Case study · SaaS

Building and running Staffvertex, a multi-tenant time tracker.

Time tracking and project management for teams that bill or pay by the hour. Tracked time turns into timesheets, reports and invoices. I build its backend APIs and web app, and own its maintenance and releases.

Role: Full-stack developer
Company: Alphinex Solutions
Status: Live, in active development
Live: staffvertex.com ↗

The problem

When a team pays or invoices by the hour, the hours have to be right. People forget to start timers, lose connection mid-task, log meetings after the fact and split time across projects. Every gap turns into a dispute on a timesheet or an invoice.

The product

People start a timer on the desktop app or in the browser. The tracked hours flow into projects, boards, timesheets, reports and invoices, with each team's workspace kept separate. A free plan covers one user; Pro and Business are per seat.

My contribution

Built the backend APIs that record time, tasks and team data.
Built the web interface teams use every day.
Own maintenance end to end: bug fixes, improvements and releases.

What the platform does

Product capabilities, as shipped. My work is the API and web app that serve them; the desktop clients are a separate project.

01
Offline-safe timer
Desktop timer for Windows and macOS keeps counting when Wi-Fi drops and syncs when it returns.
02
Idle-time policies
Each team decides whether idle time is kept, discarded or asked about.
03
Privacy-first screenshots
Optional, off by default, with blur controls.
04
Projects & boards
Tasks, dependencies and deadlines alongside the timer.
05
Timesheets to invoices
Overtime, exportable reports, invoices and pay rates.
06
Per-seat plans
Free for one user, then Pro and Business per seat.

Engineering notes

A data model that survives people editing their time.

A time tracker is really three apps sharing one API: the web app for planning and reports, the desktop app that tracks, and the API with its database in the middle. The web app runs on Next.js, which also server-renders the public marketing and pricing pages so they rank.

Read the full write-up →

01
Store intervals, not totals
Each entry has start, end, user, project and task in UTC. Durations are calculated, never the only record.
02
Record the source and keep edit history
Desktop, web or manual, plus the old values on every change. It settles disputes and catches bugs.
03
Index for the questions asked most
User + start time covers "my week"; project + start time covers project reports.
04
Day boundaries in the user's time zone
Midnight where the person is, not midnight on the server.