Intro Hubstaff Time Tracker

When picking a time monitoring tool, it is important to comprehend the many different types of tools available. Tools such as Mavenlink, Wrike, and Zoho Projects all include powerful time monitoring features for professional services businesses. On the other hand, the time monitoring features in these tools are available only as part of larger project management (PM) suites. Because of this, you’re paying a lot more money for things like file storage, in-app chat, progress reports, and shift management. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you will discover pure play time monitoring tools like Hubstaff (which begins at $5 per month per user) and TSheets, our Editors’ Choice instrument for time tracking. Hubstaff Time Tracker

Characteristics and Utilization

Hubstaff’s user interface (UI) is designed with a appealing left-rail blue navigation bar that leaves lots of room on the side of your screen for data entry and analysis. When you first log into the system, you’ll be taken to the main dashboard, which gives you an summary of how many hours your employees have worked this day and how many hours they have worked over the previous seven days. You’ll also see a list of every member, their latest jobs, and how active they have been over the past week. This is a solid PM data visualization which lets you instantly differentiate between workhorses and do-nothings, and it instantly calls to attention projects which are becoming more than sufficient focus and jobs that are being neglected.

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. With the timesheet feature, you log your hours as you probably did with pen and paper through the analog age of time monitoring. Basically, if you work your change, you add time to your timesheet, and you also sign off on it. This is a fairly standard method of tracking time. Unfortunately, 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 induce users to require a motive to guarantee they’re really adding hours they worked. Admins can also set up the system to remind users to begin tracking time if they have not clocked to the machine in a little while.

The next, and most bothersome, way of monitoring moment in Hubstaff is using the stopwatch feature. In every solution we analyzed, this component is available within the confines of your internet browserevery solution that is, except for Hubstaff. With Hubstaff, you are expected to download an native desktop application that resides within another window. In it, you can select your project, press Start, along with your own timer will begin counting. When you’re done, your activity and your screenshots will be sent to the principal hub. The native app will take a picture at random periods of up to three shots per hour depending on how frequently the admin would like to spy on workers. Screenshots can be partially blurred not to record sensitive information on every grab, but a lot of the screen is left unsullied you’ll still get a feeling of whether the display is really on work-related or play-related content. This can be an annoyingly complex and convoluted means to manually monitor time, particularly 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’s on the desktop program. The mobile apps let admins monitor motions via GPS monitoring. This gives you an summary of how much movement was performed by your worker by capturing location data at different stages.

The Schedules tab enables you to assign times and dates for workers to work. You can set a minimum number of hours to work, a lunch break interval, and you can allow it to be a recurring shift. The program’s reporting software is terribly basic: You’ll get access to weekly, daily, project, and penis view reports as well as a”habit” report which lets you filter information from the aforementioned reports. When compared to the PM solutions within this course, Hubstaff’s coverage is downright embarrassing consequently, if your goal is to learn and evolve based on when and how your employees handle time, you would be 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 limits. Invoices are automatically calculated and created depending on the time each employee worked, as well as their related pay rate. You can set up automatic payroll through PayPal, which lets you automate payments based on time monitored within the application. Remember: Users don’t need to send time through for approval, so automatic payments will be made whether workers were wrong or right about the number of hours that they worked. There is no reminder for supervisors to double-check every timesheet ahead of automatic payments go out so, if you’re concerned about making false payments, then it is possible to set PayPal payments to manual. Hubstaff Time Tracker

Cost And Options

Hubstaff has been constructed to provide you with Big Brother-level oversight into when workers are working, what they’re doing while they operate, and what you need to pay them when the job is finished. The Basic $5-per-month program gives you access to simple time monitoring tools, an employee payment program supervisor, 24/7 support, and user settings which may be handled in an employee-by-employee basis. Moreover, this plan enables you to keep tabs on whether or not your employees are operating by allowing you document screenshots while they function as well as monitor mouse and keyboard activity during changes. Of the five tools we analyzed, Hubstaff is the only instrument that provided this level of insight into the way that workers are progressing. Although keyboard and screen tracking are helpful (albeit over-reaching) attributes for a change screen, Hubstaff’s implementation leaves much to be desired (more on this later).

The 9-per-user-per-month Premium program includes all you’ll find in the fundamental plan, but you will also get access to Hubstaff’s application programming interface (API) to integrate the tool with other third-party applications. The Premium package also has a lightweight schedulingtool that gives administrators the power to assign changes and assign tasks from inside the console. Premium clients may also use the tool to create invoices and make PayPal payments automatically. Customers that pay annually will receive two months free (for both cost tiers).

