How Heeeper accelerated estimates and improved productivity by 35% with capacity planning

Key outcomes

• Increased productivity by 35% with automation and reduced context switching
• Cut customer proposal turnaround time from 24–36 hours to 12 hours max
• Saved ~15–20 minutes per invoice with Hubstaff invoice automation
• Estimated ROI of ~$150,000 from time saved and operational impact

Background

Heeeper is a UI/UX design agency working across FinTech, SaaS, Financial Services, Web & Mobile Design, and complex product ecosystems. The team is fully remote and globally distributed, with designers located across different regions of Ukraine and additional team members in other countries.

With no central office and clients primarily located in the US, Canada, and Europe, the agency needed a reliable way to track work, enhance operational visibility, and maintain client trust through clear reporting.

“We’re currently working absolutely remote. We don’t have an office.”

To better understand their day-to-day operations and what they needed from a time tracking solution, we spoke directly with Heeeper’s founder and CEO, Dmytro, about how his team manages client work across time zones and maintains high visibility while staying fully remote.

Before Hubstaff, Heeeper relied on a mix of story-point estimates, spreadsheets, and manual time tracking methods. That approach made it difficult to understand real project effort, forecast accurately, and maintain consistent visibility into day-to-day progress.

Hubstaff stood out because it helped the team build a data-driven workflow, especially for project estimates and operational decision-making.

“We needed to get the historical data to get an understanding of how much time our projects are actually taking us.”

For Heeeper, one of the most notable improvements after using Hubstaff was the reduction in time spent on quote creation. Before Hubstaff, producing estimates took 24 to 36 hours. With Hubstaff data, estimates now take a maximum of 12 hours to complete.

That speed creates a competitive advantage, enabling faster responses while staying grounded in real project history.

“It’s actually a good competitive point because you can provide something based on historical data.”

For many of their clients, visibility and accountability are non-negotiable, especially when working with remote teams and complex deliverables. Hubstaff helps Heeeper provide weekly reporting with clear activity and time breakdowns, creating a more professional experience and helping clients feel confident in the work being delivered.

For Heeeper, Hubstaff isn’t just a time tracker; it’s part of a broader system for capacity planning and management. With a distributed team working across time zones and varying availability, leadership needed visibility into how work is distributed on a day-to-day basis and how much bandwidth the team has before committing to new projects.

“We don’t want to have like 30 people who will be loaded for half of the day.”

Hubstaff helps them compare tracked time against internal resource planning workflows to understand staffing needs, avoid underutilization, and plan more accurately across ongoing work.

They also use Hubstaff’s Timeline view and time-off visibility to plan coverage and allocate resources more effectively, especially when team availability changes unexpectedly.

“Being able to easily access out-of-office time in one place… It’s also helping us to plan out our resources.”

Reduced context switching led to a 35% increase in productivity

Heeeper integrated Hubstaff with Jira and their internal app to automate ticket status updates based on time tracking activity. 

When a designer starts tracking time, the ticket automatically moves into “In Progress.” When time tracking stops or pauses under specific conditions, the ticket transitions into “Design Review,” eliminating the need for manual updates from designers, project managers, or design leads.

While the time saved from individual clicks may seem small in isolation, the team emphasized that the real value lies in protecting designers’ creative focus.

“When you have a designer thinking, their process should not be interrupted.”

They estimate Hubstaff contributed to a productivity lift of roughly 35%, because time and task management is done automatically for them.

“I would say up to a 35% increase in productivity.”

Payroll and invoicing are faster and more accurate with Hubstaff

Hubstaff timesheets give both the team and leadership a shared source of truth. With a biweekly cadence, tracked time is reviewed and approved — and disputes have disappeared.

“We all understand right now who should be paid, how much, and for what. And there are no disputes anymore.”

The team also uses Hubstaff for invoicing, estimating that it saves ~15–20 minutes per invoice cycle by eliminating manual data transfer from spreadsheets.

“You just click the button. All the data that you need is uploaded to that invoice, and that’s it.”

Final takeaway: ROI of ~$150,000 and increased efficiency

When asked to estimate the ROI, Dmytro pointed to the time saved, operational gains, and increased client trust, estimating a rough value of $150,000.

But they also stressed that the most meaningful ROI is repeat business driven by transparency and professionalism.

“The best returns are happy clients and the clients who are returning to you.”

When asked to name the single biggest impact, Dmytro chose one word:

“Efficiency.”

They tied that efficiency to the ability to operate remotely, build globally distributed teams, and deliver consistently, even under unpredictable circumstances.

Heeeper will continue working with enterprise-level clients and continue to invest in automation and operational maturity, utilizing Hubstaff as a core system to align expectations across teams and clients.

As they scale, Hubstaff will remain a key part of how Heeeper improves efficiency, strengthens accountability, and maintains consistent client reporting.