Meeting Title: Clockify Project Budgeting and Software Review Date: 2026-02-03 Meeting participants: Rico Rejoso, Elizah Joy, Sheshu Chandrasekar, Uttam Kumaran, Megan’s Notetaker, megan
WEBVTT
1 00:00:00.760 ⇒ 00:00:06.290 megan: Yeah, we’ll keep it with sales and marketing for those, and then… Okay, so.
2 00:00:06.290 ⇒ 00:00:11.010 Uttam Kumaran: And then we have operations, which is, like, this whole crew and all of their time, and then…
3 00:00:12.360 ⇒ 00:00:17.820 Uttam Kumaran: yeah, I guess I… software expense would be separate, so operations would be all of this crew’s time.
4 00:00:18.760 ⇒ 00:00:25.080 megan: Do you want that separate? We can add operations as a separate line item.
5 00:00:25.080 ⇒ 00:00:30.299 Uttam Kumaran: If possible, separate would be good, because I assume it’s being lumped under G&A, and I want a separate.
6 00:00:30.300 ⇒ 00:00:30.880 megan: It is.
7 00:00:30.880 ⇒ 00:00:32.020 Uttam Kumaran: separated out, yeah.
8 00:00:32.020 ⇒ 00:00:33.890 megan: Yep. Okay, cool.
9 00:00:33.890 ⇒ 00:00:36.570 Uttam Kumaran: Especially given it’s pretty clean, like, who the people are.
10 00:00:36.780 ⇒ 00:00:37.470 Uttam Kumaran: So…
11 00:00:37.470 ⇒ 00:00:39.349 megan: Yep. Yep, yep, yep.
12 00:00:40.920 ⇒ 00:00:54.720 megan: Okay, so we’ll add another one, just for operations. And you’re right, that’ll keep that, that G&A a little bit more clean to just, like, internal meetings and, like, general management.
13 00:00:54.720 ⇒ 00:00:55.490 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
14 00:00:56.730 ⇒ 00:01:13.409 Uttam Kumaran: Like, I assume as that grows, we’ll pick off more pieces. For example, we don’t have, like, formal recruiting right now, but we will, or formal, like, HR, or people management, but we will. So, that’s another thing where, like, I don’t know if we want to carve that out now and just mark it as zero.
15 00:01:14.090 ⇒ 00:01:23.139 Uttam Kumaran: like, that’s honestly what I would prefer, like, so those things would be, like, recruiting, and then finance is all Leo Luna costs right now, so…
16 00:01:23.450 ⇒ 00:01:24.180 megan: Yeah.
17 00:01:24.740 ⇒ 00:01:32.539 Uttam Kumaran: like, so when I think about, like, sort of, like, the, like, different groups, it’s… it’s delivery, it’s finance, it’s operations, it’s recruiting.
18 00:01:36.180 ⇒ 00:01:36.660 megan: I’m at him.
19 00:01:36.660 ⇒ 00:01:37.870 Uttam Kumaran: It’s go-to-market.
20 00:01:39.080 ⇒ 00:01:47.370 megan: Yeah, we can add a recruiting department, too, because I think that’s also in the Clockify data.
21 00:01:48.930 ⇒ 00:01:50.520 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, it is.
22 00:01:52.490 ⇒ 00:01:52.850 megan: Thanks for tuning.
23 00:01:52.850 ⇒ 00:01:57.690 Uttam Kumaran: Time spent on interviews, anybody who’s dedicated to recruiting, Yeah.
24 00:01:59.860 ⇒ 00:02:09.809 megan: Do you want to have it as, like… because some of our team time, too, is on, like, people management. It’s small, but we could make that recruiting and people off?
25 00:02:09.810 ⇒ 00:02:14.329 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I would… I would honestly say recruiting and people ops, yeah.
26 00:02:14.610 ⇒ 00:02:15.530 megan: Okay.
27 00:02:16.010 ⇒ 00:02:26.060 megan: And then I’ll just… when we have our team stuff, same as how we split other invoices out, we’ll just make sure that the HR time goes to that department.
