How WITHIN Uses Clockify for Top-Notch Performance Branding

Performance branding might sound too fancy, but at WITHIN, it’s the core of everything they do. Blending data-driven performance marketing with creative storytelling to help brands break through the noise — that’s WITHIN, in essence.

Founded in 2015, this full-service digital agency works across all channels — from TikTok to email — helping the world’s biggest brands grow by making every interaction count.

And to keep things running smoothly across 3 countries, they needed a time tracking tool that could handle the pace and complexity. That’s where Clockify comes in.

WITHIN’s HR Director, Danielle Aalund, shared her insights and experience while using Clockify. 

Let’s hear what she had to say.

What drives WITHIN: Performance, creativity, and clarity

This isn’t just another digital agency — WITHIN seamlessly connects creative ideas and performance metrics. As Danielle Aalund explains:

“WITHIN is a leading performance branding agency that helps brands drive real results by bringing together their marketing and creative efforts. Our team works across all channels — from social media to email — making sure every customer to brand interaction is optimized for performance.”

In Danielle’s words, WITHIN has a clear goal to grow and redefine what it means to be a high-performing brand:

“Our mission is to grow and be challenged by pushing the boundaries of performance branding, helping brands grow by combining data-driven insights with creative excellence.”

Their clients? Household names like Movado Group, The North Face, Foot Locker, and Ben & Jerry’s — brands that expect high standards and measurable success. Danielle tells us how WITHIN achieves precisely that for their clients:

“Our services blend integrated media and creative strategy to drive measurable growth, ensuring brands maximize their impact across all digital channels. By combining data-driven insights with innovative execution, we help our clients stay ahead in an ever-evolving market.”

How WITHIN works: Teamwork across time zones

WITHIN follows a hybrid/in-office model depending on location — a choice they say strengthens team culture and boosts collaboration:

“We believe that in-person collaboration is essential for strengthening our culture, fostering collaboration, and driving innovation. This approach allows us to create a close-knit team that delivers excellent results for our clients.”

For everything to work like clockwork and bring success, teamwork and superb organizational skills are essential. Danielle tells us how WITHIN approaches their work:

“We organize our time around the projects each department is working on, making sure our time tracking reflects our business priorities and tasks we need to deliver. We also regularly audit our meetings to make sure they’re productive and have a clear purpose. This, along with everyone proactively managing their time, helps us be as productive as possible while still having flexibility for focused work and collaboration.”

With teams spread across the US, Mexico, and Colombia, visibility into how time is spent became critical. They needed a way to balance client deliverables, internal projects, and cross-border collaboration — without constant check-ins or micromanagement.

As Danielle told us, that’s when Clockify stepped in:

“Clockify gave us the visibility we needed. We can now spot trends, optimize workloads, and fix inefficiencies we haven’t even seen before. Clockify helps us clearly see how time is being spent on different tasks, which allows us to better distribute workloads. It’s been a huge help for transparency and better time management overall.”

✉️ If you’re a Clockify user (or also use Pumble and Plaky within the CAKE.com Bundle) and you’d like to have your own customer story featured on our blogs, reach out to us at pr@cake.com!

Why Clockify? Reporting, flexibility, and ease of use

Before discovering Clockify, WITHIN’s challenge was one many agencies face — trying to manage time, projects, and priorities across multiple teams without burning out employees or missing deadlines.

The deciding factor in choosing Clockify? In Danielle’s opinion, Clockify’s customizable projects and powerful reporting tools:

“When we were searching for a time tracking tool, Clockify really stood out because of its robust reporting features and how customizable the projects were. Those features gave us the flexibility and the insights we needed to really understand and improve how our teams use their time.”

Clockify features that WITHIN uses the most

Danielle Aalund gave us the breakdown of the most useful Clockify features for WITHIN and their mission.

Clockify feature #1: Reports that drive decisions

For WITHIN, reporting isn’t just nice to have — it’s how they stay efficient and forward-thinking:

“The reporting tools give us a clear picture of how time is being used on client and internal work, which helps us make smart decisions and work more efficiently.”

Whether it’s balancing time across teams or identifying under-resourced departments, Clockify reports are key to streamlining operations.

