Case Study: How a one-man company grew to a virtual team of seven with Hubstaff

Guntis Endzelis, the owner of Partneris, LTD, is one of Hubstaff’s valued customers from Latvia. Guntis was kind enough to share his 100% virtual company’s experience with Hubstaff and how they’ve benefited from our software. A must read if you manage virtual teams.

About the Company

Partneris is an Opencart official partner that takes on complex tasks related to Opencart. They are a team of programmers and developers who are able to build custom websites or sites based on templates. Guntis, Partneris founder, is also creating in-house built software for which he uses Hubstaff.

The Problem

I was working at home alone, but I knew that if I was going to hire virtual teams I’d need a time logging solution. I searched extensively for affordable and fully-featured services before I even hired anybody. It was hard to find good software services. My criteria were that I needed to be able to log time comfortably for myself and get reports. Some services were bad, and some grew from free to very expensive.

What I was looking for:

• A cross-platform solution (I worked with Ubuntu)
• Non-obtrusive
• Bug free
• Cheap
• Flexible reporting
• Clients should be able to access reports

The Solution

I was doing heavy research. I searched everywhere and tried about 10 different solutions. Once I found Hubstaff I stayed with it. I loved their timely support system and the responsiveness of the support team. It really encouraged me communicate whenever I had trouble.

Big Wins

Partneris LTD’s virtual teams now consist of three permanent employees, one part time assistant, two programmers and one part-time contractor from India who log time in Hubstaff. Everyone works from home for a completely virtual company.

I personally manage two to three remote employees. If I were to use Upwork I’d be paying them approximately 3000€ every year. Using Hubstaff, I save 90% on that.

Also, if I were to use an office instead of having a distributed team, I’d be renting a space for just four people and have to commute back and forth. We don’t have to do any of that.

What Features Do You Love about Hubstaff? Why?

• Activity indicator – it builds trust that my staff isn’t just reading articles on the Internet but doing actual coding. If I’m in doubt, I can always check screenshots.
• Customizable reports – that allows me to retrieve the data I need quickly.
• User roles – I have a customer that’s outsourcing my employees for his projects. On my advice he created an organization and now I don’t even have to create reports for him. He can see what we are doing. I can add my team members as needed to each project. I can add projects to his Organization.
• Ease-of-use – there’s almost no education required to start using Hubstaff. You just pick it up and go.
• The referral program – it somehow works so well for me that I’ve been using the service for free for quite a while.

My Recommendation

Hubstaff allows me and my team to have this excellent way of working – at home. I have met my employees only once when we signed the work agreements. Thanks to Hubstaff and other modern communication tools I don’t need to meet them face to face, aside from perhaps a fun day together as a recognition.

My employees say that Hubstaff works more precisely than oDesk (now Upwork) tools, as it tracks your work down to the second.