Hubstaff says, “Time is really the essence of what we do”

Time. It’s the only truly finite resource. And since 2012, Hubstaff has been helping their customers save time – and money – with their smart tools to streamline time tracking, reporting, client invoicing, and employee payment for remote teams.

The team and customers at Hubstaff saw an opportunity to integrate Wise for borderless payments. A ‘grassroots movement’, if you like, which is now helping users save even more money and time, every day, while throwing open the doors to expand the Hubstaff client base by up to 10x. Here’s the Hubstaff story.

Like so many successful businesses, Hubstaff grew from a personal pain point. Dave Nevogt, Hubstaff founder, talked recently about the experiences of running remote teams which led him, and Jared Brown to set up Hubstaff:

We started it based on a personal pain point. I’ve had companies online for 15 years now, and something I struggled with was understanding what everyone was doing. They were mostly remote companies, so it was hard for me to communicate. It was hard for me to understand why projects were going slowly, why things weren’t releasing on time. I knew the pain point very well.

And from this pain, came the idea behind Hubstaff. Help clients step away from the spreadsheets. Support remote managers to delegate, monitor and reward great work, better. Remove waste and inefficiency, and allow service based clients to see how much they’re really spending on labour and resources – and use the granular detail to improve billing.

With Hubstaff you can track the progress of work projects, across employees based in different locations and timezones, as well as creating staff schedules, invoices and budgets. Customers can therefore spend less time tracking activity – and more time growing and improving the business. Smart stuff.

Painful payments

From the very beginning, the Hubstaff team knew they needed to offer an integrated payment option that worked for customers. But finding payment partners that worked for everyone proved a tricky feat. Dave explains the issues they ran into with some payment providers:

You’ve got fees on both sides – for the payer and the person receiving. A lot of time those fees are not clearly defined upfront. You’ve got issues with account management, accounts being shut down, not supported in certain countries, payments not going through without any real reasoning or logic.

International payment fees can be a significant issue for global businesses. In fact, independent research carried out by Consumer Intelligence found that PayPal international business payments cost significantly more than making the same transfer with Wise in tests based on paying someone based in the UK, Europe or Australia.

But it’s not just the fees. Working with some payment providers proved a headache for Hubstaff for other reasons entirely. PayPal Masspay isn’t available globally, for example – despite the world being ever more connected, and remote work rapidly becoming more accepted. Dave concludes, “It just doesn’t seem like a very modern industry to me.”

Until, that is, Hubstaff users introduced him to Wise.

Hubstaff, meet Wise

Users and employers wanted the Hubstaff team to offer Wise as an integration to allow them to send and receive money across the world, at the best possible exchange rate, and with a transparent fee structure. Customer, of course, is king – and so the Hubstaff founders started to take note. A little research, and they were sold. Wise could be exactly what the doctor ordered for some of their customers’ remaining pain points.

The results during initial user testing have been impressive. Using the Wise API, Hubstaff will be able to automate payments, which means manual intervention will be limited. Managers will receive a timesheet or payment request and can simply approve and pay. And because of the low fee structure, both the employer and employee will be better off.

People are looking for a modern solution. And a modern solution is something where you can connect different people and not have to go through all of these loopholes that exist.

Unlike some other payment partners, Dave says, “Wise is opening up, looking from things more from a global perspective” – which is exactly what Hubstaff is all about.

A modern solution, for 10x growth

With a global rise in remote working practises, Hubstaff expects to grow. Integrating with Wise is a game changer, as it opens up new payment routes which can reach more clients and result in cost and efficiency savings for both employers and employees.

We have people that can not use us currently because they want that payment solution. [PayPal] Masspay is hard to join, and Payoneer has huge limits. Wise will mean huge growth for our payroll solution.

Erik Edin, product manager at Wise, agrees. "Existing providers are too expensive and not friendly to international businesses. Thanks to our network of local banks around the world, our customers can manage global payouts like a local business. That's also a big benefit to employees or suppliers getting paid. With us, there are no receiving fees, meaning more money in the pocket for the employee."

And that, Dave says, could mean growth in the region of 10x. Yep. Up to ten times as many happy customers. Less money lost on bank fees and charges. More money in the pockets of entrepreneurs, freelancers and employees – wherever in the world they may be. Impressive stuff.