The Unmakers: The startup out to eliminate time sheets

"What I uncovered as I tried to get my team set up time sheeting ...  was that not only are they incredibly frustrating for the people doing them, and the people chasing them, but the data that comes back from them is not very accurate."

That's Freddie Mckenzie, co-founder of Manifest, a startup using AI to automatically construct timesheets at agencies. Mckenzie, speaking with Tim Burrowes in the latest episode of Mumbrella's Unmaker Series podcast, says he's well aware that many in the industry think billable hours is a broken model: but that doesn't mean it's irrelevant.

 "The agency model and the whole industry runs on time: time's a really important component at the moment. It's becoming less important as we go into the future, but ultimately it's a service-based industry ... [and time remains important for] understanding your costs, understanding your resourcing, understanding your team, and understanding your business."

Manifest began as an internal tool ("Shutterspeed") built inside Mackenzie's Auckland production company Vivid Creative (now Chameleon). The system uses machine learning to automate time sheet tracking, and Mckenzie says that pricing model will initially be based on standard per-seat SaaS models.

McKenzie told Burrowes that while some people may have privacy concerns about the software, it was probably worth it even on an individual basis because for many agency people, timesheeting is the worst part of their job.

Manifest is not a simple timesheeting stand-in: it's designed to give managers a better understanding of their own operations.

 "Charging based on time is definitely becoming obsolete really fast -- it de-incentivizes agencies to use AI tooling because it's supposed to make us faster."

 "What Manifest is designed to do is help you understand how outputs are created and how value is created inside the agency," he says.