28 00:02:26.760 ⇒ 00:02:27.450 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
29 00:02:27.450 ⇒ 00:02:32.020 megan: Which will help, just kind of get things a little bit more organized.
30 00:02:34.650 ⇒ 00:02:50.970 megan: So, yeah, I mean, I mostly just want this to be helpful, so that it’s actually set up in a way that you’re thinking about how you’re managing the business, because, I think it’ll be a lot more clean for 2026, if we do this now.
31 00:02:50.970 ⇒ 00:03:01.529 Uttam Kumaran: We are thinking about a lot of those pieces as, like, percentage of revenue, in terms of doing budgeting, and we have some benchmarks that were…
32 00:03:01.900 ⇒ 00:03:08.590 Uttam Kumaran: That we’re thinking through, okay, like, what is the typical benchmarks of, like, for example, we got some benchmarks that’s, like.
33 00:03:08.800 ⇒ 00:03:13.399 Uttam Kumaran: 20-25% for S&M, 10% for G&A,
34 00:03:13.530 ⇒ 00:03:26.770 Uttam Kumaran: 5-10% for R&D internal, and, like, it allows us to, like, look at the benchmarks, and then look at what we’re doing. And then, also, as we look at, like, what is the… what is the ROI on every dollar in those buckets.
35 00:03:26.860 ⇒ 00:03:34.780 Uttam Kumaran: we’re able to clearly do that. And then, as we forecast our revenue forward, it’s gonna forecast those teams, like, budgets a bit forward.
36 00:03:35.020 ⇒ 00:03:39.100 Uttam Kumaran: You know, so that makes sense.
37 00:03:39.580 ⇒ 00:03:44.410 megan: Yeah, yep, okay. That… I like that.
38 00:03:44.580 ⇒ 00:03:49.090 megan: I like, using that as kind of like the budget estimate, too.
39 00:03:50.550 ⇒ 00:03:56.979 megan: So, let me… Okay, let me reshare.
40 00:03:57.120 ⇒ 00:04:00.350 megan: And then I think we’re good here.
41 00:04:01.450 ⇒ 00:04:16.159 megan: I think we can just consider this signed off, and then, and then maybe I’ll just ask for Rico’s help, then, just to make sure, like, all of the Clockify projects I’ve got here are aligned.
42 00:04:17.130 ⇒ 00:04:17.880 megan: Yeah, and I think.
43 00:04:17.880 ⇒ 00:04:31.909 Uttam Kumaran: Rico, as long… like, I don’t know if… like, I think… I just want to make sure that at some… for some reason, we can make sure, Rico, if what’s in Clockify, the naming doesn’t match here, in parentheses, you can just put the finance P&L light item.
44 00:04:32.060 ⇒ 00:04:37.629 Uttam Kumaran: Because some people are not going to know what G&A means, so whatever we have it, if we just have an internal.
45 00:04:37.840 ⇒ 00:04:43.239 Uttam Kumaran: At Clockify, just put G&A in parentheses so that finance knows that.
46 00:04:43.460 ⇒ 00:04:45.190 Uttam Kumaran: Like, that’s what it maps to.
47 00:04:45.190 ⇒ 00:04:46.050 Rico Rejoso: Okay, yeah.
48 00:04:46.770 ⇒ 00:04:49.370 Uttam Kumaran: So there shouldn’t be any Clockify
49 00:04:50.730 ⇒ 00:04:55.500 Uttam Kumaran: there shouldn’t be any Clockify projects without a… without a relevant…
50 00:04:55.850 ⇒ 00:04:59.639 Uttam Kumaran: finance P&L in parentheses. Does that make sense? Yep.
51 00:05:00.110 ⇒ 00:05:06.040 megan: Yeah. Okay. As long as we kind of know, like, what they are.
52 00:05:06.180 ⇒ 00:05:14.349 Uttam Kumaran: Because we’re… because I think that more of the thing is, like, we’re gonna… if people… we’re gonna probably end up creating more Clockify projects. I don’t want there to be stray ones without a clear tie.
