These Leaders Master Budgets, Output, and Billing With Clockify
“Using Clockify allowed us to have better control and structure when working internally.”
– Carolin Hyzyk
Ever wondered how time tracking can improve your work habits?
Or, how time tracking can enhance productivity and creativity?
To get you some answers, we reached out to 6 business leaders who are also our respected customers.
Since they use Clockify to track their time, tasks, and projects, we were curious to find out how time tracking helps them with their work.
A brief introduction to our interviewees
Let’s introduce you to our interviewees in more detail.
They come from creative fields such as marketing, design, and book advisory, as well as OCR (optical character recognition) technology, including:
- Filip Kubicki — the COO at a full-service digital design studio,
- Maria Bayley — a marketing manager at a recruitment consultancy located in the UK,
- Cristiana Caserta — an education technology and humanities consultant,
- Carolin Hyzyk — a director and head of business development at a digital design company,
- Mordechai Lewis — a data recovery expert and entrepreneur, and
- Kevin Oliveira — the CEO of a marketing and design agency.
Let’s see how Clockify and time tracking improved their diverse workflows.
Daily benefits of time tracking
Our customers pointed out that time tracking helps them allocate time to projects better. Moreover, using Clockify to record their time allows them to focus solely on their tasks and avoid any distractions.
Maria Bayley and Kevin Oliveira say that they love the fact that they can separate time entries by clients, projects, and tasks, which Kevin elaborates:
“Generally, I use the app on my mobile phone a lot more because of its practicality. The features of identifying tasks that have already been completed, pausing and continuing with tasks that I have started previously, and separating tasks by categories are very practical and make the working day easier.”
Maria adds that she enjoys setting the billability status for her tasks.
Another Clockify feature that Carolin Hyzyk and Cristiana Caserta find practical for their work is reports. Here’s how Carolin and her team use this feature:
“Clockify’s reports help our project manager analyze how long certain jobs took — analyze per project, per team member, and per task over any time frame needed.”
Filip Kubicki claims that, for the Riotters team, hourly rates are invaluable. Thanks to this option, the team can charge their clients more easily:
“We charge most of our clients, and with hourly rates, Clockify is a godsend. Another useful tool is PTO and vacation tracker. No more using spreadsheets or Notion for that.”
Benefits of using Clockify for internal and client purposes
We also wanted to know whether our customers use Clockify for client or internal purposes.
The vast majority of them — Carolin, Cristiana, Filip, and Kevin — say that Clockify comes in handy both for tracking the time they spend working for clients and for internal reasons — i.e., they record time to understand how they can improve their productivity.
Here’s how Carolin elaborates on this subject:
“At Keen, we use Clockify to see whether certain team members might need training regarding specific job duties, and to see how much time we spend on tasks.”
Kevin was also keen to explain how he and his team record time:
“From a professional standpoint, I use Clockify to know how much time I spend on each client’s projects, but I do use it for personal purposes as well. I put a certain amount of time into studying, reading, playing, and being more productive.”
On the other hand, Maria and Mordechai say they use Clockify solely for client purposes. Maria adds that, if she were a full-time freelancer, she would track her administration time as well.
Other benefits of using Clockify at work
For instance, Carolin Hyzyk and Kevin Oliveira discuss taking control of their time. Here’s how Carolin explains this in more detail:
“Using Clockify has allowed us to have a better sense of control and structure when working internally.”
On the other hand, Kevin mentions a slightly different type of control over time, which he believes is an additional benefit of using Clockify:
“I did notice a better control of the day-to-day activities and also an increase in productivity beyond the ordinary.”
But a sense of better control over time isn’t the only advantage that comes from using Clockify. For Maria Bayley, understanding how long a project should take based on tracking history has been the greatest benefit.
“It means that not only can I quote and budget time accurately, I can also advise delegates how long they should expect to be working on tasks.”
Furthermore, Mordechai Lewis claims that an additional benefit of using Clockify in his work is that it helped him stay honest in terms of time rates.
