How can agencies determine client return on investment?

We’re always looking for smarter ways to work here at awesome. Especially when it comes to managing projects, budgets and our team’s time.  
 
So we took the challenge to our digital our Digital Partner and CO Chris. He spent some time thinking about it and came back with our very own tool for tracking time against budgets. Of course, it’s called Awesome. Time. 
 
We sat down with Chris to ask him about Awesome. Time, how it works and the difference it’s made to the way we manage projects. 
 
What problem were you looking to solve when creating Awesome Time? 
 
We were struggling to find software that truly fit the way our agency works. 
 
At awesome., we use Jira to manage projects and sprints, so we needed something that could integrate seamlessly and help us track how projects and monthly retainers were performing against our available time and budget.  
 
That turned out to be harder to find than expected. 

We lacked clear visibility on profitability while projects were still live. We wanted sprint decisions to reflect real budget and margin positions – not just delivery deadlines. 
 
Plenty of tools offered time tracking and resource management, but most felt too heavy. We didn’t need a full people-management platform. Just clear, reliable metrics built around our Jira data to help us make better decisions, faster. 
 
Why is agency ROI so hard to tie down? 

Agency ROI isn’t easy to measure. Teams are running multiple projects at different stages, often across several tools. Time, budget, scope and delivery data end up fragmented, making it hard to see the true financial picture in one place. 

As a creative agency, we intentionally keep admin overhead low so we can focus on delivering great work. But that often means ROI is reviewed after a project finishes, rather than guiding decisions while it’s still live. By the time issues become visible, it’s usually too late to course correct. 
 
What’s needed are simple, real-time health indicators that fit into existing workflows. Which helps teams make smarter decisions without slowing them down. 
 
Why is connecting work to real costs so beneficial? 
 
The kind of work we do isn’t predictable or off-the-shelf. Creativity isn’t a science, and accurately estimating ambitious, complex projects upfront is always a challenge.  
 
It’s easy to quote something safe and repeatable. But that’s not how we work. We push ideas, explore new approaches and often build things that are new for both us and our clients. The same goes for large development projects, where hidden dependencies and real-world constraints can quickly make features more involved than expected. 
 
When you connect work to real, live costs as it happens, those unknowns become visible much earlier. Teams can make better decisions during delivery – whether that’s adjusting scope, shifting priorities, or having open conversations with clients – before profitability quietly slips away. 

The goal isn’t to eliminate uncertainty. It’s to make it visible. When you can clearly see how time translates into cost, you can course-correct early and protect both the quality of the work and the health of the business. 
 
How does this help teams? 

It gives teams a clear goal and shared data to guide decisions. 

As creatives, we can see multiple ways to solve the same problem. But without clear metrics, it’s difficult to know which route best fits the time and budget available. When those constraints are visible, decision-making becomes sharper and more intentional. 

Clear boundaries don’t limit creativity – they focus it. When everyone understands the trade-offs, decisions are faster, more confident and better aligned. 

I often think back to my previous career as a musician. My performances were always stronger when my preparation was focused and deliberate, rather than trying to explore every possible direction. The same applies to creative and technical teams: clarity sharpens execution. 
 
And how does it help clients? 

It gives clients clear, real-time visibility into how their time and budget are being used. 

Through client-accessible dashboards, they can see the metrics that actually matter to them – whether that’s a one-off project or an ongoing retainer. Creative and technical work can look simple from the outside, but much of the value sits in the thinking, iteration and decisions made along the way. Surfacing real delivery data – progress against budget, time spent and overall project health – makes that value visible. 

For retainers, clients can spot trends over time and plan ahead with confidence. For projects, early signals help flag drift before it becomes a problem, allowing for better conversations and course correction. 

The result is greater transparency, fewer surprises and a stronger, more collaborative relationship built on shared understanding. 
 
Any surprising insights you can share since using Awesome Time? 

One of the biggest surprises has been how clearly decision-making delays show up. It quickly becomes obvious when a project isn’t slowing down because of delivery, but because it’s waiting on approvals or key calls. That visibility alone has improved conversations and momentum. 
 
It’s also reinforced something we’ve always believed: creative exploration isn’t inefficiency. Exploration, experimentation and iteration are often what lead to the strongest outcomes. 
 
By making that time visible and measurable, Awesome Time helps us show the value behind the process. It gives teams the space to try, test and refine – while still keeping a clear view of cost and impact. 
 
How did we build it? 
 
Awesome Time is built on a modern, scalable stack using Laravel, React and Inertia, with a custom Jira integration at its core. 
 
The biggest technical challenge wasn’t building dashboards – it was making sense of Jira’s data in a reliable, future-proof way. Jira has evolved over many years to support a huge range of workflows, which means its API isn’t always as clean or predictable as you might expect. 
 
Instead of trying to force structure onto it, we designed a system that embraces that complexity. Jira data is crawled and normalised efficiently, with key metrics calculated in the background, then stored and cached. That keeps the frontend fast and responsive, while ensuring the insights are always up to date. 
 
Once enough historical data exists, the platform begins generating forward-looking projections. These are recalculated incrementally as new data comes in, keeping forecasts accurate without unnecessary processing overhead. We also built a lightweight Electron desktop timer app to make time tracking frictionless for teams. Because, frankly, most native Jira timers aren’t great. 
 
From day one, the platform has been designed for extensibility. As usage grows, there’s clear scope to introduce more advanced forecasting models, including machine learning, to provide even deeper insight. 
 
Sound like something your agency could benefit from? We’d love to chat about it.