Kanban board: what it is and how to use one for client work

A kanban board is a visual way to manage work in progress. The board is divided into columns, one for each stage the work passes through, and every piece of work is a card. Cards move from left to right as the work advances. Anyone who looks at the board sees three things at once: what is waiting, what is being worked on and where work is piling up. Kanban, the method behind the board, adds two rules that make it more than a coloured to-do list: each active column has a limit on how many cards it may hold, and people pull the next card only when they have room for it.

Columns

Columns are the stages of your process, not the people in it. The simplest board has three: To do, In progress and Done. For client work, add a fourth, Review, because work that waits for an internal check or a client’s approval is where deadlines often slip. Give each column a plain exit rule, such as “approved by the account manager”, so everyone knows when a card may move.

Cards

A card is one deliverable or task with one owner and a due date. If a card needs three people for three weeks, split it. Small cards move often, and a card that has not moved for several days is a signal to ask why.

WIP limits

A WIP (work in progress) limit is the maximum number of cards a column may hold at one time. When In progress is full, nobody starts anything new: the team first finishes what is already started or moves a stuck card forward. The limit makes overload visible instead of hiding it in a longer list, and when fewer things compete for the same people, each card tends to finish sooner.

On screen the three look alike, and all three hold tasks. The difference is in the rules. A to-do list records what needs doing, with no stages and no limit, so it grows quietly. A kanban board adds stages and WIP limits and runs continuously: new work enters whenever a column has room. A scrum board belongs to Scrum, a framework that organises work in sprints, fixed periods of one month or less. The team commits to a set of items at sprint planning and starts each sprint with a fresh board. Client work rarely arrives in tidy sprints: requests, revisions and retainer deliverables come in all month, so a continuous board usually fits it better.

Here is what a kanban board for agencies can look like: a five-person marketing agency with monthly retainers and one website project. Its four columns are the same stages shown on the client board in PLYNTUM’s demo workspace: To do, In progress, Review and Done. The cards, owners and limits are an example, not a benchmark: start with them and adjust after two weeks of real work.

• Exit rules. A card leaves In progress when its owner has finished the work and attached the file. It leaves Review when the account manager or the client has approved it.
• One owner per card. The owner moves the card. A card that seems to need two owners usually needs splitting in two.
• Revisions are new cards. “Revisions from the client call” sits in To do as its own card, so the extra work is visible and its time is logged separately.
• Recurring work. The monthly report and the content plan come back every month. In PLYNTUM you create them from a recurring task template instead of typing them again.

PLYNTUM’s online kanban board is one of five views of the same tasks: list, board, calendar, week and timeline. All five are on every plan, from Launch to Intelligence, and a change made in one view appears in the others. Boards belong to a company workspace, so each company keeps its own boards, fields and members. A card on the board is a full task: it belongs to a project, and the project belongs to a client. That is the difference from a standalone board: the card that shows progress also carries the hours logged against it.

What a card holds

• Owner and deadline, with subtasks when the work needs splitting.
• Dependencies, so you can see which task is waiting on another.
• The brief and files, attached to the task itself.
• Comments, approvals and changes, kept with the task, so when the brief changes the team can see what was agreed before.
• Custom fields and stages, set to match how your team already works, for example a channel or a deliverable type.
• Logged hours from everyone who worked on it.

Time on the card

Time is logged manually against the task on every plan; there is no background timer and no automatic or AI time capture today. From Core, project cost counts every logged hour, and a manager approves each person’s week, which locks it. See time tracking.

Not available yet

Task Composer is in development. It is designed to turn a brief into a draft plan that the team reviews before any work is assigned; buying a plan today does not activate it. Expanded team chat channels are also in development. WIP limits on columns are not among PLYNTUM’s listed board features, so agree them as a team rule and check them at the weekly review. More on projects and tasks.

PLYNTUM is priced per workspace with members included, not per user. Every plan has the board view; the plans differ in how many boards and projects a workspace can hold. For a team of 10, the matching plan is Core: $150 a month, or $120 a month billed annually ($1,440 a year), with 20 boards and 50 projects. If you keep one board per client, that is room for 20 clients. A team of five or fewer can start on Launch at $55 a month, with 10 boards and 20 projects. There is no free plan; Launch has a 7-day trial that needs no payment card.

Beyond the board, Core adds timesheet approval, project profitability, billable rates and the client portal. Current limits and prices are on the pricing page.

If your team only needs to see work and move cards, standalone kanban board software is the simpler and cheaper answer. Trello, for example, organises work as boards, lists and cards, has a free plan, and is hard to beat for a small team that wants to see what is in progress. PLYNTUM costs more, and the difference is worth paying only when the board has to connect to hours, clients and money. A standalone kanban tool is enough when:

• You do not bill or cost by time. Trello’s pricing page lists no time tracking, invoices or client billing (checked 25 September 2026). If you do not need them, you do not need PLYNTUM either.
• You want to start free. PLYNTUM has no free plan.
• Your clients work on the board with you. Trello lets you invite clients to a board as guests. PLYNTUM’s client portal, from Core, shows each client their projects, invoices, payments and balance, not tasks.
• Your process runs on integrations. PLYNTUM has no integrations with other tools and no add-on marketplace today. Connections to Google Calendar, Drive, Gmail and Outlook, an API and webhooks, and rule-based automation are planned.
• You run Scrum. PLYNTUM is not an issue tracker: it has no sprints, story points or velocity charts.

There is no Trello importer in PLYNTUM. Data import and export are on every plan, so move one client at a time: rebuild the open cards as tasks and leave finished cards in Trello. The Trello alternatives page compares seven options. Note that PLYNTUM’s AI Board is not a task board: it is a planned view of business risks, still in development.

A board works when the team trusts it, and that takes a week of use on real work. Start with one client you are working for now, keep the four columns from the example above, and set up time logging and rules before you add more boards. The steps below work on every plan, including the Launch trial; only the weekly approval needs Core.

1. Day 1: one client, one board. Pick a live client project, create its board and set four stages: To do, In progress, Review and Done.
2. Day 2: cards with owners. Add every open piece of work as a task with one owner and a deadline. Attach the brief and files, and link the tasks that depend on each other.
3. Day 3: rules. Write each column’s exit rule in a team document and agree a WIP limit, for example one card in progress per person.
4. Day 4: time on the cards. Ask the team to log hours against the task every day, and set up the monthly report from a recurring task template.
5. Day 5: the first review. Read the board from right to left: what is done, what is waiting in Review, what has not moved. Compare the logged hours with your plan. On Core and above, approve each person’s week.

After the first week, move the next client. For the wider choice of agency tools, read the guide to agency management software; the terms used on this page are explained under work management.

• The work carries its context.
• Task management software for client work: owner, date and hours on every task
• Trello alternatives for client work: seven options and where PLYNTUM fits
• Best agency project management software (2026)
• Work management