Why We Built BetterFlow: A BetterQA Story

BetterFlow didn't start as a timesheet product. It started as an internal tool we built at BetterQA because we were tired of forcing our team to use time tracking systems that felt like punishment rather than support.

We're a software testing and quality assurance company. Our engineers work across multiple client projects simultaneously, juggling different testing frameworks, tracking bugs in various systems, and coordinating across time zones. We needed accurate time tracking for client billing and project costing, but every tool we tried either oversimplified the complexity of real work or created so much administrative overhead that people avoided using it.

The Problem We Kept Running Into

Our first attempt at time tracking used a popular project management tool with built-in timesheets. The interface was beautiful, but it assumed everyone worked on one project at a time for neat 2-4 hour blocks. Our reality was messier: 45 minutes testing a payment flow for ClientA, 20 minutes in a status call, an hour writing test automation for ClientB, another 30 minutes reviewing someone's pull request, then back to ClientA for deployment validation.

Forcing this messy reality into clean timesheet entries meant either lying (rounding everything to whole hours) or spending 15 minutes at end of day reconstructing our work from memory and browser history.

We tried automatic time tracking next. The software monitored which applications we used and attempted to categorize time as productive or unproductive. This created new problems. Time in Slack was flagged as unproductive, even though coordinating test strategies with distributed team members is core work. And the surveillance aspect made everyone uncomfortable.

What We Actually Needed

After watching our team struggle with inadequate tools for two years, we mapped out what time tracking needed to do for a services business working across multiple clients and projects:

• Capture work in whatever increments actually happened, not force artificial rounding
• Connect time entries to client projects for billing without requiring project codes and bureaucracy
• Integrate with the tools we already used (Jira for issue tracking, GitHub for code, Slack for communication)
• Handle leave management so we stopped maintaining separate spreadsheets for vacation tracking
• Generate reports that clients actually wanted to see: what we worked on, why it took the time it did, what value was delivered

We also knew what we didn't want: surveillance features, productivity scoring, ranking team members by hours logged, or any other approach that suggested we didn't trust our people to work honestly.

Building the First Version

Our initial version was deliberately simple. A web interface where you could create entries with just four fields: what you worked on, which project it belonged to, how long it took, and any notes that would help explain the work to clients or future-you reviewing the week.

We added a weekly review screen that showed your entire week at a glance, making it easy to spot missing days or entries that needed more detail before submitting to your manager. We built integrations with Jira so you could see your assigned issues and log time against them without context switching between tools.

The design philosophy was to reduce friction rather than enforce process. No required fields beyond the essentials. No multi-step approval workflows that created bottlenecks. No complicated categorization schemes that required training to understand.

From Internal Tool to Product

We started casually mentioning our time tracking system to other services companies we knew. The response was immediate: "We have the same problems. Can we use your tool?"

We initially resisted productizing it. Building internal tools is different from building products for external customers. Products need polish, documentation, flexibility to handle different ways of working.

But the demand kept growing. We were already maintaining the codebase for our own use. The incremental effort to make it work for others seemed manageable. And honestly, we were excited about the possibility of solving this problem for more teams beyond our own.

Why BetterQA Builds Products

BetterFlow isn't our only product. We also build BugBoard (our test management platform), Access (our authentication system), and Flows (our workflow automation tool). Every one started as an internal solution to a problem we faced in our consulting work.

Building products makes us better consultants. We understand software challenges from both sides: as service providers who need to track time and manage projects, and as product builders who need to balance feature requests against maintainability and user experience.

And it means we're using BetterFlow every day ourselves. Every frustration our team encounters, we fix. Every feature we wish existed, we can build. The product improves because we depend on it, not just because customers request features.

Conclusion

BetterFlow exists because we needed it and couldn't find anything that worked the way real services businesses actually operate. We built it to solve our own problems, then discovered that hundreds of other companies had the same problems.

We're still a QA consulting company first. Building products is what we do with the expertise we develop solving client problems. But we're committed to making BetterFlow the time tracking system we wish we'd had from the beginning.