Time tracking company TSheets draws major online attention

If anyone still doubts the old maxim “necessity is the mother of invention,” then they’ve never heard of TSheets. And if they’ve never heard of TSheets then they haven’t been reading Inc.com or checking on new media info powerhouses TechCrunch.com or Technorati.com. The Meridian-based company, owned by CEO Matt Rissell, develops and sells one of the hottest new innovations in remote time keeping – a Web-based software system that turns any PC or Web-enabled handheld into a fully integrated time tracking system accessible to employees and managers anywhere in the world, in real time.

And Rissell said it was developed simply because he needed something like it for his startup, Cartridge World, and it didn’t exist.

“My bookkeeper came back after using it for a week and said, 'Can you sell this? It’s incredible,'” he said.

After selling Cartridge World in May 2007, Rissell devoted all his time to TSheets, refining the system, integrating it with Jott – a feature that allows users to clock in and out by voice-command – and garnering about 5,000 active users worldwide.

Now, as mania builds for the newly-released iPhone 3G, TSheets has announced an iPhone Web application version of its site that Rissell says has already jump-started the two-year-old company’s customer base and heightened its visibility substantially.

“It puts us on the map,” he said.

After TSheets’ June 8 appearance on TechCrunch – “the Web startup version of the Wall Street Journal,” according the blog TechBoise.com – Rissell said the company picked up more than 100 new customers, its largest-ever one day gain.

On Friday, June 11, Rissell even flew down to Silicon Valley to be interviewed by new media maven Robert Scoble for Fast Company’s WorkFast.tv.

“We’re growing, it’s exciting stuff. I love building companies and I love this stage,” he said.

But despite TSheets’ rapid growth and high-profile attention, Rissell said there are loads of improvements on the way.

“We’re going to have invoicing, we’re going to add scheduling, we’re going to be integrating with the top 100 payroll companies out there, really we’re going to dominate the time tracking market – [we’re going to be] the best and the biggest, the easiest and the most powerful,” he said.

Though there are a few other companies out there that offer similar services, Rissell chalks TSheets’ success up its pioneering use of the voice-command feature Jott, its versatility and customer loyalty.

“It’s essentially a 99 percent [customer] retention rate,” he said. “If we add customers they’re not going out the back door, and that’s because we solve a real problem, we’re not just a cool technology.”

Rissell says about 4 million companies are still using hand-written timecards – a process that’s time-consuming, easy to mess up and incompatible with an increasingly mobile workplace.

“There’s no reason to be doing that anymore,” he said.