Time tracking looks like a solved problem until the data has to mean something. Punchly is our own product, spanning web, desktop and mobile, tying hours to projects, expenses and client billing.
Start your projectThe build
Punchly is a time tracking and workforce management platform built by Aipxperts as our own product.
It runs on web, desktop and mobile, and lets teams log hours, track projects, tasks and expenses, manage time off, and generate timesheets and reports. It is aimed at any business billing or costing work by the hour: agencies, consultancies, accountants, developers, lawyers and construction teams among them.
The problem
Time tracking looks like a solved problem until you need the data to mean something. Most teams start with spreadsheets, and spreadsheets fail in a specific order.
Entries are made from memory at the end of a week, so they are approximations presented as records.
Nothing connects an hour to a project, so project cost is inferred rather than known.
Expenses live somewhere else entirely, usually in a folder of photographed receipts.
Historic rates are lost, so last year's profitability cannot be recalculated.
For agencies and accountants specifically, that last point is the expensive one. If you cannot reconstruct what a client actually cost you at the rate that applied at the time, you cannot tell which clients are worth keeping. There was also a delivery problem. People track time in different places. At a desk, on a phone between sites, and on a desktop machine while working. A tracker that only exists in one of those gets used inconsistently, which puts you back to approximations.
What we built
We built Punchly as a monorepo so the same product ships everywhere without three teams maintaining three versions of the truth.
A timer plus manual entry with keyboard shortcuts, because the people who track the most hours want the fewest clicks.
Generation, management and approval flows.
Hours attributed to specific work, which is what turns time data into cost data.
Costs recorded against the same project as the hours.
Requests and approvals in the same system as attendance.
Time, activity, attendance and cost reporting.
Roles, availability and workload.
Multi-client and multi-currency with billing, plus historic rate tracking so profitability can be recalculated correctly for past periods.
The same session continues wherever the person is working.
The outcome
Next.js
TypeScript
PostgreSQL
Redis
Flutter
JiraBuilding a product across web, desktop and mobile without tripling the team is an architecture decision, and we made it on our own product first.
Start the conversationReaching a brand is a strangely bad experience: hunt for an email address, try a social DM, or call and wait. Qiktell…
Read the buildJira handled our issues and sprints perfectly well. What it could not model was which developers are allocated to which client next…
Read the buildTell us what you're building. We'll reply within one business day.
