Case Study

From spreadsheet chaos to Monday-morning calm

How a 12-person design studio in Jakarta replaced five disconnected tools with one workspace — and got their Mondays back.

Company Senja Studio

Industry Design Agency

Team size 12 people

Location Jakarta, ID

Five tools. Zero clarity.

Rina, co-founder and ops lead, started every Monday the same way: hunting through tabs. Attendance in a Google Sheet. Leave requests in WhatsApp. Expense receipts in email. Tasks scattered across Trello and sticky notes on the office wall.

By 10 AM she hadn't done any real work. She was just the human glue holding five systems together — none of which talked to each other.

📋 "Who approved Adi's leave? Check the sheet…"

💬 WA group: "I'm WFH today — feeling unwell"

🧾 taxi receipt.jpg → forward to finance@…

✅ Trello: "Design brand kit" — is this done??

⏰ Reminder: update attendance before payroll Friday

The breaking point

I realised I was spending 15 hours a week just moving information between apps. That's two full workdays — gone.

Rina Amelia

Co-founder & Ops Lead, Senja Studio

When a client deadline was missed because nobody knew who was on leave, Rina knew something had to change. She didn't need more tools — she needed fewer. One place where attendance, leave, expenses, and tasks lived side by side.

She found Workived through a friend running a similar-sized consultancy. The pitch was simple: everything your small team needs, nothing it doesn't.

Two weeks. Zero downtime.

Senja Studio didn't stop working to switch tools. The migration happened alongside their normal projects — one module at a time.

Day 1

Signed up & invited the team

Rina created the workspace, added 12 team members, and set up 3 departments. Total time: 8 minutes.

Day 3

Attendance goes live

The Google Sheet was retired. Team members started clocking in from their phones. GPS verification meant no more "I forgot to mark attendance" excuses.

Day 7

Leave & expenses unified

No more WhatsApp leave requests. No more emailing receipts. One dashboard showed who's off, who's claiming what, and the remaining leave balance — all real-time.

Day 14

Fully migrated

Task boards moved in. The old Trello was archived. For the first time, Rina could see attendance, tasks, and leave all from one screen. Monday mornings became productive.

The numbers speak

Three months after switching, Senja Studio measured the impact.

Hours saved per week

15h

That's two full workdays returned to the team — every single week.

Tools replaced

5→1

Google Sheets, WhatsApp, Email, Trello, and manual spreadsheets — all consolidated.

Leave request resolution

< 2 min

From "did anyone see my WhatsApp?" to instant notification and one-tap approval.

Expense claims processed

98%

Within 24 hours. Previously? Some receipts got lost for weeks.

Team adoption

100%

All 12 members active within the first week.

Setup time

8 min

From sign-up to first team member invited.

Monthly cost

Workived's free tier covers teams up to 15 people.

What changed — beyond the numbers

The spreadsheet hours came back. But the real transformation was cultural.

Mondays stopped being admin days

Rina now spends her Monday mornings on client strategy, not chasing attendance records. The weekly team sync starts with project updates — not HR catch-up.

Everyone owns their own data

Designers check their leave balance themselves. Developers submit expense claims directly. Nobody needs to ask Rina "how many sick days do I have left?"

Deadlines stopped slipping

With tasks and leave visible in one place, the team can actually plan around absences. No more "I didn't know she was on leave this week" surprises.

It just… feels lighter

The team vibe shifted. Less friction. Less "who do I ask about this?" anxiety. More time for the creative work that actually matters to a design studio.

Your team's story
starts here

Join hundreds of small teams who traded chaos for calm. Workived is free for teams up to 15 people — no credit card, no catch.

Get Started Free