The Queued Work tab is a shared pool of unassigned tasks that any qualified team member can pick up. As an admin or manager, you control which tasks land in the pool and who can see them.
Queued Work replaces the "grab the next file from the shared drawer" handoff. During tax season, returns flow into one queue, any preparer on the client's role can pull the next one, and nothing stalls or gets lost when staff are out or roles change mid-year. Because work follows the role and not a named person, you can add or remove staff without touching a single task.
⚠️ Required plan and permissions: You must have an Admin permission set to set up Queued work.
📌 Set up Roles first. Queued Work depends entirely on Roles, and optionally Teams if you want to assign a whole group to a role at once. Set these up before continuing. See Setting up Roles and Setting up Teams.
Table of Contents
How the Queued Work List Works
Before setting anything up, it helps to know the rule that governs the entire tab. A task appears in a person's Queued Work only when all three of these are true at the same time:
A role is assigned to the task.
That person is a member of that role for that client.
The task has no assignees — the Set role members as assignees option is toggled off.
The moment anyone adds themselves as an assignee, the task leaves the queue and moves to that person's My Work tab. If any one of the three conditions is missing, the task won't surface. The rest of this article is just putting those three pieces in place.
To navigate to the Queued work tab:
Click the Work tab on the global navigation bar.
Select Tasks List from the menu.
Click the Queued Work tab.
Assign Role Members to Your Clients
This connects your team to the clients they're allowed to pull work for. A staff member only sees a client's queued tasks if they're a member of that client's assigned role.
The fastest way to assign one role across many clients at once:
Go to Clients > Client List.
Check the box next to each client you want to assign.
Click the ⋮ (more options) icon in the right corner of the list.
Select Manage assignments.
With Add assignments selected, find the role you want (for example, Tax Prep) and add the user or team.
Click Save.
To assign a role on a single client instead, open that client and use Manage Assignments from the client's profile.
You can also navigate to the Client Record and click the Manage Assignments icon in the upper right corner to add/remove team members.
📌 Assigning a Team to a role adds every member of that team at once. As people join or leave the team, their access to that role's queued work updates automatically — no need to revisit each client.
How to Make Tasks Appear in the Queue
A task only enters the queue when it has a role assigned and no assignees set. You can do this on an individual task, but for recurring work like tax returns, setting it once on the task template is far more reliable.
Recommended: set it on the template
Open a new or existing task template (for example, your 1040 template).
Add the relevant role(s) to the template — for example, Tax Prep.
Make sure Set role members as assignees is toggled off.
Every task created from that template will now surface in the queue for everyone on that role, with no per-task setup. This is why the template approach matters: one missed toggle on a manual task means that task silently never appears for anyone.
On an individual task:
Skip this if you've set it on the template.
Open the task and click Edit (or the edit icon).
In the Roles field, add the role that should be able to pick up this task.
Make sure Set role members as assignees is toggled off.
Click Save changes.
Leaving that box checked sets the role's members as assignees directly, which keeps the task out of the queue. Toggle it off any time you want the task to return to the pool.
Give Managers Visibility Into Their Team's Queue
Skip this section if managers don't need to monitor their team's queued work.
A manager sees a task in Queued Work under the same rule as everyone else: they must be a role member on the task. That means a manager only sees their team's queue if they're assigned to a role on those clients and that role is on the tasks. In a firm with multiple managers, this is what keeps each manager seeing only their own team's work.
The cleanest way to set this up is a dedicated Manager (or Partner) role, kept separate from the roles your staff use:
Create a Manager role. See Setting up Roles.
Using the bulk Manage assignments flow above, add the manager to the Manager role across every client their team oversees.
Add the Manager role to the task templates for that work — alongside the staff role (for example, both Tax Prep and Manager on the 1040 template).
Now any task created from that template appears in both the staff queue and the manager's queue, as long as Set role members as assignees stays off.
Add the Manager Role to Clients in Bulk
Add the Manager Role to a Task Template
Add a Task to the Queued Work Pool
Assign a Task or Pick Up Queued Work
This is the same action whether a manager assigns a task to someone or a team member claims it for themselves — both work by setting an assignee on the task.
Navigate to Work > Tasks List.
Click the Queued Work tab.
On a task, click the Assignee(s) field.
Select a team member to assign to the task.
A manager can assign the task to any qualified team member, or a team member can assign it to themselves.
📌 Once a team member is assigned, the task leaves the Queued Work list. It then appears in the All Work tab for the manager, the My Work tab for the assigned team member, the client record's task list, and any custom task lists filtered to include it.
Troubleshooting
A task isn't appearing in anyone's queue:
Check that the task has a role assigned and that Set role members as assignees is toggled off. If either is missing, the task won't surface.
A staff member can't see a task their teammate can:
Confirm they're a member of that client's assigned role. Role membership is per client — being on the role for one client doesn't grant access to another.
A manager can't see their team's queued work:
The manager's role must be added to the task itself, not just to the client. If the role is on the client but not on the task (or template), the task won't appear for them.
Summary
Queued Work distributes shared tasks by role instead of by named assignee, so any qualified team member can pull the next available task and work follows the role as your staff change. Set it up by assigning role members to clients, adding roles to your task templates with assignees toggled off, and giving managers visibility through a dedicated role added across their clients and tasks.
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