Intro Hubstaff Screenshots
When choosing a time tracking tool, it’s important to understand the many different kinds of tools available. Tools like Mavenlink, Wrike, and Zoho Projects all include powerful time monitoring features for professional services companies. On the other hand, the time tracking features in these tools are available only within larger project management (PM) suites. Because of this, you are paying a lot more money for things like file storage, in-app chat, progress reports, and change management. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you will discover pure play time monitoring tools such as Hubstaff (which starts at $5 a month per user) and TSheets, our Editors’ Choice instrument for time tracking. Hubstaff Screenshots
Characteristics and Usage
Hubstaff’s user interface (UI) was created with an attractive left-rail blue navigation bar which leaves plenty of room around the side of your screen for data entry and analysis. When you first log into the system, you will be taken to the main dashboard, which provides you an overview of how many hours your employees have worked that day and how many hours they have worked over the past seven days. You will also see a list of each member, their latest jobs, and how active they have been over the past week. This is a strong PM data visualization which lets you immediately differentiate between workhorses and do-nothings, and it instantly calls to focus projects which are getting more than enough attention and projects that are being neglected.
There are two ways to put in time in Hubstaff: You are able to build manual timesheets with previous hours worked, or you can use the stopwatch feature on Hubstaff’s native desktop app. With the timesheet feature, you log your hours as you likely did with pen and paper through the analog age of time monitoring. Essentially, you work your change, you add time to your own timesheet, and you also sign off on it. This is a pretty standard method of monitoring time. Regrettably, because Hubstaff doesn’t allow you to add future time, you can not use the platform as a shift planner. Administrators can let users manually edit previously submitted timesheets, and they can force users to require a motive to guarantee they’re really adding hours they worked. Admins can also set the system up to let users to start monitoring time should they haven’t clocked to the machine in a while.
The second, and most frustrating, way of monitoring time in Hubstaff is using the stopwatch feature. In each solution we analyzed, this component is available within the confines of your web browserevery solution that’s, except for Hubstaff. With Hubstaff, you’re expected to download an native desktop application that resides within a separate window. In it, you can choose your job, press Start, along with your timer will start counting. When you’re done, your activity and your screenshots will be transmitted to the principal hub. The native app will take a photo at random periods of up to three shots per hour based on how often the admin wants to spy on employees. Screenshots can be partly blurred to not record sensitive information on every grab, but enough of the display is left unsullied you’ll still get a feeling of if the screen is really on work-related or play-related content. This is an annoyingly complicated and complicated means to manually track time, particularly if you’re jumping from task to task throughout the day. Hubstaff must find a way to bring the stopwatch and also screengrab elements to the cloud-based architecture to simplify ease of use.
Tracking time in real-time on Hubstaff’s Android and iOS apps is precisely the same as it’s on the desktop app. The mobile programs let admins monitor motions via GPS tracking. This provides you an overview of how much motion was performed by your employee by capturing location information at different stages.
The Schedules tab enables you to assign times and dates for employees to work. You can put a minimum number of hours to operate, a lunch break interval, and you’ll be able to allow it to be a recurring shift. The tool’s reporting applications is terribly basic: You’ll get access to weekly, daily, project, and member view reports as well as a”custom” report which lets you filter data from the above reports. When compared to the PM options in this course, Hubstaff’s coverage is downright embarrassing consequently, if your target is to learn and evolve according to when and how your employees handle time, you would be much better off working using Zoho Projects, our Editors’ Choice for PM.
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Admins receive notifications once they have reached weekly staffing and funding limits. Invoices are automatically calculated and made depending on the time each worker worked, as well as their associated pay rate. You can set up automatic citizenship through PayPal, which enables you to automate payments based on time tracked within the application. Remember: Users don’t need to send time through for acceptance, therefore automatic payments will be made whether workers were wrong or right about the amount of hours that they worked. There is not any reminder for managers to double-check each timesheet ahead of automatic payments move out so, if you’re worried about making false payments, then you can place PayPal payments to guide. Hubstaff Screenshots
Cost And Options
Hubstaff has been 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 finished. The Basic $5-per-month plan provides you access to simple time tracking tools, an employee payment schedule supervisor, 24/7 support, and user settings which can be managed on an employee-by-employee basis. Moreover, this plan lets you keep track of whether your employees are working by letting you record screenshots while they function as well as monitor keyboard and mouse activity during changes. Of the five tools we’ve tested, Hubstaff is the only tool which offered this amount of insight into the way that employees are progressing. Although keyboard and screen monitoring are useful (albeit over-reaching) features for a change screen, Hubstaff’s implementation leaves much to be wanted (more about this later).
The 9-per-user-per-month Premium plan includes all you’ll discover in the Basic program, but you’ll also get access to Hubstaff’s application programming interface (API) to integrate the application with other third party applications. The Premium bundle also comes with a lightweight schedulingtool that gives administrators the capability to assign shifts and assign tasks from inside the console. Premium clients can also use the tool to create invoices and create PayPal payments mechanically. Customers that pay yearly will receive two weeks free (for both cost tiers).
