Designing time tracking for craftsmen
2022 · Product and interaction design
Context
Craftsmen, such as plumbers and electricians, often juggle unpredictable schedules and a variety of tasks – from traveling to job sites to installing new lights. As a result, tracking time spent on each project can be tedious and error-prone, leading to incorrect invoices, inefficiencies, and frustration.
ToolTime is a platform that helps craftsmen manage and digitalize their business operations. It provides a mobile app for employees in the field to receive and document appointments, while the web interface focuses on administrative tasks such as creating offers, generating invoices, and managing projects.
Opportunity
At ToolTime, our mission is to digitalize the craftsmen business, enabling them to spend less time on manual administrative tasks and more on their actual work. Together with a user researcher, I conducted 9 user interviews to better understand their pain points with time tracking. Through these interviews, we learned that:
Manual methods lead to errors
Craftsmen relied on paper logs and spreadsheets, which were prone to mistakes, easily lost, and time-consuming to manage. For some, this even resulted in incorrect invoices or miscalculated projects.
External tools weren’t ideal
Third-party apps were inefficient, introduced additional costs, and weren’t integrated into ToolTime.
Need for efficiency
Users emphasized the importance of a simple time tracker that wouldn’t interrupt their workday.
Accurate time tracking for payroll
Business owners emphasized how important it is for them to have accurate and accessible records of employees’ working hours and absences to process payroll quickly and accurately.
These insights – combined with data from surveys and user feedback – presented a clear opportunity to design a time tracking feature within the existing ToolTime mobile app to address craftsmen’s frustrations.
Solution
I led the design of the time tracking feature for the ToolTime mobile app, working closely with engineers and the product manager to deliver the solution. Over five months, we conducted usability tests, interviewed users, and iterated on prototypes to ensure the solution met their needs. The MVP was successfully launched on both mobile and web platforms, providing craftsmen with an easy way to track their working time.
The core of the time tracking feature is an overview page that gives users a clear, consolidated view of their tracked hours. It allows craftsmen to easily manage time entries by assigning them to appointments, adjusting start and end times, and adding descriptions.
Making Time Tracking Easy
One of the biggest challenges was integrating time tracking in a way that felt seamless. Once a user starts tracking time from the main time tracking view, it becomes essential to provide a clear, at-a-glance view of their active timer and total hours worked. To support this, I designed a stopwatch pattern anchored to the bottom of the screen, so users can start, pause, or stop their timer from anywhere in the app.
During user testing and interviews, users shared that starting the timer didn’t always fit smoothly into their daily workflows – especially during busy days with a lot of different tasks. Based on this feedback, I added manual logging options so users could capture a complete workday by entering their hours and absences at the end of the day if needed.
Automating Time Management
After refining the design and improving the functional prototype, I tested the stopwatch with users during their regular workflows once more. That’s when I noticed they sometimes forgot to stop the timer, which led to incorrect tracking of their working hours.
This insight led me to design an automatic stop function to prevent entries from running indefinitely. When a time tracking entry exceeds the preset 8-hour limit – the standard full-time workday in Germany – it stops automatically, and users receive a notification with an option to edit it directly.
Oversight for Business Owners
For business owners, we developed a web interface that makes it easy to view time entries. This helped them quickly spot missing working hours, reduced the need for manual follow-ups, and ensured employees are paid accurately based on their tracked time.
Outcome and Future Potential
The time-tracking feature launched successfully on both web and mobile platforms, improving billing accuracy and directly impacting business revenue. With 2,000 active mobile users (roughly 50% of all mobile users) engaging monthly and over 45,000 time entries logged , the feature has quickly proven its scalability and relevance.
Craftsmen especially appreciated the feature’s intuitive design and seamless integration into their workflows, which made time tracking very easy for them. By addressing this critical pain point, the feature not only enhanced user satisfaction but also established ToolTime as an indispensable tool in the craftsmen industry.
You’ve got one thing right: that it’s easy for the guys to use. That’s the main thing.
This feature is really great. Now I know how long my guys are working on something.
While the feature has already transformed how users manage time tracking, I see potential for future enhancements. On mobile, future enhancements could include tracking overtime or multiple-day absences. For business owners using the web app, features like an editing function or additional payroll related features would add even more value.
Reflection
Personally, this project reinforced the importance of designing for flexibility, as ToolTime’s users have incredibly diverse workflows. It showed me the value of actively listening to user feedback and building adaptable features that meet varied needs while supporting long-term business goals.