From a $7K Subscription to a Custom Tool in 50 Hours

Client Overview

We’re From Poland With Dev, a software development company with around 105 people tracking time across client projects. Those records support payroll, client billing, retainer tracking, and project management. We used Clockify, but it didn’t fit the way we worked. Its reports often required manual checks: our Finance team had to review individual records, reconcile exports, and move the data into spreadsheets. The subscription cost $6,917 a year, and payroll preparation alone took around 20 hours of manual work every month. Building a custom replacement wasn’t a new idea. In 2023, we estimated the project at 300 - 500 hours - too much senior engineering time to take away from client work. So we put it on the backlog. Then we revisited the project using an agentic development workflow. Instead of spending hundreds of hours building it, we delivered the replacement in just 50.

Challenges

A standard time-tracking tool captured the hours, but several teams still had to do the work around them manually.

Payroll and billing: Finance reviewed time entries person by person and reformatted the data for payroll and invoicing.
Leave balances: HR relied on a separate file to calculate how much time off each person had left.
Retainers: Team members had to ask Account Managers how much of a client’s retainer had been used.
Access to data: The tool made it difficult to give each team access to the data they needed while keeping sensitive figures restricted.
Engineering capacity: With an estimated 300–500 hours of development work, the project was difficult to prioritize alongside client work.

“Toward the end of the month, it was always a race against the clock. Manually checking data, correcting errors, and making sure everything added up for payroll. I’m glad that now, with Time Tracker, I can do it much faster and with less stress.”

Julia Mieszczak

Finance & Administration Specialist

Solutions

We built the Time Tracker around the teams that used it, starting with the payroll and billing reports that created the most manual work. We then brought time tracking, leave balances, retainers, and role-based access into one system - and delivered the whole thing in 50 hours using our agentic development workflow.

Started with the workflows that mattered most: clients, accounts, projects, and the company’s internal processes.
Tackled the biggest source of manual work first by building payroll and billing reports directly in Finance’s required formats.
Extended the system to cover leave balances and retainer usage, replacing separate files and manual lookups.
Added role-based access so each team could see what it needed without exposing sensitive information.
Used an agentic development workflow to move quickly, with a Lead AI Engineer reviewing every pull request and approving each production release.

Work we’ve delivered

From payroll-ready reports to leave and retainer tracking, we brought the workflows our teams relied on into one system, giving them the data they needed to get their work done.

Custom Time Tracking

A single system for tracking time against the right clients, accounts, and projects.

Custom Software

Internal Tool

Payroll and Billing Reports

Reports in the formats Finance needs, without the manual work of rebuilding exports in spreadsheets.

Reporting

Workflow Automotion

Leave Management

A shared view of time-off balances, replacing separate calculations and manual follow-ups.

HR Tools

Data Visibility

Retainer Tracking

Retainer usage linked to client accounts, so teams can check the current status directly.

Account Management

Reporting

Role-Based Views

Role-specific access for Finance, HR, Account Managers, and Project Managers.

UX Design

Permissions

Tech Stack

Frontend

React

Tailwind CSS

Node.js

NestJS

PostgreSQL

AWS

Claude Code

Codex

Backend

React

Tailwind CSS

Node.js

NestJS

PostgreSQL

AWS

Claude Code

Codex

Platform

React

Tailwind CSS

Node.js

NestJS

PostgreSQL

AWS

Claude Code

Codex

DevOps

React

Tailwind CSS

Node.js

NestJS

PostgreSQL

AWS

Claude Code

Codex

Design

React

Tailwind CSS

Node.js

NestJS

PostgreSQL

AWS

Claude Code

Codex

AI Delivery

React

Tailwind CSS

Node.js

NestJS

PostgreSQL

AWS

Claude Code

Codex

Other

React

Tailwind CSS

Node.js

NestJS

PostgreSQL

AWS

Claude Code

Codex

Results

Around 105 people now use Time Tracker every working day. Payroll data comes out in the format Finance needs, with no monthly spreadsheet reformatting required.

50 hours - build time vs. an earlier estimate of 300–500 hours.
$6,917/year - SaaS subscription cost eliminated.
~240 hours/year - manual payroll work eliminated.
~8 months - estimated payback period.
~$49,000 - projected five-year savings after the replacement cost.

Conclusion

Built for Today, Ready for What’s Next

Meet the minds behind the project

We're the brains and the heart behind the code. A quirky bunch of passionate pros who love turning ideas into reality. Here, every project is a team sport, and we’re all about building software – and relationships – that last, one line of code at a time.