From internal frustration to a full-blown SaaS time tracking app.
Sanddev is a custom software development agency – we build things for other people (specially in Adtech and MarTech industry) for a living. But somewhere between managing projects, tracking billable hours, and chasing invoices – we realised we had a problem we hadn’t solved for ourselves. So we built Sandtime.io: a clean, no-nonsense time tracking app for small and medium-sized businesses, which was listed in the United Nations WSIS Stocktaking 2021 Global Report as a successful digital solution contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Sandtime.io was also been recognized in Econstor as a standout example of open innovation – a rare case where utility meets impact without a paywall in sight.
See how it happened.
Time-tracking is one of those things that everyone knows they should do, and almost no one does well.
We weren’t exempt. As an agency juggling multiple client projects simultaneously, we struggled to answer simple questions like: How many hours did we actually spend on this project? Is this client profitable? What did we ship last Tuesday?
The existing time tracking apps on the market fell into two frustrating camps:
Camp A – the Behemoths. Time tracking apps like Jira, Monday, Harvest or SAP – powerful, yes, but wildly over-engineered for a 10–50 person team. They required hours of configuration, had steep learning curves, and came with price tags to match.
Camp B – the Oversimplified. Basic stopwatch time tracking apps that logged time but couldn’t answer the actual business questions: billing rates, project profitability, team performance, or client-ready reports.
Camp C – the Surveillance state (yeah, no mistake above). And then there was a third camp nobody liked to admit existed: tools built on distrust. Screenshot monitoring, keystroke logging, desktop activity tracking, idle detection. Tools that technically “tracked time” but really tracked people. The message they sent – to employees and to clients – was clear: we don’t trust you. For agencies trying to build honesty and trust this is unacceptable.
The gap was clear: nobody was building for the manager who just wants to run their small team well – without a PhD in enterprise software. Time tracking apps were either built for solo freelancers or for Fortune 500 ops teams. Everyone in the middle was stuck copy-pasting hours into Excel spreadsheets.
That was us. That was the market gap.
Before writing a single line of code, we did what we do for our clients: we validated the problem first.
Internal audit. We mapped our own pain points in detail – where did time data go missing, what workarounds were people using, what questions management couldn’t answer. The result was a messy picture of Excel sheets, Slack threads, and educated guesses.
Competitor analysis. We stress-tested the top time tracking apps in the space – Toggl, Harvest, Clockify, TimeCamp, and others. Each had strengths, but none nailed the combination of simplicity + managerial insight + team context. Most were either too basic or required too much setup to get value from.
User interviews. We spoke to other agency owners, team leads, and operations managers. The recurring themes were:
Key insight: The primary user wasn’t the person tracking time – it was the manager reading the reports. Most tools are optimised for the tracker. We decided to optimize for the one making decisions with the data.
With a clear product vision, we moved into architecture. Our constraints were real: we’re a software house, not a VC-backed startup. So we needed to build something lean, maintainable, and scalable from day one.
Native-first, then everywhere. We launched with mobile apps on iOS and Android from day one – putting Sandtime directly in your pocket before anything else. As demand grew and user habits evolved, we expanded to where people spend most of their time today: the desktop. Our desktop apps are now the most popular way to use Sandtime, with a web app rounding out the full cross-platform experience.
Multi-platform ecosystem. Today Sandtime runs on web, iOS, Android, Windows (Microsoft Store), and macOS – a deliberate choice to meet users wherever they work, not force them to change their habits.
Automation hooks. We built in automatic time registration at startup and shutdown – a feature that sounds minor but dramatically increases data completeness. People forget to log time. The app doesn’t.
Integrations architecture. Rather than building a monolith, we designed for extensibility from the start. Slack integration was the first – because those are where software teams live. More integrations (with Jira and GitHub) are on the roadmap.
Multi-currency & billing rates. A deliberate early decision. If we wanted agencies and international SMEs to use Sandtime for invoicing, it had to support temporal cost/revenue rates and multi-currency from the start – not as an afterthought.
If there’s one thing we obsessed over, it was reducing the cognitive cost of time tracking to near zero.
