A—B increased time tracking adoption from 20% to almost 100% with Float

A—B is an identity-powered design agency redesigning how power works and who it works for. They’ve partnered with progressive organizations like Black PAC, Color Of Change, Amnesty International USA, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop campaigns that change the status quo in politics, culture, and the economy.

As they gear up for a busy election year, they’ve adopted Float to improve time tracking and simplify project forecasting.

It was difficult to get team members to track their time

The team at A—B had tried a bit of everything—Asana, Harvest, Google spreadsheets, Trello, and Airtable—to track time and plan their work.

But, none of these tools did exactly what the team needed them to do–consolidate project budgets, time tracking, and timelines.

With no time-tracking data, Justin West, former program manager at A—B, could not answer questions about capacity. It was hard to tell who was overbooked, or who was underallocated, or how much time was spent on a project.

Project information was siloed with budgets, time sheets, and timelines, living in different and disconnected places. This left Justin unable to tell how changes in timelines affected budgets and, by extension, the profitability of projects.

Before [Float], the budgets lived over here, the time tracking lived over here, and timelines lived over here. We were making them on an ad-hoc basis for different projects. I wouldn’t say the situation was dire, but there was room for improvement.

Pre-filled sheets and the timer in Float simplify time tracking

Justin began researching alternative resource management tools on review site G2. Users praised Float for its user-friendliness, straightforward setup, and excellent customer support, making it a standout choice.

Float looked to be a good middle ground between some of the programs we felt didn't do enough and some that we felt were just a step beyond what we needed right now, like Monday.

After Justin made a case on how Float was going to replace Harvest and how it would help manage the creative team, winning them over was a breeze.

Everyone was excited to have a tool that would make their work (and lives) easier.

“In general, there's an appetite for anything that can make the team's life easier in any organization. So everybody was excited when it came to the capacity tracking [because] everyone appreciates a more consolidated project timeline view. So that part was easy.”

Aided by quick responses to his questions in our Slack community and product guides from the Learn Library, Justin was able to migrate his team from Harvest to Float.

A—B increases adoption of time tracking from 20% to almost 100%

Within a few months of switching to Float, the results were clear. Float has empowered the team at A—B to increase adoption of time tracking from 20% to almost 100%.

Justin initially had some concerns about the cultural change needed to adopt time tracking as a consistent practice.

“The hardest part is the cultural change when you're going from an organization that's not really used to time tracking or hasn't been [logging time] consistently to one where it's now a requirement. Anyone in any organization can attest to that being difficult.”

Time logging in Float is so frictionless that, within months, nearly everyone on the team was consistently tracking their time.

With time tracking up and running in Float, planning team capacity became easier.

At a glance, Justin can now tell who is overburdened with work and who is underallocated.

This helps inform his decisions about allocating tasks and managing workloads.

In a case where a project phase needs to be extended by, say, a week, Float’s visual schedule shows the impact on the team's hours and budgets. “Having forecasting connected to a visual tool and not having to be messing around in graphs to figure that out is super helpful.”

When stakeholders ask about the status of a project, Justin heads over to Float to show them what they need. No more wasting time creating custom reports.

Just being able to pop into Float and show leadership the status of projects as opposed to having to put together a unique report just for that is very helpful. I would say [Float] does what it says on the box. It just makes life easier in all.