Your flows don't have to run entirely on their own. When you need to pause and make a judgment call before an action sends — or finish some prep work first — you can build manual checkpoints into a flow using Manual Approval and tasks.

Two built-in tools let you add manual control to an otherwise-automatic flow. Manual Approval holds a specific action until you give it the go-ahead. The Create Task action creates a to-do that can block a later action from running until the task is checked off. You can use either tool on its own, or combine them for tighter control.

Manual Approval holds a flow action so it won't run — even after its trigger fires — until you explicitly approve it. This gives you a window to review and edit the action, wait on client feedback, or decide whether you want it to go out at all. A common use case is waiting until after a consultation call to decide whether to send a proposal to a potential client.

Manual approval is only available on actions that send something to your client. The six actions that support it are:

For details on adding and configuring any of these actions, see the flow actions reference.

You turn on manual approval inside the action's configuration panel in the flow editor.

With that toggle on, the action will not run until you approve it, regardless of when its trigger fires.

When a flow is applied to a project and an action with manual approval enabled reaches its trigger, Dubsado waits for you to approve it before it runs.

Inside the flow on the project, any action waiting for your approval shows a purple Approve button with a thumbs-up icon on its node. Click Approve to let the action proceed.

You don't have to wait for the trigger to approve. You can approve an action as soon as the flow is applied to a project — before the trigger fires — so it runs seamlessly when its turn comes. Even if you pre-approve, the action still waits for its trigger before running.

If you don't pre-approve an action, Dubsado sends you an email alert when the action triggers. You can also find all pending approvals in two places:

For more about managing actions on an active flow — including Force now, Skip and mark complete, and Retry — see the flow overview and progress tracking article.

The Create Task action (found under the Tasks category in the action picker) creates a task for you to check off when it's triggered. On its own, it's a simple reminder. Its real power comes from using it to hold a later action: any action that follows a Create Task action and uses the after all previous actions are completed trigger will wait for you to check off the task before running.

You can chain multiple tasks in sequence to hold an action behind several steps of prep work.

Here's a practical example. Say a client fills out a questionnaire and you want to review their responses, build a mood board, and paste the mood board link into the follow-up email before it goes out. You can set up the flow like this:

Now the email can't go out until all three tasks are checked off. If the Send Email action used any other trigger — say, a specific date — it would run on that date regardless of whether your tasks were done.

When you add a Create Task action, the configuration panel gives you a few options:

For the full details on configuring the Create Task action, see the flow actions reference.

If you need to pause all subsequent actions until a specific condition is met — rather than tracking individual tasks — the Hold Actions Until action offers another approach.

Like task-gating, Hold Actions Until only holds actions whose trigger is set to after all previous actions are completed; actions with stand-alone triggers (like a specific date) will still fire on that trigger regardless of the hold. See the flow actions reference for how Hold Actions Until works.

Tasks created by a flow appear in two places, and you can mark them complete from either.

Each Create Task node in the flow shows a clickable circle. Before you complete the task, the node displays Task created - Awaiting completion. Click the circle to mark the task complete — it fills with a checkmark. Completing the task directly in the flow is convenient because you can see which action comes next and what it will trigger.

Flow-created tasks also appear in the Tasks app (left sidebar) and in the Tasks tab of the project where they were created. The Tasks app is the best place to see tasks across all of your projects at once.

Using both together gives you the tightest control. If you're worried about accidentally checking off a task and immediately triggering the next action, also require Manual Approval on that action. Then you have to check off the task and approve the action before it runs.

A useful practice, especially when working with a team: write "Check off this task to automatically ___" in the task body so anyone can see at a glance what happens next before they complete it.

Deleting the task marks it complete in the flow — Dubsado records a completion timestamp from when you deleted it and does not ask for confirmation. However, deleting a task does not advance the flow the way completing it does. An action set to run after all previous actions are completed will not fire automatically when you delete the task. To keep the flow moving, complete the task instead of deleting it, or use Force now on the next action. If a project has been cut short and you don't want any remaining actions to run, archive the flow on the project before deleting unwanted tasks.

Create task actions won't show a due-date field during configuration. Once the flow runs and creates the task, you can set a due date on that task by editing it from the main Tasks app or by heading to the Tasks tab within the associated project.

Yes — you can add a Pause Flow action to stop the entire flow until you manually resume it. This is useful when you want to halt everything, not just a single action. See the flow actions reference for how to use Pause Flow and Hold Actions Until.