This Consulting Firm Bolsters Team Accountability With Clockify
“Clockify is flexible, offers value for money, and provides structured team time tracking.”
– Dave Thornton
Bid writing expert Dave Thornton is the managing director at Thornton & Lowe, one of the largest bid management firms in Britain. His company helps businesses secure public sector contracts.
Naturally, reaching that level of success in his niche wasn’t easy for Dave — especially considering the time-sensitive nature of the work:
"As a bid writing business, we work to strict external deadlines, and we have our own internal and client deadlines before the tender itself is submitted. As such, time management is essential."
Dave’s company tried out a few time tracking solutions, but they ultimately chose Clockify. We interviewed the man himself to learn how our time tracker helped his consultancy.
Why Dave Thornton loves Clockify
Before he discovered Clockify, Dave and his company tried a few time tracking platforms that weren’t up to the task:
“Those solutions provided similar functionality as Clockify does, but did not save our progress as we went along, and were less flexible. So, we've been using Clockify since 2019.”
As Dave mentioned in another interview for Authority Magazine, Clockify is now a key part of his company’s software stack:
Clockify has yielded plenty of benefits for Dave’s time management — let’s dig deeper into how and why.
Benefit #1: Higher employee satisfaction
With such a demanding line of work, Dave always tries to provide his employees with a decent work-life balance:
“By ensuring that all time is tracked, we also use Clockify to monitor overtime and staff wellbeing. We identify where we should arrange time off after a particularly challenging deadline or project.”
To ensure everyone has a balanced workload, Dave uses Clockify’s advanced reporting features. This has a profoundly positive impact on employee satisfaction and retention.
As you track your time in Clockify, the platform automatically creates visual reports for you in real time — and that’s one of many things Dave loves about the app:
“Our ability to generate impactful reporting which shows how our time has been spent on projects, whether we are on track, and where we can make our process more efficient for the benefit of our staff and clients.”
These reports provide you with all the necessary data in just a few clicks, which Dave greatly appreciates.
Benefit #2: More accurate project forecasts
With a large number of consultants working across multiple projects, staying on budget can be challenging. But Clockify helps Dave with that as well:
“We set up a timesheet entry for every project and have set tasks for each project which are aligned to our process. This enables self-monitoring of each consultant’s progress against the budget and provides visibility for our management time.”
When work takes longer than expected, this also enables Dave to identify if, where, and how they should adjust their forecasts for future projects.
Clockify makes it easy to make project forecasts, especially when the projects include recurring tasks.
You can make an estimate at the start of a project, and the graph automatically updates based on scheduled assignments and tracked time.
As a result, you can see an overdue or overbudget project a mile away.
Benefit #3: Better client relationships
No one likes being overcharged for services, which is why clients often want to know where their billable hours are going.
For Dave, Clockify makes precise invoicing easier:
“For contracted clients, we will typically quote our time. If we spend less time than quoted, we will only charge for the time actually used. This has allowed us to pass savings directly back to our clients and improve their value for money from the service. Without formal time tracking, this would be impossible.”
In Clockify, you can automatically generate invoices for each client based on the time you’ve tracked.
You don’t have to waste time creating invoices manually — and there’s far less room for human error. Clients will also appreciate extremely detailed invoices that show how your team spends their billable time.
Jumpstart team productivity with Clockify
Dave Thornton is the perfect example of an executive who got the most out of their team using Clockify — without overworking anyone.
If you lead a team, our time tracker can help you:
- Improve employee work-life balance,
- Predict project timelines accurately, and
- Increase client satisfaction.
Strike the perfect balance between your team’s accountability and well-being.
