At least for me, time tracking is important, but at the same time annoying, because at the end of the day I usually can’t remember everything. For months I had been “followed” by the Timeular ZEI° advertisement, I had clicked on it several times (sorry, over several months from different devices, so I unfortunately thwarted your attribution model a bit). After analyzing my team’s time tracking data, it was clear to me that I definitely wanted to try this thing. It’s not that I’ve never worked with other tools, quite the opposite, but many haven’t proven to be practical. So here are my Timeular ZEI° experiences.
The unboxing and installation of the Timeular ZEI°
The device comes in a nice box, I think most people have learned by now that a product looks more valuable with it. Let’s see when the opposite trend comes that the products are packaged minimally, so that sustainability is more in the foreground and not part of the money invested goes into the design of the packaging.
The first impression after unpacking was that the cube is bigger than I would have expected from the videos and pictures. The device itself doesn’t feel quite as high-quality as the packaging, but it’s not cheap either. Since I had already dealt with the ZEI° before, I already knew what I wanted on which side of the cube, and setting up the cube with the software was super fast. At first I had used the app on my mobile phone, but that was a bit pointless, because of course I like to take my mobile phone with me to meetings, and then the Bluetooth connection breaks down. I hadn’t read anything in the FAQs about how to change the device, but it was very simple: Install the app on the computer, log in, and then the cube even pairs automatically with the computer, if you have logged it out of the mobile phone app beforehand.
The software is minimal and well thought out, no frills, nice design, but with all the features I need. Respect. A lot of brainpower has gone into this so that the functions can be used as easily as possible. I can only hope that future versions will not fall into featuritis.
Usage
What I was missing at first: More sides on the cube. At least theoretically. I’m certainly rather alone in this. But I book on project numbers, and I have more than one project per customer. Overall, I have more projects than pages on the cube. I currently solve this in such a way that I have one client per page and then use the notes to assign the projects. That will certainly not always work. But do you really want to have more sides to the cube? Probably not, because then the simplicity of this time recording system would be lost.
But that is also the only downer. It’s pretty damn cool that if I’m working on a client and a colleague from another project comes in, I can immediately pick up the cube and switch sides to match the conversation to the other client. And I have such a situation several times a day. Since the cube lies on my otherwise relatively empty desk and is therefore mostly in view, I am also more aware of the necessity of changing sides. His presence alone reminds me of the time tracking, so that I do it exactly at that moment and don’t unjustifiably think that I will remember it in the evening. I just don’t.
The Reports
Let’s get to the most important thing: the reports. And they have it all. Because at the end of the day, I can see very clearly what I have been working on and what my time has been spent on.
I have the impression that I am now logging MORE time, and the overview in the picture next to it is just great: I can see immediately whether I am investing the time in the projects that should also have the highest priority. It’s a bit like my beloved Life Balance, which unfortunately is no longer being developed, except that you don’t set priorities beforehand and the system is also much simpler.
However, some points are not quite as easy to understand, such as the productivity level: I didn’t find any information about this on the homepage. And what do I do with the information that I have long entries, mid entries and short entries? Of course, I could read from it how concentrated I am working on a project on average, but for that I also need a benchmark somehow.
The conclusion: Timeular ZEI experiences
It’s only been a few days with de Timeular ZEI°, and I’m pretty excited. If you read through my other reviews here, you know that this is rarely the case. And this despite the fact that the device has fewer pages than my projects and I have to transfer the hours to the official timetracking tool afterwards. At some point, an API solution could do that for me, but at the moment that’s still a long way off.
For me, the very physical existence of this object on my desk has an almost therapeutic function in terms of hourly bookings.
Now the device is not cheap at 115€ if you work with larger teams. What if I wanted to equip my whole team with it? Or if the whole company decided to do so? I’m not sure if you can really justify this expense. Of course, one could justify that this means that more is billed and that the purchase will therefore pay for itself very quickly. But spend a few extra €1,000 for a company of a few dozen employees? This will probably not be so easy to explain.
Comments (since February 2020 the comment function has been removed from my blog):
Stefano says
- July 2018 at 00:40 Hello Tom, in February 2018 you started using the ZEI cube as a time tracking system and a few days later you wrote this report. I had one of the first ZEI in 2017 and was so annoyed by the many software bugs of the Zei tracking software on my Windows system that I let the device go back, which worked without any problems, with full replacement. But I would still like to have such a system. May I ask you if you have maintained the habit of using time over the months? Maybe I would then dare to make a new start myself, because the instabilities of the tracking software from the first days have certainly already been overcome.
Tom Alby says
- July 2018 at 13:32 Hello Stefano,
I actually still use the ZEI cube every day I work and I’m still totally happy with it.
Best regards Tom
Wast says
- January 2019 at 13:09 Thanks for the great article. I also think the thing is a great idea and I like the design, but unfortunately still many teething problems (connection problems for me). The battery was new from the factory with only 43% charged. Notes on the device smudge a lot. The main point of criticism for me, however, is that you are not even allowed to transfer the data to Excel without a premium subscription. So without an expensive subscription not so much of a hit for me. Otherwise, the idea would be quite nice, if it worked.
Patrik says
- October 2019 at 23:26 Simple but very practical. Define a task and then only turn the times on and off. What is impractical for me is the recording to the second. So it can happen that e.g. 15 minutes are then recorded as 14 minutes because a few seconds are still missing. But I log my times in quarter-hour intervals and then have to make corrections. Here an adjustment option would be pleasant. The download in Excel is simple, can be filtered, but is also very simple. No sums are automatically calculated. per day. This has to be reworked manually.