Intro Hubstaff Manager
When picking a time monitoring tool, it is important to comprehend the many different kinds of tools available. Tools like Mavenlink, Wrike, and Zoho Projects all include robust time tracking features for professional services businesses. However, the time monitoring features in these tools are available only within bigger project management (PM) suites. As a result, you’re paying much more cash for things such as file storage, in-app chat, progress reports, and change management. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you will discover pure play time tracking tools like Hubstaff (which begins at $5 a month per user) and TSheets, our Editors’ Choice instrument for time tracking. Hubstaff Manager
Characteristics and Usage
Hubstaff’s user interface (UI) is designed with a appealing left-rail blue navigation bar that leaves plenty of room on the right-hand side of your display for data entry and analysis. When you log into the system, you will be taken to the main dashboard, which gives you an overview of how many hours your employees have worked that day and the number of hours they have worked over the past seven days. You’ll also find a list of every member, their most recent tasks, and how busy they’ve been over the last week. This is a solid PM data visualization which lets you immediately differentiate between workhorses and do-nothings, and it immediately calls to focus projects that are getting more than enough attention and jobs that are being disregarded.
There are two methods to put in time in Hubstaff: You can build manual timesheets with past hours worked, or you may use the stopwatch feature on Hubstaff’s native desktop program. Together with the timesheet feature, you log your hours since you likely did with pen and paper through the analog age of time monitoring. Basically, if you work your shift, you add time to your own timesheet, and you sign off on it. This is a fairly standard method of tracking time. Unfortunately, because Hubstaff does not allow you to add future time, you can not use the platform for a shift organizer. Administrators can let users manually edit previously submitted timesheets, and they can force users to require a motive to ensure they’re really adding hours that they worked. Admins may also set the system up to let users to start tracking time should they have not clocked to the system in a while.
The second, and most bothersome, way of monitoring moment in Hubstaff is by using the stopwatch feature. In each solution we analyzed, this element can be found within the boundaries of your internet browserevery solution that’s, except for Hubstaff. With Hubstaff, you’re required to download a native desktop application that resides within a separate window. In it, you can choose your project, press Start, and your own timer will begin counting. When you’re done, your action and your screenshots will be sent to the principal hub. The native program will take a picture at random periods of up to 3 shots per hour depending on how often the admin would like to spy on employees. Screenshots can be partly blurred not to record sensitive information on every grab, but a lot of the display is left unsullied you’ll still get a feeling of whether the screen is really on work-related or play-related content. This is an annoyingly complicated and complicated means to manually track time, especially if you’re jumping from task to task through the day. Hubstaff must find a way to bring the stopwatch and screengrab elements to the cloud-based architecture to simplify ease of use.
Tracking time in real-time on Hubstaff’s Android and iOS programs is precisely the same as it is on the desktop program. The mobile apps let admins monitor movements via GPS monitoring. This gives you an summary of just how much movement was done by your worker by capturing location data at different stages.
The Schedules tab enables you to assign times and dates for workers to do the job. You can set a minimum number of hours to operate, a lunch break duration, and you can allow it to be a recurring shift. The tool’s reporting applications is horribly basic: You will get access to weekly, daily, project, and member view reports as well as a”habit” report which lets you filter information from the above reports. In comparison to the PM options in this course, Hubstaff’s reporting is utterly embarrassing so, if your target is to learn and evolve based on if and how your employees manage time, you’d be much better off working using Zoho Projects, our Editors’ Choice for PM.
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Admins receive notifications when they’ve attained weekly staffing and funding limitations. Invoices are automatically calculated and made depending on the time each employee worked, in addition to their related pay rate. It is possible to set up automatic citizenship through PayPal, which enables you to automate payments based on time tracked inside the tool. Remember: Users don’t need to send time for approval, therefore automatic payments will be made whether workers were wrong or right concerning the number of hours they worked. There is no reminder for managers to double-check each timesheet before automatic payments move out so, if you are worried about making false payments, then you can set PayPal payments to manual. Hubstaff Manager
Price And Options
Hubstaff was built to provide you with Big Brother-level oversight into when workers are working, what they are doing while they work, and what you really want to pay them as soon as the job is done. The Fundamental $5-per-month program provides you access to easy time tracking tools, a worker payment program supervisor, 24/7 support, and user settings that may be handled on an employee-by-employee basis. Moreover, this plan lets you keep track of whether or not your employees are working by letting you document screenshots while they function in addition to monitor mouse and keyboard action during changes. Of the five tools we’ve tested, Hubstaff is the only tool which offered this amount of insight into the way that workers are progressing. Although keyboard and screen monitoring are useful (albeit over-reaching) attributes for a shift monitor, Hubstaff’s implementation leaves much to be desired (more on this later).
The $9-per-user-per-month Premium program includes all you’ll discover in the fundamental program, but you will also get access to Hubstaff’s application programming interface (API) to integrate the tool with other third party software. The Premium package also comes with a lightweight schedulingtool that gives administrators the capability to assign changes and assign tasks from within the console. Premium clients may also use the tool to create invoices and make PayPal payments automatically. Customers that pay yearly will receive two weeks free (for both cost tiers).