This is how you can make the most out of the Clockify reporting feature:

• See where time goes with summary, detailed, or weekly reports,
• Filter by project, client, team member, or date,
• Spot trends, track progress, and find inefficiencies fast,
• Export reports as PDF, Excel, or CSV for easy sharing, and
• Use them for billing, payroll, or performance reviews.

The app’s reporting feature provides Danielle’s team with some peace of mind thanks to detailed insights into how time is spent across projects, clients, and team members. In fact, they can filter, export, and analyze reports to improve productivity, track billable hours, and make better business moves.

Clockify feature #2: Customizable projects and tasks for the best organization

Not every team works the same way — and WITHIN needed a reliable tool that could adjust to different team needs.

Clockify’s flexible project setup allows each department to organize their time according to their own workflow:

“Being able to customize projects means our time tracking fits seamlessly with how we work, making it easier to manage workloads across our 3 offices.”

Setting projects in Clockify is simple yet flexible, so you can match it to how your team actually works. This is how:

• Create projects for clients, departments, or anything you need,
• Break projects down into specific tasks to keep things organized,
• Assign team members to certain projects or tasks for clarity,
• Set hourly rates, time estimates, or billable/non-billable labels, and
• Tag entries with custom fields for extra details or reporting.

Clockify feature #3: Cross-time zone-tracking for best resource allocation

With teams in 3 countries, asynchronous work is the norm. Danielle says that Clockify bridges the gaps by showing exactly what each person is working on, no matter the time zone:

“Having teams in the US, Mexico, and Colombia means we’re not always online at the same time, or even in the same place! Clockify helps us see what everyone’s working on, no matter the time zone or location. It’s great for tracking workloads, making sure everyone’s on the same page, and spotting any inefficiencies we might have missed otherwise.”

It’s not about hours on the clock — it’s about clarity, alignment, and flow. With Clockify, there’s no need to worry about working in different time zones, as the app deals with everything for you, including:

• Everyone tracks hours in their local time, so there’s no need for you to convert anything,
• Time entries are automatically synced to a shared team timeline,
• Managers can see who worked on what — no matter the time zone, and
• Reports reflect all hours in real time across all locations.

As you can see from the image above, managers get a clear, real-time overview of all active projects, tracked hours, and team activity in one place. It’s an easy way to see who’s working on what, how time is being spent, and where resources may need adjusting.

The impact: Better time management without micromanagement

In Danielle’s words, one of the biggest wins for WITHIN was using Clockify to support their client-facing teams — the folks juggling campaigns, meetings, and internal strategy.

“Having a clear breakdown helps them stay organized, manage their workloads, and make sure they’re meeting client commitments. Clockify gives them the visibility they need to balance their tasks and be as productive as possible.”

It’s also a huge plus for internal culture. Employees track time independently, and team leads gain insights without constant check-ins.

Tracking time in Clockify is easy:

• Start the timer when you begin a task and stop it when you’re done — Clockify logs work hours automatically,
• Add time manually with a few clicks or use the weekly timesheet view to enter time in bulk, or
• Track time via mobile app or browser extension when on the go.

The image above shows how simple it is to log hours for each task or project by simply filling in your work time for the day or week in Clockify’s timesheets. It’s a quick, organized way to track time without needing to start and stop a timer.

What makes Clockify stand out from the competition?

We were pleased to hear that the WITHIN team enjoys Clockify’s simple and intuitive design. What’s more, Danielle revealed that Clockify lets everyone be more productive with their time:

“Clockify stands out because it’s both easy to use and flexible enough to work with different team structures and workflows. It’s more than just a time tracking tool; it actually helps businesses understand how their employees are spending their time so they can boost productivity. I’d recommend it to any company that wants a simple but powerful way to manage time and improve efficiency.”

What the future holds for WITHIN?

WITHIN isn’t slowing down anytime soon. The team has big ambitions to continue growing as the go-to agency for performance branding — and they see Clockify playing a key role in that future. Danielle puts it like this:

“As we grow, tools like Clockify will be even more important for managing our time and resources, making sure our teams stay efficient and focused on doing their best work. In the future, we’re looking forward to fine-tuning our processes, using data to make smarter decisions, and really pushing the limits of performance branding. We’re always learning and improving, and having the right tools helps us stay ahead of the curve.”

And as they expand and refine their processes, Clockify will be there — offering structure, transparency, and the insights needed to scale without losing their edge.

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