Introducing Tasks
(and Paddy and Larissa!)

We’re always working to make it easier to be a bloody good boss. PaySauce lives in the cloud, so it’s part of our business model to constantly add to and improve our product.

The big vision is to build out the PaySauce platform, adding apps to support smarter and more connected teams in the workplace. So while our core development team is busy with big projects to make the future of employment easier, we thought it’d be cool to bring on some extra brain power and new ideas.

We wanted to hire a couple of interns, but we were looking to do this in an unusual way. Typically, interns are given the grunt jobs, meaning they don’t gain a heap of practical vocational experience, and the company doesn’t get to hear their ideas. We weren’t too keen on that, so we decided to do an experiment. We thought we’d hire a couple of clever kids, explain what we’re trying to create for Kiwi businesses, and leave them to come up with a cool app for the platform. Then we’d give them as much support as they needed and see how far they could get building it.

We heard about Summer of Tech, an awesome program that connects Kiwi tech companies with students and grads. Then we applied to Callaghan Innovation, who sponsor a lot of great homegrown ideas and have helped us out before with an agritech trip to the UK. We asked for some support to help us afford to bring on two new hires, and we were lucky enough to get it. We headed to Westpac stadium for the big Summer of Tech meet-and-greet, where we were introduced to at least a hundred fresh-faced prospective interns. We were looking for coding skills, but more than that, we were looking for the ability and drive to learn. Larissa and Paddy stood out because of their keenness to learn, track record of doing things themselves, and high energy. So we asked them to come hang out with us for summer, and they said yes!

Larissa and Paddy had just 3 months, and we’d given them a major challenge - and a pretty cool opportunity. The first hurdle was choosing a concept for their app. It had to be something genuinely useful for our customers, something simple enough to be built in a limited timeframe, and something that would meet the extremely high standards of our development and design leaders. The team of two presented 3 ideas, and we chose the one that we thought would be most beneficial for our customers - a task management app. Paddy and Larissa drew up the parameters of what they needed to build, and started refining the details. They were helped out by feedback from the dev team and smart cookies in the agri industry (like Andrew Hoggard at Federated Farmers). Input from real customers made sure that the app was solving genuine problems in practical ways, while our team was on hand to help out with any challenging coding and careful testing.

Tasks is live now on the PaySauce platform, and we’re absolutely chuffed with what our interns created. Tasks gives our customers the technology to efficiently manage their team to-do list, assigning jobs, managing deadlines, and setting priorities. As team manager, you can choose who’s in charge of each job, how important it is and when it needs to be done, and leave notes on a task for themselves or their teams. Your team’s details are automatically added in Tasks from your existing PaySauce payroll account (which is pretty cool). You can also use filter view, so you only see the tasks you're looking for, and you’ll see a reminder alert when things are nearly due.

We’re really proud of what our two rookies have created, and we think the results demonstrate the awesome potential of both the PaySauce platform and our newest developers. This is only the first version of Tasks, and it’s been designed to be easily extended and improved, so we’re planning to keep adding to it. We’re really excited to see how you guys use this new app, and we’re hoping it’ll make your teams more efficient and organised. And we’d love to hear your feedback - give it a go and tell us what you think!