“One click to start. One click to stop.” The core interaction had to be dead simple. No mandatory fields, no project selection required upfront, no forms to fill out before the clock starts. Track first, annotate later. An unassigned activity is better than a lost hour.
The dashboard as a command centre – not a data dump. We designed the dashboard for managers, not accountants. At a glance: what’s your team working on right now, what’s been logged today, which projects are consuming the most hours. Insight over raw data.
Reports built for real-world use cases. Standard reports cover the 80% use case – weekly summaries, project breakdowns, team performance. But we also built custom report creation for the 20% who need something specific. You can export reports and print to pdf. Reports are shareable via link and can be branded – because the client on the other end shouldn’t need to know what app you use.
Timesheets for the old-school crowd. Not everyone wants a running timer. Manual timesheet entry is fully supported, including monthly export – for clients or employees who prefer that workflow.
QR code clock-in/clock-out. A feature that might seem unusual for a software tool – but it was a deliberate signal that Sandtime isn’t just for desk workers. Service businesses, hospitality, light manufacturing – they need time tracking too, just not keyboard-first.
We didn’t launch with a big bang. We launched with a working product and a few honest conversations.
Phase 1: dogfooding. The first users of Sandtime were the Sanddev team. We tracked all our client project hours inside Sandtime before the product was public. This gave us months of real usage data, uncovered edge cases, and let us iterate without any public pressure. We also ate our own cooking – if something frustrated us, it frustrated our future users.
Phase 2: soft launch & early adopters. We launched quietly and invited peers – fellow agency owners, project managers, small ops teams. Early feedback confirmed our core hypotheses and surfaced some surprises (the QR code feature, for instance, came from an early user in a non-software business).
Phase 3: free tier as growth engine. We made the core product free. In a market full of freemium tools, this wasn’t a revolutionary move – but it was the right one. A time tracking tool only works if the whole team uses it. Lowering the barrier to team adoption was more important than early monetisation. The free tier also became our best marketing channel – real users, real reviews, real word of mouth.
Phase 4: review platform presence. Getting listed and reviewed on G2 was a key milestone. For B2B SaaS, G2 is where buyers go to validate decisions. Early reviews reinforced what we built for: simplicity, the manager-first philosophy, and genuine business utility.
Ongoing: roadmap transparency. We’ve kept a public roadmap from the beginning. It does two things: it keeps us accountable, and it invites users into the product development process. Features like embeddable tracking widgets, branded reports, and Jira/GitHub integrations were shaped heavily by user requests – validated demand before a line of code was written.
Building Sandtime taught us things that made us better at building for our clients too.
Solve your own problem first. The most authentic products come from genuine frustration. We didn’t invent a market – we experienced the gap.
Design for the decision-maker, not just the end user. In B2B software, the person who pays isn’t always the person who clicks. Design for both, but optimise for the one with the most at stake.
Friction is the product’s worst enemy. Every extra click is a missed time entry. Every missed time entry is bad data. Bad data means bad decisions. Ruthlessly reduce friction.
Ship small, learn fast. Sandtime launched without half the features it has today. The browser extension, mobile apps, and integrations came from listening – not from a whiteboard.
Your own product is your best portfolio piece. Sandtime isn’t just a product – it’s proof of what Sanddev can do. It shows prospective clients not just that we write code, but that we think about products, users, and markets.
Time Tracking
Timesheets
Reporting
Organization & Projects
Financial
Goals
Auth & SSO
Apps & Platforms
Notifications
Localization
Data & Backup
Try it now – it’s completely free (NO ADS) –> SANDTIME.
Have an interesting SaaS product to build? Let us know –> contact@sanddev.com
We love a challenge.
Or see first our case study how we increased our client’s sales velocity by 757%.
757% sales velocity increase. No, that’s not a typo. It’s the result of killing the manual work for a US profilometers giant. Read our new case study and build the exception with us.
We can’t show you everything we build – and neither will we when we work with you.
But here’s a sneak peek at a solution we are allowed to share.
Advertisers want reach. Publishers want money. Ad networks want… well, a cut of everything. It’s a love triangle where everyone is cheating. We’re dissecting the trust problem – because someone has to tell the truth.