Click here to sign up for Hubstaff
In comparison to TSheets, its closest competition in our roundup, Hubstaff is reasonably priced, especially given the extra monitoring features that are unavailable in competitive resources. TSheets supplies a fundamental free accounts, as well as a $4-per-user-per-month accounts that charges a $16 base fee a month for teams with fewer than 100 users, along with an $80 foundation fee per month for teams with over a hundred users. The base fee, which Hubstaff doesn’t charge, makes TSheets marginally more costly than Hubstaff, even in Hubstaff’s Premium degree.
If you’re more interested in these hulky PM solutions, then you’ll need to pony up a little more money. Mavenlink’s cheapest program that includes time monitoring prices $39 per user per month. Zoho’s cheapest time monitoring plan is $25 a month for an unlimited number of consumers (that is a pretty good deal if you need all of the extra PM features). Wrike’s lowest time monitoring plan prices $24.80 per user per month.
What Ought to Be Added
Editor’s note: Since our original review of Hubstaff, the company has released a significant upgrade in late 2018 that specifically addressed specific feature weaknesses or omissions, such as adding a internet timer, fleshing out reporting options, and adding activity levels and monitor tracking. We’ll be analyzing these features shortly and you will see the results in an upcoming update to this review.
Aside from its draconian screengrab and keystroke monitoring, Hubstaff does not do a very good job allowing for deeper change supervision. For instance, Hubstaff does not allow advanced tracking. If you operate a trucking business and you are less concerned about how many hours a trucker drove than the distance driven, then there’s no way to handle that in Hubstaff. Users may add notes to a empty text field, but that information won’t be mixed into reports. As a consequence, that you can not use it to learn about who’s functioning, how they’re functioning, and what they’re producing (other than the amount of hours tracked). TSheets not only gives you this option, it provides you the ability to make six extra customizable innovative monitoring fields. You might also put in a query for every clock-out (i.e.,”Was there an episode? Yes. No.”) Along with the system forces the user to respond to the queries at the close of each change or else they will not have the ability to clock out.
As hardcore as Hubstaff is all about monitoring work, the application does not allow for IP address restrictions, which means your employees can say they are working from the workplace but they can actually be operating from a cruise boat in the Bahamas (unless they are using the cell program to track time). This is a standard feature that’s available in almost every other instrument we tested. Hubstaff also doesn’t enable admins to need users to snap a photograph if they report to work. I guess it is overkill to generate someone 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 retail, building, or amusement work). The software also does not let users clock via a phone call, which is an element TSheets and other service providers make available for employees who do not have a smartphone.
Tracking Employee Work
We have touched on how a number of Hubstaff’s more Big Brother-like features factor into time tracking. However, the platform also has many of the hallmarks of employee tracking tools. Hubstaff’s employee monitoring features include keystroke logging, URL and application tracking, GPS and place monitoring, and activity screenshots.
As soon as you place your users and they download the timer program onto their server, the desktop app not only tracks time but will take screenshots randomly or at custom intervals, for example three screenshots per minute. This applies not just to the user’s most important display but any connected monitors too. Hubstaff doesn’t log keys however, it does track the action provided via the mouse and keyboard, giving employers a calculation of how busy the worker is. This info all winds up around the Hubstaff dashboard in the Task tab. This is where you can then select an individual from the drop-down menu to view their screenshots correlated with action data.
When it comes to application and URL monitoring, Hubstaff goes beyond just tracking time to see what sites and apps a worker opened or visited and how long they had been there. The Reports section can subsequently run custom queries on vectors like program usage mapped against time and action. Hubstaff integrates with project and task management tools like Asana and Trello to filter reports by particular projects or tasks to monitor productivity.
One unique employee monitoring feature offered is GPS location monitoring through Hubstaff’s mobile program. While the cellular app can not take screenshots or capture mobile app and site activity, it lets you monitor and log location for workers working in the field. While the thickness of tracking surveillance and data features can not step up to a powerhouse tool for example Teramind, our Editors’ Choice for employee tracking, Hubstaff includes a helpful choice of features for companies that want a little more oversight. Hubstaff Screenshots
Wrap-up
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 will have the ability to log screenshots, track keystroke volume, and path movements via GPS monitoring.
Regrettably, if you’re trying to find a platform that goes the extra mile to enable customization, atypical information entry, or even a much more sophisticated reporting arrangement, then Hubstaff will not be right for you. Additionally, in case you choose another program, your employees will thank you for not needing them to obtain a secondary app for monitoring time–especially when you consider that every other tool we reviewed makes this possible within the boundaries of their web-based UI. Hubstaff Screenshots
Click here to sign up for Hubstaff