53 00:05:15.280 ⇒ 00:05:23.709 megan: Exactly. Something on the P&L, yeah. Yeah, the Clockify, it should… it should definitely be intuitive for the people who are booking their time.
54 00:05:23.710 ⇒ 00:05:35.660 megan: And then we can, like, we can adapt to it, as long as we kind of know, like, oh, if you have engineering, then book it to, internal AI engineering, for example.
55 00:05:36.040 ⇒ 00:05:36.490 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
56 00:05:36.580 ⇒ 00:05:43.359 megan: very obvious, so same thing we do there. So yeah, I mean, don’t, I don’t think we need to, like.
57 00:05:43.360 ⇒ 00:06:00.950 megan: lead with these, like, the P&L departments, because you’re right, I don’t think they’re going to be as intuitive to people, and I don’t want to make things harder for them. We have no problem going the other way around. Like, recruiting will, you know, add here anything marketing and sales.
58 00:06:00.950 ⇒ 00:06:03.199 megan: So I guess then, Rico, for,
59 00:06:03.260 ⇒ 00:06:09.690 megan: January, I know we’re… I know Carla’s working on that… that right now, and
60 00:06:09.840 ⇒ 00:06:29.609 megan: I think we were still going back and forth on a few things, but maybe we can look at all the projects that came through on January, and just kind of do a quick sanity check of, like, you know, kind of where it should go on the P&L, and then hopefully tomorrow, when I’ve got that loaded, then we can get everything, organized to the new line items.
61 00:06:32.080 ⇒ 00:06:32.750 Uttam Kumaran: Great.
62 00:06:32.750 ⇒ 00:06:33.350 Rico Rejoso: No kidding.
63 00:06:35.530 ⇒ 00:06:36.380 megan: So…
64 00:06:37.560 ⇒ 00:06:47.740 megan: Okay, cool. Well, if we’re good with this, then I will have Kenzie add these new departments, and then, we can start using it with, this past month.
65 00:06:48.840 ⇒ 00:07:06.500 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, awesome. And then we… we just went through a big software review as well, and so we have a few things that we’re going to, like, cut and reassign. And so, I don’t know, Eliza, like, what… I think you… both these teams work together to produce
66 00:07:06.710 ⇒ 00:07:10.579 Uttam Kumaran: that, right? Like, I don’t know, Eliza, did you get the cost from the finance team?
67 00:07:10.830 ⇒ 00:07:11.890 Uttam Kumaran: on those.
68 00:07:12.250 ⇒ 00:07:22.710 Elizah Joy: Not yet on the others, so that still needs confirmation. So the, some of the softwares, they’ve came from the actual, like, app that we have.
69 00:07:23.340 ⇒ 00:07:33.159 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay, so we’re… we’re basically did a review of all software, so… So that we can start to set budgets around, like, our software expense, and so, yeah, I think…
70 00:07:33.440 ⇒ 00:07:38.480 Uttam Kumaran: We’re gonna be reviewing that probably, like, once a month, end of the month as well, each month, so…
71 00:07:40.640 ⇒ 00:07:46.300 megan: Yeah, yeah, that’s good. Yeah, I think, too, there’s…
72 00:07:46.800 ⇒ 00:07:52.040 megan: Well, I guess, like, while we’re kind of thinking about it, too…
73 00:07:52.540 ⇒ 00:07:59.240 megan: Any software… so one of the other things I was going to add in was a software cost of goods sold.
74 00:07:59.420 ⇒ 00:08:02.970 megan: So if we’re using things for clients…
75 00:08:04.040 ⇒ 00:08:12.520 megan: Yeah, exclusively for, like, delivering revenue to clients, then we’d want to flag that, but the,
76 00:08:13.000 ⇒ 00:08:27.579 megan: I keep, like, every time I start thinking about this, I kind of talk myself into a circle about it. I’m like, okay, but then I think about, like, okay, but how much of, like, the project management software is being used purely for internal purposes, and then I am back on, like.