Click here to sign up for Hubstaff

In comparison to TSheets, its closest competitor in our roundup, Hubstaff is reasonably priced, particularly given the added monitoring features that are unavailable in competitive resources. TSheets supplies a fundamental free accounts, in addition to a $4-per-user-per-month account that charges a $16 base fee a month for teams who have fewer than 100 users, and a $80 foundation fee monthly for teams with over 100 users. The base fee, which Hubstaff doesn’t 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 bit more cash. Mavenlink’s cheapest program that includes time tracking costs $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 solid deal if you want all the excess 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 significant upgrade in late 2018 that specifically addressed certain feature flaws or omissions, including adding a internet timer, fleshing out reporting choices, and adding action levels and screen monitoring. We’ll be testing these attributes shortly and you will see the results in an upcoming update to this review.

Aside from its draconian screengrab and keystroke monitoring, Hubstaff doesn’t do an excellent job allowing for deeper shift supervision. For example, Hubstaff doesn’t allow advanced monitoring. If you operate a trucking business and you’re less concerned about the number of hours a trucker drove than the distance driven, then there is no way to handle this in Hubstaff. Users may add notes to an empty text area, but that information won’t be blended into accounts. As a consequence, that you can not use it to learn about who is functioning, how they are functioning, and what they are producing (aside from the number of hours tracked). TSheets not only provides you this option, it provides you the ability to make six extra customizable innovative tracking fields. You can even add a question for every clock-out (i.e.,”Was there an episode? Yes. No.”) And the system forces the user to reply to the queries at the close of every change or else they will not have the ability to clock out.

As hardcore as Hubstaff is all about monitoring work, the tool does not permit for IP address restrictions, which means your employees can say they’re working from the office but they can actually be operating from a cruise boat in the Bahamas (unless they’re using the cell app to track time). This is a normal feature that’s available in almost every other tool we tested. Hubstaff also does not enable admins to need users to snap a photo when they report to work. I guess it’s overkill to make somebody take a selfie right before you get started recording their display and tracking their keystrokes, but TSheets lets you set this as a requirement (which makes sense, particularly if you’re tracking tasks done out of a computer, such as retail, building, or entertainment work). The software also doesn’t let users clock via a phone call, which can be an element TSheets along with other service providers make available for employees who don’t have a smartphone.

Tracking Employee Work

We’ve touched on how some of Hubstaff’s more Enormous Brother-like features factor into time monitoring. But the platform also has many of the hallmarks of employee monitoring tools. Hubstaff’s employee tracking attributes include keystroke logging, URL and application tracking, GPS and location monitoring, and activity screenshots.

Once you set your customers and they download the timer program onto their server, the desktop app not only monitors time but will require screenshots randomly or at custom intervals, for example three screenshots per minute. This applies not only to the user’s most important screen but any attached monitors too. Hubstaff doesn’t log keys but it does track the activity provided through the mouse and keyboard, giving employers a calculation of how active the worker is. This info all winds up on the Hubstaff dashboard in the Activity tab. This is where you can then select a user in the drop-down menu to view their screenshots connected with activity data.

If it comes to program and URL tracking, Hubstaff goes beyond just tracking time to learn what websites and apps a worker opened or visited and how long they were there. The Reports section may then run custom questions on vectors like app usage mapped against time and action. Hubstaff integrates with project and job management tools such as Asana and Trello to filter reports by particular projects or tasks to track productivity.

1 unique employee tracking feature offered is GPS location tracking through Hubstaff’s mobile app. While the mobile app can’t take screenshots or catch mobile app and website activity, it allows you to monitor and log location for workers working in the field. While the thickness of monitoring surveillance and data features can’t measure up to a powerhouse tool such as Teramind, our Editors’ Choice for worker tracking, Hubstaff has a helpful selection of attributes for employers that want a bit more oversight. Hubstaff Time Tracker

Summary

Hubstaff is an easy-to-administer, feature-rich, time tracking tool. If you are diligent about tracking employee behavior while on the clock, then there is no better software available than Hubstaff. You will be able to log screenshots, monitor keystroke volume, and path movements via GPS monitoring.

Unfortunately, if you’re looking for a platform which goes the excess mile to enable customization, atypical data entry, or a more sophisticated reporting arrangement, then Hubstaff will not be right for you. In addition, in case you choose a different system, your employees will thank you for not requiring them to download a secondary app for monitoring time–especially when you consider that every other instrument we examined makes this possible within the confines of their web-based UI. Hubstaff Time Tracker

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