Save Engineering Time

Why building your own time tracking tool is a mistake

Most engineering teams underestimate the true cost of building internal tools. What looks like a weekend project becomes years of maintenance. We know, because we did it.

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We know because we did it too

Sandtime.io started as an internal tool. The team needed to track time across projects and clients, and like many engineering teams, the thinking was: "How hard can it be?"

What started as a small project turned into months of development. Then came the feature requests, the bug fixes, the mobile apps, the currency conversions, the Slack integration, the browser extensions. Over 15,000 engineering hours later, we have a product we are proud of.

That is why we made Sandtime.io available to everyone. So your team does not have to spend those 15,000 hours, and can focus on what actually moves your business forward.

The numbers tell the real story

Internal tools are a bigger investment than most teams realize.

33%
of engineering time spent on internal tools on average
Retool State of Internal Tools
45%
for companies with 5,000 or more employees
Retool Survey
15,000+
engineering hours invested in Sandtime.io so far
Our own experience
$70K+
minimum cost to build even a basic time tracking tool
Industry estimates

What would it cost your team?

Adjust the inputs below to estimate what building a time tracking tool in-house would actually cost.

$150,000
estimated first-year cost of building in-house

Based on 500 engineering hours for an initial build. Does not include ongoing maintenance (add 20-30% per year), product design, QA, or DevOps costs.

The hidden costs of building in-house

The initial build is only the beginning. Here is what teams consistently overlook.

Development

Design, architecture, coding, testing, and deployment. What starts as a simple tracker quickly grows into a complex project with edge cases you never anticipated.

Maintenance

Bug fixes, security patches, browser compatibility, and mobile apps. The work never stops once you ship the first version.

Opportunity cost

Every engineering hour spent on internal tools is an hour not spent on your core product. Your competitors are not building their own time trackers.

Scalability

Training new hires, writing documentation, and maintaining continuity when the original builders leave. Internal tools become institutional debt.

Build vs buy

Time tracking is a solved problem. Your engineering time is worth more elsewhere.

Building in-house

  • Months to years before it is actually usable
  • Constant feature requests from your own team
  • Bug fixes become urgent internal support tickets
  • Engineers leave and take knowledge with them
  • No mobile apps, browser extensions, or integrations
  • Compliance and data security fall entirely on you

Sandtime.io

  • Start tracking time in minutes, not months
  • Automatic updates with new features continuously
  • Engineers stay focused on what drives revenue
  • Dedicated support team and full documentation
  • Desktop, mobile, browser extension, Slack integration
  • Built-in security, privacy, and data compliance