Case Study: Rumble Boxing x Buddy Punch
How Rumble Boxing gym owner Jaclyn Ruggiero balances fun and professionalism with Buddy Punch

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Highlights
Problem:
- Jaclyn was spending too much time manually tracking and recording the working hours of her part-time employees.
- Requesting hours via text message felt informal and unprofessional.
- No extra time to teach her growing team how to use new software.
Solution:
Buddy Punch Time Tracking
Results:
- Streamlined payroll operations – Implementing Buddy Punch for time tracking has given Jaclyn more time in her day to pursue bigger goals: providing excellent service and growing the business.
- Improved pay accuracy – Since Buddy Punch can capture time worked down to the minute, Jaclyn is confident employees are getting paid every cent they’ve earned.
- Easy onboarding – Getting her team up to speed required little-to-no training.
- Cost-savings – As an entrepreneur and small business owner, cash flow is a top priority for Jaclyn. With Buddy Punch, she can rest easy knowing she’s not paying for any unnecessary features.
Overview
Jaclyn Ruggiero’s entry into entrepreneurship was unexpected. Just a few years out of college and uninspired by her corporate job in New York City, she decided to follow her fitness passion into small business ownership. Rumble Boxing, the gym she frequented, had just expanded into franchise operations, and Jaclyn was ready for a challenge.
Over the course of the next three years she built her studio in Englewood, NJ from the ground up. Since her official grand opening in February of 2023, members have been flocking to the gym thanks in part to a positive and energetic environment that doesn’t always come with the territory. “We hold these truths to be self-evident that working out doesn’t have to suck” the website reminds visitors and as a Rumble Boxing franchise owner, Jaclyn knows it’s up to her to uphold those values in every aspect of her business.
But as the studio began to grow and Jaclyn began hiring additional front-desk staff, she knew her old way of tracking hours for payroll wouldn’t be sustainable. She started her search for time tracking solutions for small businesses and, with its user-friendly interface, Buddy Punch quickly jumped to the top of her list. She’s been pleased with the way her staff has adopted the solution so far.
“I have a studio manager who I talk to about everything. I am on the phone with him every single day, multiple times a day, even if I’m not at the studio. He is the one running the day-to-day operations of the business. I definitely ran Buddy Punch by him to get his feedback: ‘Do you think we need this? Do you think I should use this? Will it make the employee’s lives easier?’ And it was a yes to all those questions. So it was kind of a no-brainer for me and for him,”
Jaclyn
Challenge
As a first-time business owner, Jaclyn quickly came to realize that there would be no dull moments. Her days are full, between fostering member relationships, growing the business, hiring and managing staff. Although Rumble Boxing is part of a larger franchise operation, she makes the majority of business decisions on her own, and is solely responsible for ensuring things run smoothly.
“It’s definitely crazy, every single day is different. I never know what I’m going to get when I wake up. My day-to-day literally could be anything from running payroll to doing paperwork, to getting on calls with corporate. If we have an issue with our electricity or our wiring isn’t working, or our Wi-Fi goes out, that falls on me. I’m the fire putter-outter.”
Her main focus has always been supporting her team members so they’re not only happy to come to work, they’re also creating the fun and upbeat atmosphere Rumble Boxing prides itself on. In the beginning, she was able to take on the responsibility of requesting and entering payroll hours herself and took an “honor system” approach with the few employees she had at the time.
“I was tracking hours manually, having them record their hours and then send it to me. I didn’t have that many front desk employees at the time, so it was easy enough to track, [but it] really wasn’t efficient. [Basically] I was using an honor system. I mean, I have cameras in the studio so I can fully see when people are showing up and leaving, it’s not a secret. But I’m not watching the cameras 24/7. I’m not here every day.”
It didn’t take long before Jaclyn realized her lack of process around time-tracking was affecting how she reported on business performance and her ability to scale the team as the business grew. More importantly, she was spending energy wrangling and entering numbers that could have been better spent elsewhere.
“I think what it came down to was two things: I recognized that I’m not going to have two front desk employees forever. So when the studio grows, I’m not going to be able to manually have all these people text me their hours. So that was the first moment I thought, ‘I probably should implement some kind of system here.’”
Solution
Despite only having a few years of entrepreneurship under her belt, Jaclyn knew that she was going to have to find a better solution for time tracking, especially if she wanted to grow the business and add new members to the team.
“I think what it came down to was two things: I recognized that I’m not going to have two front desk employees forever. So when the studio grows, I’m not going to be able to manually have all these people text me their hours. So that was the first moment I thought, ‘I probably should implement some kind of system here.’”
And then the next thing…I realized [was] I want things to be a little more buttoned up, a little more professional. I want my employees to know that they are clocking in, clocking out. That I have a stamp of their hours and not just a haphazard [record],” she said.
She didn’t have to look far in her search before finding Buddy Punch, which immediately stood out to her for its simplicity and easy-to-use interface. Other solutions felt cluttered with too many random tabs, or overly complicated, and she worried about paying for features that she didn’t need or want.
“My deciding factor [for choosing Buddy Punch] was that it seemed very user-friendly. If it’s not user-friendly and my staff can’t understand it, I cannot sit here and spend hours training them on software,” Jaclyn explained.
She went on to say:
“When software is trying to do too much or over-complicating what it does, I find that it almost has the reverse effect. Buddy Punch is simple, so that my employees can come in, clock in and clock out. When they log in, the home screen is not complicated by any means.”
Results
Overall, Jaclyn has found the switch to Buddy Punch from manual time tracking to be a seamless and smooth process. And she’s already seeing the positive impact that comes from having more structure in her business and payroll operations. As promised on the website, the Rumble Gym environment is still as casual and fun as it’s always been – the joking around and music hasn’t gone anywhere. But now, Jaclyn is finding the balance between having fun and keeping things professional.
She’s also happy with the improvements to pay accuracy, since her employees are being paid for every minute of time worked as opposed to rough estimates, rounded off to the nearest hour or half-hour.
“[Making] sure that people are getting paid accurately, that’s the most important thing. It’s another big reason why I wanted an actual time tracking system, because it’s very, very rare that somebody worked 25 hours [exactly]. If that person has clocked 25.7 hours, they are owed that 0.7 of time. That’s their money,” she explained.
As for what Jaclyn is spending her time on these days, she’s currently “full-throttle,” working hard and getting ready for the gym’s busiest season – January through May – and excited to see just how far she can take Rumble Boxing.
“In terms of bigger picture goals, I want to own more locations. I’ve learned [a lot by becoming a business owner at a] very interesting age where not many people are doing this. I’m just kind of going where it takes me,”