77 00:08:27.770 ⇒ 00:08:31.549 megan: Well, maybe we just keep it all in where it is now, which is just software.
78 00:08:32.580 ⇒ 00:08:40.050 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, like, we don’t have any softwares, like, for example, we don’t have any softwares where we can clo- it’s, like, super clear to delineate.
79 00:08:40.480 ⇒ 00:08:51.049 Uttam Kumaran: that one software is being used more for one client, so just dividing… there are some softwares that are being used for delivery, like Google Drive we use internally and for delivery, right? So.
80 00:08:51.050 ⇒ 00:09:06.579 Uttam Kumaran: Given that, like, I’m actually just more interested in keeping the cost as minimal as possible, and looking… we went through the review, and we’re… we’re for the most part, like, pretty lean, actually. Like, all of our tools, we’ve already cut a lot of users, and it’s a… it’s a large number, but it’s…
81 00:09:06.790 ⇒ 00:09:10.260 Uttam Kumaran: fairly tight, like, we don’t have anything wasteful. So…
82 00:09:10.690 ⇒ 00:09:18.349 Uttam Kumaran: I think as we grow, and as that grows, we can think about it more for now. It’s just like, can we just keep that number as low as possible?
83 00:09:19.900 ⇒ 00:09:30.060 megan: Yeah, yeah, I agree. And I know there’s also been some talk about, like, converting some of them to, like, annual versus, like, just to get more…
84 00:09:30.060 ⇒ 00:09:30.630 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
85 00:09:30.630 ⇒ 00:09:33.739 megan: screens there. I think that’s a great,
86 00:09:33.900 ⇒ 00:09:49.959 megan: I think that’s something that we can pick up later. It’s just, like, now, like, right now, I think we’re still not out of the liquidity crunch, and it’s just kind of like, it’s, okay, so yeah, we could save $600 on this one subscription, but it involves, like.
87 00:09:50.080 ⇒ 00:09:54.799 megan: Spending $6,000, or whatever it is, you know, to get those savings.
88 00:09:54.800 ⇒ 00:09:55.440 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
89 00:09:55.440 ⇒ 00:10:16.770 megan: So, I think we’ll keep those month-to-month for now, but, you know, we’ll pick that up a little bit, like, a couple months down the road. And, like, maybe not all of them make sense to kind of convert to annual, just because of that, like, one-time cost outlay, but we could pick, like, the biggest bang for the buck at that point, and then make those changes, so…
90 00:10:16.870 ⇒ 00:10:22.499 megan: But yeah, I know you guys are tracking that, though, and have it on your lists.
91 00:10:24.610 ⇒ 00:10:26.110 Uttam Kumaran: Perfect. Okay.
92 00:10:26.590 ⇒ 00:10:30.100 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, that’s really all I want to talk about, so this is perfect, this is helpful.
93 00:10:30.650 ⇒ 00:10:35.509 megan: Yeah, yeah, let me get those changes over to Kenzie, and…
94 00:10:36.140 ⇒ 00:10:55.730 megan: I’ll still… I’ll add a COGS software, just in case we need to use it in the future, then it’s already there, but, yeah, I think we’ll just keep software on its own, add in those 4 or 5 that we talked about, and I’ve got a couple other minor renamings, and then we can go from there.
95 00:10:56.590 ⇒ 00:10:57.250 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
96 00:10:58.170 ⇒ 00:10:59.359 Uttam Kumaran: Thank you, everybody.
97 00:10:59.960 ⇒ 00:11:00.900 megan: Awesome.
98 00:11:01.930 ⇒ 00:11:02.429 Rico Rejoso: Thank you guys.
99 00:11:02.430 ⇒ 00:11:03.130 Uttam Kumaran: Appreciate it.
100 00:11:03.130 ⇒ 00:11:04.050 Elizah Joy: Thank you.
101 00:11:04.740 ⇒ 00:11:05.610 megan: Bye.