Finally, Cristiana Caserta says that she’s more focused at work thanks to recording time with Clockify.
Lessons learned from regularly tracking time at work
If you regularly track your time at work, eventually, you’ll get better at organizing your day and getting things done.
But are there any other lessons you can learn from recording your time every day?
That’s what we asked our customers. We also wanted to know whether they use this knowledge to improve their work habits.
Surprisingly, they all had different answers about what they learned while time tracking with Clockify.
Lesson #1: Billing is easier
When it comes to billing, Maria Bayley pointed out this valuable lesson:
“I learned that I was often undercharging clients for my time because I wasn’t counting the odd 5 or 10 minutes here and there, which do add up. I’ve also learned to break down my processes and budget time.”
Lesson #2: You organize projects better
On the other hand, Mordechai believes that recording the time spent on activities you enjoy is crucial.
“Even if it’s volunteer work, when you see how much time you put into it, it gives you the satisfaction of your devotion to that organization.”
Mordechai says that clocking in and clocking out the time when doing the OCR for her client gives her “the motivation to carry on — at the end of the day, I see I’ve devoted 6 or 7 hours to a book. If I didn’t clock myself in for it, I wouldn’t feel the same. I wouldn’t feel the same level of accomplishment after being devoted for several hours.”
Another point worth mentioning, as Carolin claims, is that time is precious, which is why using Clockify is a good habit for her team to record their tasks and the time spent on them. Thus, Carolin concludes that Clockify has become part of their daily routine.
Moreover, Kevin Oliveira shared with us his valuable lesson:
“I started monitoring everything inside my working hours, from answering emails that take me 15 minutes a day to how much time I spend in meetings and resting. This information is valuable and shows me if I can reschedule tasks in order to make more time to meet new clients.”
Lesson #3: You have a better handle on expenses
Furthermore, Cristiana Caserta says that she learned to estimate the time needed for various phases of the project, decide on remuneration, and make an adequate estimate.
For the Riotters team, Filip highlights their lesson — Clockify has helped them monitor expenses and run the business more smoothly than before.
“Thanks to the possibility of downloading CSV reports, we found it super easy to correlate it with our financial data. Thanks to that feature, we created a management control system (MCS) to help us analyze the condition of our company.”
How time tracking helps set boundaries between work time and free time
We were also eager to learn more about the link between time tracking and setting work-life boundaries.
From Maria’s standpoint, it’s helpful to measure your active working time, because sometimes, at the end of an 8 or 9-hour day, it’s hard to say how much of that time was actually spent working.
“Time tracking helps to identify how much time is spent procrastinating or being distracted, and identifying that helps you understand why you’re not getting the output you expected. From there, you can find ways to improve your productivity so you can actually switch off at the end of the work day.”
Moreover, Carolin believes that time tracking plays a crucial role in achieving work-life balance in teams scattered around the globe.
“It empowers employees who work remotely and in different timezones to be a part of the proper process in their own time and space, without interrupting the in-office team during their leisure time.”
Furthermore, Kevin says that after he started using Clockify at work, he now has more time for fun in his personal life.
“Now, I am able to do more things during working hours, and therefore, I do not have to spend my leisure time on projects that have not been completed.“
Improve work habits with Clockify
As you can see, our customers believe that time tracking can genuinely help you improve your work habits.
Here are some benefits of using Clockify that they point out:
- Maria claims that tracking time spent on tasks and projects allows her to gauge how much time should be spent on similar projects in the future.
- Kevin agrees with Maria and adds that knowing how much time he needs for each project makes it easier to fit new projects and improves billing.
- Cristiana says that monitoring your time encourages you to avoid making many interruptions.
- Carolin points out that, thanks to time tracking, her team has a better sense of control and structure when working internally.
- Mordechai highlights that time tracking helps him stay honest regarding time rates.
- Filip believes that recording time at work allows his team to keep an eye on expenses and run the business more smoothly than before.
So, even if you haven’t been tracking time by now, we hope that our interviewees will inspire you to change your mind.
