Useme is a platform for the legal settlement of freelancers without setting up a business. The freelancer issues a VAT invoice, and the client receives a cost document and formal security for the cooperation. Fast, simple, and without unnecessary bureaucracy. The company creates a safe environment where companies and independent specialists can collaborate without administrative barriers. Calamari has accompanied Useme since May 2022, supporting the 67-person team with three modules: Time Off, Time & Attendence and Core HR.
Useme was growing and needed to sort out two things: scheduling and time tracking for select teams, and managing attendance and leave across the entire company. Google Calendar and spreadsheets had worked fine before, but as the organization expanded, they started creating more work than they saved.
Calamari was the first tool the team chose. They were won over by its simplicity and the fact that Calamari is a Polish product. For a company that itself simplifies processes for its customers, choosing an HR tool with a similar philosophy felt natural. The right number of features for a small team that doesn't need advanced HR capabilities or complex processes was also important.
67 people at Useme work across 7 teams, but the Time & Attendence module is active in only two of them: Customer Service and Finance. The rest of the company uses the Time Off and Core HR modules. The ability to activate selected modules for selected groups — rather than all users — turned out to be one of the deciding factors when choosing the tool.
In the Customer Service team, which works in shifts, the Time Tracking module is particularly important.
For me, as a Head of Department, the ability to measure working time and generate reports that facilitate the calculation of overtime and hours to be made up is particularly useful. This is of great significance in the Customer Service team, as we work in shifts, and it is important to have a clear overview of hours worked and any potential overtime.
"The calendar showing both current and planned absences is also very helpful — it makes it easy to see who is unavailable at any given moment or who is planning a longer holiday," says Agata Kołodziej-Dynaryńska. "It makes it easier to organize team work and to plan meetings in the broader context of the whole company. Reports on days off help assess employee availability and respond appropriately when someone's absences start becoming more frequent or prolonged."
Both teams using the Time Tracking module clock hours primarily through Slack, and secondarily through the browser.
One of the more interesting solutions at Useme is the way the company handles leave requests from management. The ability to customize approval processes by role and team allowed the company to configure automatic approval for leave requests submitted by heads of departments.
One of the things that surprised me most when I joined Useme was that heads' leave requests in Calamari… simply approve themselves automatically. And it really works.
At first glance it might seem risky, but in practice it's the opposite. This solution is built on a very mature organizational culture. Every leader understands their responsibilities clearly — both for their projects and their team — and makes sure that before any absence, all key topics are covered and stakeholders know what will happen in the meantime.
As a result, a lot of things happen here naturally, without extra layers of control. The process works because people genuinely own their areas.
Calamari supports this approach by allowing approval flows to be customized by role and team. A company building a culture of trust needs a tool that doesn't impose unnecessary steps.
Slack and Google Calendar integrations are one of the biggest advantages of Calamari for the Useme team. Automatic status synchronization between Calamari and other apps means nobody has to remember to add absences to their calendar or update their Slack status. As the team puts it: "Everything is crystal clear."
Approving leave through Slack is great — I can do it right away when an employee submits a request, nothing has to "sit on the desk" or wait until I open Calamari.
Logging working time through Slack is another convenience. There's no need to open a separate Calamari page — everything happens in the tool the team already uses every day. Viewing available leave days directly in Slack makes it easier to submit requests and keep track of limits.
Useme employees most commonly use the tool to request time off, and their favourite feature is the absence calendar and its integration with Google Calendar and Slack. The company has also recently started using the Core HR module to handle HR formalities.
Useme uses 6 types of restrictions in the Leave Management module. Each one solves a specific problem:
The system enforces the rules automatically, taking that responsibility off managers and the HR team.
Birthday notifications in Calamari remind the Useme team to send wishes to their colleague on Slack. They share them along with a GIF, video, or card, and each employee has the chance to write something personal. It's a small feature, but in a distributed organization, rituals like these matter.
After three years with Calamari, the Useme team sees concrete results:
Calamari helped us bring order to key processes in the organization and introduce greater transparency into day-to-day work. We no longer have to track dozens of spreadsheets and manually calculate working hours, or remember to mark leave in multiple apps. It simplifies onboarding for new employees, makes daily work easier — especially for managers leading teams — and brings structure to document workflows.
While it's hard to express this in concrete numbers, the tool has genuinely improved the way we work and lifted the burden of managing scattered documents and processes off our shoulders, bringing everything together in one intuitive app. We absolutely see that as a valuable return on investment.
You can always reach out to Calamari's support team — the care and response time are top-notch. And the tool itself is genuinely simple, covering all the essentials without unnecessary distractions.
