 10 times, whatever it may be, you have the option to do that as well. After that you also have the option to update the status to a certain something. So if you wanted it to be pushed back into like a Black Law backlog with a planning status, you can but oftentimes I just leave that checked off. Um, I don't find a purpose in that. I just kind of say, hey, when the new task is created, just put it to the to do status there. I don't need to adjust this at all. So after that, once you go through all of those, you're good to go. You can go ahead and click Save. And now you have a nice recurring task that when I close it again like that, it's going to open that back up with a fresh new task for me. But it's going to go ahead and bring all the comments and things like that that I had on it originally. So if I had any data, if I had any custom fields, signees, subtasks or anything on this, it's all going to come with this new task because I said create a new task and bring everything else with it. So after that, that's really your most sort of basic settings and setting up of your recurring tasks in ClickUp. However, if you followed us, followed Zenp out for a while, and you know a lot about sort of our system and how we structure tasks, oftentimes we're using a parent task in subtask structure just like this, and oftentimes you might have things like this that you need to recur. So meetings are a great example of this. You might have meetings once a week, once a month, and you want to make sure you get all of that work for that meeting into ClickUp because you're going to have preparation for the meeting. You're actually have attending for that meeting. You're also going to have things like action items and tasking out from that meeting as well. So you need to make sure that work gets into ClickUp. And for that reason we typically will leverage a parent task and a subtask structure where the parent task represents a deliverable. For that example, it would be a meeting and then all the subtasks are the action step to complete that deliverable, which the meeting again is available. And all the subtasks are the things that are included within that meeting. So the way that we do this and set up the recurring settings on this is we're not going to set up the recurring settings inside of these subtasks. We're going to set it up in the parent task. Because what happens here, if I set this up to recur once a week just like this, and I come to this and create a new task and bring the subtasks with it and everything, all these other things, essentially what that does now is it's going to. Once this closes out and all these are closed, it's going to bring this whole fresh workflow back into my workspace again. So instead of me having to go set these all up as recurring and then the due date is kind of like falling way behind here. We'll just have all of these close out and then this will close out and then this whole workflow will recur just like that. So I'll show you how this works. One other thing to note here is a lot of times, because this is sort of a non actionable item, it's just sort of pairing together all of these subtasks. If there's no one there to close this task, because I'll close this one unless I'm tasked to go close the parent, we can close this automatically via automation. So what I'd recommend is if you structure your tasks like that, you go ahead and you go to the space level, most likely go to space settings, go to automations, we're going to go to our active automations to show you this here. What I can do is say when this happens on tasks or subtasks, so all subtasks are resolved or closed out, then we come here, change the status. This is going to be changing the status of the parent task to close. So what that does essentially is once the all the subtasks are closed under that parent task, it's going to go ahead and close that parent task. And then again because that parent task has the recurring settings, the whole structure, that whole workflow there that I showed you will recur. So let's show you what this looks like. So let's take all of these subtasks like that and we're going to go ahead and close all of them just like this. And so that's then going to close that parent task and then make everything. So as you can see here, the automation just fired and now this whole workflow is going to recur and bring us a task for the next due date. As you can see here as it starts to load now it's February 27th and that's going to bring all of the subtasks with it as well. So as you can see here now all of them have loaded. So we now have the 27th and the 28th for everything here. So one other thing to note here, and just a warning is when I go ahead and I update any of these subtasks, so let's say that this one gets pushed way out in the future, let's say this is the 29th, this is 29th and I don't get this till the 1st. If I do that, when it recurs, it's not going to take those due dates and push them back to the dates that they were. It's going to take the new dates with it. So that sometimes get a little bit complex and get sort of those due dates all mixed up. So just make sure, if you do have to push some things and you do move some of those due dates, if you want to make sure for the next week it falls back on the right day that you go ahead and update the due dates again, because that's just going to happen. Unfortunately, it doesn't go back to the original dates that were set, that original date map, it's going to update to what you have here. So again, these dates will be off for the next recurrence there. So just take note of that. In addition for this, the other drawback is that the dependencies will not come with the new task. So no matter what, that's the one setting that doesn't come with it. All the custom fields, everything. As you can see, if we were to go into these recurring settings, if I come into here, I can bring a lot of different things. I just can't bring those dependencies. So you'll have to reset them if you're going to need them. We like to use those dependencies to remap due dates, but unfortunately for a longer workflow and when you have subtasks like this, the dependencies will not come with the new task. In addition, one other thing to note with this is in workload, if I were to come here, as you can see, and customize, I have the option in my workload options to show future recurring tasks. This future recurring tasks will only show tasks in the future that have the recurring settings on it. So if I were to come here, let's come back and assign myself to this one. Just so it shows up, we'll put a time estimate of 20 minutes just like that. To show you what this looks like, I need to make sure I have recurring settings set up on here. We'll do daily, we'll skip the weekends like that. And then we'll go back to our workload and we're going to see this task. As you can see, the original one is right here. And then all the future ones are shown, but they have a little dotted lines around them like this. So that'll show up on my workload. However, when you have parent task in the subtasks here and the parent Task is the only one that has those recurring settings. The subtasks will not show up in future workload. They'll show up on the the original workload that they're on. So if I were to come here to the workload and what those dates are, the 27th, it's going to show up here for the Prepare for meeting. It's going to show up on Andrews for the actual meeting, but it's not going to show that in the future, unfortunately. So what I need to do is if I need to see sort of a month in advance or something like that, I can go ahead and I can take this meeting and I can sort of duplicate it four times. So if this is a weekly meeting, essentially what I would do is just have meeting first week and then I have all the subtasks underneath it, meeting second week, subtasks underneath it, meeting third week, subtasks underneath it, meeting fourth week, subtasks underneath it. And then within that, I would just make them recur each of them once a month so that they all sort of fall on the first week, second week, third week, fourth week, like I just explained. So it's kind of a way to work around the workload. Again, you'd have sort of four meeting tasks built out there. Each of them will recur once a month. So that's mainly if you just need to see workload for those future meetings because of that limitation where it's not going to show these subtasks in the future because they don't have those recurring settings in them. So that's a few drawbacks. But again, this structure is great for having sort of the workflow to pass work back and forth. You just have to have a few workarounds there. But overall that is your recurring settings here inside of ClickUp. Remember, just go here and I would definitely recommend you sort of testing some things to see what's going to work for you in terms of the workflow that you need and the specific dates that it needs to fall on. If you're still having trouble with it or have any questions, if you can do that or this, feel free to leave them in the comments below and we'll get right back to you and answer your question. And there you have it. That's how you use the recurring settings inside of Click click up. And if you have any specific questions or need help with a certain scenario with your recurring settings, go ahead and drop that in the comments below and we'll get back to you as soon as possible. And if you found this video. Helpful and insightful. Go ahead and hit the like button and subscribe. We're going to continue to deliver content weekly for teams trying to get the most out of ClickUp. And while you're at it, I highly recommend you go and download our ultimate how to Use ClickUp guide that'll walk you through how to best use ClickUp to build a more productive process, profitable and healthy team. And with that, I'll see you again next time. It's about time. It's about time.
