Bulk Actions
Bulk Actions changes many records in one pass, across people, projects, clients, contacts, invoices, time, expenses, tasks and saved reports. You filter a list, choose the change, and see a read-only preview of what will happen before anything is written. Apply the preview and every record gets its own result — applied, failed, or skipped with the reason. The preview expires four hours after it is created, and a newer preview replaces it.
One pass is four steps: narrow the list, look at what will change, adjust it if it is not right, then apply and read the results.
Pick the area first — people, projects, invoices, time entries, expenses, tasks, clients, contacts or saved reports — then narrow the list with that area’s filters. The filters are the same ones the area’s own list uses.
Choose an action and fill in what it needs. Nothing is written yet: the preview shows the records it matched and, for each one, the value before and after.
If a record should not change, take it out of the preview and look again. The preview is a draft of the change, not a log of one.
Applying writes the change. Every record comes back as applied, failed, or skipped — a skipped record says why, so a partial pass is readable rather than mysterious. The run is then in your history.
Only the fields an action actually supports appear in its form. The action list changes with the area, so the picker for invoices does not offer project rates.
January · rate review
The increase applies to everyone, and doing it person by person is where a typo hides.
One pass lands the new rate for the whole team, and the preview shows each person’s old and new rate before anything is written.
| Person | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| A. Moreau | $145 | $155 |
| J. Okafor | $130 | $140 |
| S. Lindqvist | $120 | $150 |
| P. Raman | — | Skipped, no current rate |
March · someone leaves
A departing colleague’s projects block their replacement, and every one has to come off by hand.
Twelve projects come off in one pass instead of twelve edits, and the preview names each project it will touch. Their tasks are a second pass, because a run carries one action.
| Project | Person | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Atlas rebrand | R. Vance | Removed |
| Q1 audit | R. Vance | Removed |
June · quarter close
Finished work should stop appearing in pickers, but a project with a running timer is not finished.
The quarter closes without opening forty project pages, and any project with a running timer comes back failed rather than archived.
| Result | Projects | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Applied | 38 | Archived |
| Failed | 2 | Running timer on the project |
September · invoice cleanup
Overdue invoices are the ones worth chasing, and one that already has a reminder scheduled needs nothing more.
Reminders go out on the whole batch, and the two invoices that already have one scheduled are left alone.
| Invoice | Status | Result |
|---|---|---|
| INV-2041 | Open | Reminder in 3 days |
| INV-2047 | Part-paid | Skipped — already has a reminder |
Some of them. Archive and reactivate can be reversed by running the opposite action on the same records. Archiving a person stops their running timers and takes them out of active assignments without deleting them, so reactivating puts them back on the same projects. Archiving a task removes it from every project it was on, and restoring it later does not re-add it — that is by hand. Every delete is permanent: deleted time entries, expenses, invoices, contacts and saved reports cannot be brought back, so read the preview before you apply one.
Four hours from when it is created. After that it is gone and you filter again. Creating a new preview replaces the previous one, so only the latest is available to apply. Runs you already applied stay in your history.
A preview covers up to 500 records in a single pass. If your filter matches more, narrow it and run a second pass rather than expecting one apply to cover everything.
Anyone who can run at least one bulk action on an area — it is the permission on that area that decides, not the admin role. The Bulk Actions hub in Settings is the exception: it needs company-wide read access, which most members do not have. The Help Center guide below still describes Bulk Actions as an administrator tool; this page is the more current of the two.
It is skipped or failed, and the result says which and why — a project with a running timer, a person who would exceed the seat limit, a contact who receives the client’s invoices. The rest of the pass still applies.
People, projects, clients, contacts, invoices, time entries, expenses, tasks and saved reports. Each area offers its own action list, so what you can do to invoices is not what you can do to people.
Start with a filter and a preview: nothing is written until you apply it, and every record tells you what happened.