Timizer
Timesheets and activity reports management
Timizer is a specialized B2B SaaS solution focused on automating creation, e-signing, and export of activity reports / timesheets for freelancers, IT service companies and IT departments.
France freelancers need to have their timesheets signed by their client before sending their invoices.
Why Timizer exists (the universal pain of the activity report)
For years, I lived the consultant life. You know the drill: deliver on the client site, solve complex problems, and then, at the end of the month, the true battle began. It wasn't about debugging code; it was about the Activity Report (called Compte Rendu d'Activité in french, a kind of super timesheet).
I realized that the CRA wasn't just my problem; it was the silent killer of productivity and cash flow for every freelancer, every IT service company and every IT Department.
The pain was multi-layered and chronic:
For the consultant/freelancer: Weeks of work boiled down to a chaotic scramble to find the right Excel template, manually fill in hours, save as PDF, print, sign, and send. Time spent on this administrative chore is time not billable.
For the admin team: They faced a nightmare of follow-ups, chasing managers for signatures, dealing with formatting errors, and manually reconciling dozens of different templates against contracts. This manual process delayed invoicing by an average of 5 to 10 days.
The market gap: I looked at the tools available. They were either gigantic, overly complex ERP systems designed for HR (way too expensive for my simple need: validate an activity report), or simple time-tracking apps that completely missed the critical step: the client's secure, formal e-signature and validation.
The revelation was simple: No one was focused solely on solving the bottleneck between "time spent" and "cash collected." That’s when the idea for Timizer was born: a single, focused solution to turn the chaotic activity report into a seamless, automated cash-flow accelerator.
The tech stack & dev journey
As an indie hacker, I knew the solution had to be reliable, scalable, and built quickly to validate the core market need. I focused on robust, established technologies to avoid getting bogged down in configuration hell.
The stack
Backend: I opted for Go (Golang). Why Go? Stability, performance, and its excellent concurrency handling are crucial for managing high volumes of reports exports and API calls reliably for our growing my IT services companies clients.
Frontend: React—a no-brainer for building a modern, fast, and intuitive user interface. The goal was to make activity reports entry so simple that consultants wouldn't fight it.
Hosting: I chose OVH for hosting. Their commitment to European data sovereignty was a huge factor, especially when dealing with sensitive corporate data and contracts. Ça vous plait ? C'est français !
The development sprint
The initial goal was to build the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) quickly to test the core value proposition: Activity report creation, secure e-signature, and PDF generation.
It took me 2 months of focused nights and weekends to launch the MVP. It wasn't pretty, but it did the one thing the market needed: it solved the client validation bottleneck. I intentionally left out bells and whistles to focus 100% on the core administrative pain.
Early traction & hard-won lessons learned
Getting from zero users to the first paying customers was a grind, but highly instructive.
Initial Traction
My focus was initially hyper-local and targeted the highest pain points:
Cold outreach to pain: My very first clients were freelancers I found through my network and local communities, and a few small ESNs (IT services companies) on LinkedIn. I didn't sell features; I sold time back and faster payments.
The freemium hook: The freelance community responded well to the freemium model. Giving away the core activity report generation functionality for free was a great way to onboard them, and they quickly converted to Premium when they realized they needed the automated reminders, PDF customization and client e-signature.
The first numbers: As of today, Timizer is generating €1.1k MRR and is trusted by over 4K active users (including paid and free users). [Self-correction: I’m learning that even small numbers are better than silence.]
The biggest lesson so far
My initial mistake was thinking the biggest feature would be the beautiful UI. I was wrong.
The biggest challenge, and ultimately the biggest driver for paid adoption, was catering to the specific needs of our two main paying customer types:
For the Small IT services companies: The critical feature wasn't the activity report creation itself, but the CSV export quality and the batch processing for their accounting team. The pain moves from the consultant to the Sales team.
For the enterprise market: Nothing else matters until we implement SSO (Single Sign-On) and robust APIs. They need integration, security, and homogeneity. Features are secondary to compliance and control.
This pivot in focus, from UI polish to backend integration and export fidelity, was the key to unlocking our first B2B contracts.
The Future & Calling on the IH Community
Timizer is currently focused on the French market, where the specific concept of the activity report is a mandatory administrative bottleneck for freelancers, IT service companies and IT departments.
International scaling: my next big hurdle
Having validated the product-market fit here, my next major move is to scale globally. To facilitate this, I have just completed translating the entire platform and website into English.
But this raises a critical question I need help with from this community:
Is the "Activity Report" pain point (where a signed document is legally required by the client to trigger invoicing) as prevalent or mandatory in the US, UK, or other foreign markets as it is in France?
While time tracking is universal, the specific administrative flow for client validation might vary greatly. If this specific flow exists under a different name (e.g., "project sign-off sheet," "consulting validation form"), knowing that would accelerate my marketing and localization efforts.
Next steps & goal
My current primary goal is to leverage the new integrations (SSO and advanced APIs) to land a few larger Enterprise clients and push our MRR past the €10k mark by the end of Q1 2026.
What advice would you give on localizing a B2B SaaS built around a very specific administrative document?
2 Comments
Really cool to see another founder tackling freelancer admin pain. I'm building something in a similar space — invoicing for freelancers and small businesses, targeting the US market.
To answer your question about the US: the "activity report" concept isn't as formalized here as in France. US freelancers don't usually need client-signed timesheets before invoicing. But the pain is still very real — it's just shaped differently. Here it's more about chasing late payments, dealing with clunky tools (or worse, Excel/Google Sheets), and not having a simple way to track what's been sent vs paid.
The tools that dominate (FreshBooks, Wave, Zoho Invoice) are either expensive or overly complex for solo freelancers. There's definitely a gap for something simpler and more affordable.
Your insight about freemium driving adoption is interesting — I've been debating the same thing. How did you decide what to keep free vs premium?
We built something in the CAPTCHA space recently and learned (the hard way) how much friction it can add if you’re not careful.
How are you balancing UX vs abuse?