Agency time tracking is a necessary evil. It’s boring, unnatural and wildly unproductive, but without it nobody can get paid. As much as we hate time tracking, it isn’t going anywhere. It’s exactly why we designed Timely – the first automatic time tracking app that can track and log hours for all your employees while they work.
The agency time tracking tool
Timely is the life work of a very disgruntled ex-agency employee called Mathias Mikkelsen. Frustrated by the tedium and inefficiency of tracking his design agency time, he quit his job to try and solve the problem once and for all. And he might just have cracked it.
Timely tracks all the time your team spends on different projects and clients without interrupting them. It records all active web and desktop activity – as well as mobile calls and GPS location – and uses AI to translate it all into fully accurate time sheets. You can control, manage and bill time from one place without compromising your team’s productivity.
Bill all clients accurately
When time tracking dictates how much you get paid, your system better be accurate. By tracking everything you work on automatically in the background, Timely makes sure that every detail makes it to your time sheet. Nothing is forgotten, misremembered or misrepresented, even when you switch between tasks and projects. With a complete log of everything you worked on, you can bill clients honesty and transparently.
Track projects in real-time
Whether you charge hourly or used fixed rates and retainers, you need to understand exactly how much projects are costing you. Timely helps you track project performance across all your clients and projects using powerful real-time dashboards. Monitor time and money budget spend, track the latest activities across all projects, and ensure everyone is working to priorities to deliver efficient projects on-time and on-budget.
🕶 Estimate projects with confidence
By showing you exactly how long project phases and tasks take – and capturing “hidden” project work spent on client communication and travel – Timely’s data can help you pitch and estimate new work with confidence. Analyze past projects in depth to agree rates that actually deliver a profitable return.
🏋🏾♀️ Remove the time tracking burden
Timely uses AI to create time sheets for your employees and sends reminders to make sure all hours are approved on time - so no more chasing at the end of the month! By tracking everything automatically, you never have to break your focus to start and stop manual timers, and you can choose to log hours when it actually suits you – instead of immediately after each task. Everyone can just get back to useful productive work without being bothered by time tracking.
🕹 Manage team resources
Timely pulls all your team’s time data into one place for quick, proactive management. See who’s working on what, who has extra capacity to help on another project, who’s veering from their priorities and who’s getting en route to burn out. By showing everyone’s activity across your projects, it also facilitates quick team collaboration; know where your colleagues are with a task without interrupting their work.
∑ Quantify internal time
Smart agencies value all your hours – not just the billable ones. Timely gives you full control over your total business costs by tracking all the time your team spends on non-billable work, like project management and task organization, email, meetings, pitch development and research, and internal team communication. Identify the inefficient processes and workflows that limit your team’s productivity.
Report effortlessly
Status updates, employee time sheets, quarterly reports – however you need to represent your time data, Timely’s got your back. A suite of ready-made report templates takes the pain out of granular reporting, and Timely’s simple chart builder lets you build beautiful custom reports and dashboards in a matter of minutes. Share key information with clients quickly via a private URL, or export reports as PDF, XLS or CSV files.
💪🏼 Lead with trust
The wrong approach to time tracking can completely kill an agency’s culture. At Timely, we’re super sensitive about making a tool which actually empowers and supports the people using it. As such, you won’t find any creepy mouse tracking or routine screenshots. All the data Timely tracks is completely private to your employees. They can choose to share tracked activities when approving their time sheets, but only they can access the data captured in their private Memory Timelines. Employees feel comfortable tracking their time and managers are able to lead from a position of trust. Everyone’s a winner.
📱 Work anywhere
Timely was built for the dynamic agency lifestyle. Workshops, client presentations, off-site pitches, meetings, mobile calls and travel – all the work that happens away from your desk can all be captured. And Timely itself is accessible on web, desktop, tablet, smartphone and smartwatch, so you can easily manage time as you move between devices. Expect a fully native app, whether you prefer Android to iOS or Mac to Windows.
Why agencies love Timely
Agencies from a whole host of industry backgrounds and geographies choose Timely to accurately capture, manage, control and bill for their time. We caught up with a few of them to understand why Timely is their new agency time tracking standard:
“A really easy-to-use tool to control the time your team spends in each project. It's easy to add hours as an employee, and easy to control as a manager.”
– Ramon, web design agency
“It helps me keep track of what I am doing, for who, and when without me having to stress that I will forget my hours or bill incorrectly since it always keeps track of what I am doing.”
- Ford, branding and design agency
“We use Timely to get deep insights on where our team is spending for each client project. It helps us identify potential time sucks, billing misses or billing overages – all of which help to keep the client first.”
– Nathan, film production agency
“Time tracking requires minimal effort if you have the Memory Tracker installed. Timely is simply the easiest way not to lose money.”
– Domenico, digital design and branding agency
“We use Timely for billing, time tracking and scheduling. It also helps us manage costs on projects.”
– Vinay, shopper and brand marketing agency
"I need to track the time me and my team spend on client projects. Doing that manually using timers was awful. Timely is the exact tool we need for modern work.”
– Miika, web design agency
“Timely helps me stay on-track and shows what jobs are profitable and where I should have charged more. It also qualifies expenses on projects; it's all there for clients to see if they wish.”
– Will, advertising and design agency