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Compared to TSheets, its nearest competition in our roundup, Hubstaff is reasonably priced, especially given the added tracking features that are unavailable in competitive tools. TSheets supplies a fundamental free account, in addition to a $4-per-user-per-month account that costs a $16 base fee per month for groups with fewer than 100 users, along with a $80 foundation fee per month for teams with over a hundred users. The base fee, which Hubstaff does not charge, makes TSheets slightly more expensive than Hubstaff, even in Hubstaff’s Premium degree.
If you are more interested in those hulky PM alternatives, then you will need to pony up a little more cash. Mavenlink’s cheapest program that includes time monitoring costs $39 per user per month. Zoho’s cheapest time tracking plan is $25 per month for an infinite number of consumers (that is a fairly solid deal if you need all of the extra PM attributes ). Wrike’s cheapest time monitoring plan prices $24.80 per user per month.
What Should Be Added
Editor’s note: Since our first overview of Hubstaff, the business has released a major update in late 2018 that specifically addressed certain feature flaws or omissions, including adding a internet timer, fleshing out coverage choices, and adding action levels and screen monitoring. We are going to be analyzing these attributes shortly and you’ll see the results in an upcoming update to this review.
Besides its draconian screengrab and keystroke tracking, Hubstaff does not do a very good job allowing for deeper change supervision. By way of example, Hubstaff doesn’t allow advanced monitoring. If you run a trucking business and you’re less concerned about how many hours a trucker drove than the distance driven, then there’s no way to handle this in Hubstaff. Users may add notes to an empty text field, but that information won’t be blended into reports. As a consequence, that you can not use it to learn about who’s functioning, how they are functioning, and what they’re generating (other than the number of hours tracked). TSheets not only gives you this option, it provides you the ability to create six additional customizable advanced tracking fields. You might even put in a query for every clock-out (i.e.,”Was there an episode? Yes. No.”) And the system forces the consumer to respond to the queries at the end of each shift or they will not have the ability to clock out.
As hardcore as Hubstaff is about monitoring work, the tool does not allow for IP address restrictions, which means your employees can say they are working from the office but they can actually be operating from a cruise boat in the Bahamas (unless they are using the cell program to monitor time). This is a normal feature that’s available in almost every other tool we analyzed. Hubstaff also does not enable admins to require users to snap a photograph when they report to work. I guess it’s overkill to make somebody take a selfie before you start recording their display and tracking their keystrokes, but TSheets lets you set this as a necessity (which makes sense, especially if you’re monitoring tasks done out of a computer, such as electronic, construction, or amusement work). The software also doesn’t allow users clock via a phone call, which is an element TSheets along with other service providers make readily available for workers who do not have a smartphone.
Tracking Employee Work
We have touched on how a number of Hubstaff’s more Enormous Brother-like attributes factor into time monitoring. But the platform also offers a lot of the hallmarks of worker tracking tools. Hubstaff’s employee tracking features include keystroke logging, URL and program monitoring, GPS and location tracking, and activity screenshots.
Once you place your users and they download the timer app onto their machine, the desktop app not only monitors time but will take screenshots randomly or at custom intervals, such as three screenshots each minute. This applies not just to the user’s main display but any connected monitors too. Hubstaff does not log keys however, it will track the action provided through the mouse and computer keyboard, providing employers a calculation of just how active the worker is. This data all winds up on the Hubstaff dashboard in the Task tab. This is where you can then pick a user from the drop-down menu to see their screenshots connected with action data.
When it comes to program and URL tracking, Hubstaff goes beyond just tracking time to learn what websites and programs an employee visited or opened and how long they were there. The Reports module can then run custom questions on vectors such as app usage mapped against time and action. Hubstaff integrates with project and task management tools such as Asana and Trello to filter reports by specific projects or tasks to monitor productivity.
1 unique employee tracking feature offered is GPS location monitoring through Hubstaff’s mobile program. While the mobile app can’t take screenshots or catch mobile app and site activity, it allows you to monitor and log location for workers working in the area. While the depth of tracking data and surveillance features can’t step up to a powerhouse tool such as Teramind, our Editors’ Choice for worker tracking, Hubstaff has a helpful selection of features for employers that want a little more oversight. Hubstaff Manager
Conclusion
Hubstaff is an easy-to-administer, feature-rich, time monitoring tool. If you’re diligent about tracking employee behaviour while on the clock, then there is no better software available than Hubstaff. You’ll be able to log screenshots, monitor keystroke volume, and route moves via GPS monitoring.
Regrettably, if you’re trying to find a platform which goes the extra mile to enable customization, atypical data entry, or a much more sophisticated reporting arrangement, then Hubstaff won’t be right for you. Additionally, in case you choose another program, your employees will thank you for not needing them to download a secondary program for monitoring time–particularly when you consider that every other tool we reviewed makes this potential within the confines of their web-based UI. Hubstaff Manager
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