Intro Light Track App
When choosing a time tracking tool, it is important to understand the various kinds of tools out there. Tools like Mavenlink, Wrike, and Zoho Projects all feature powerful time tracking features for professional services companies. However, the time tracking features in such tools are available only within bigger project management (PM) suites. As a result, you are paying a lot more money for things such as file storage, in-app discussion, progress reports, and change administration. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you will discover pure play time monitoring tools such as Hubstaff (which starts at $5 per month per user) and TSheets, our Editors’ Choice instrument for time tracking. Light Track App
Characteristics and Usage
Hubstaff’s user interface (UI) was created with an attractive 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 first log into the system, you will be taken to the main dashboard, which provides you an summary of the number of 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 tasks, and how active they have been over the past week. This is a strong PM data visualization which lets you instantly differentiate between workhorses and do-nothings, and it instantly calls to focus projects that are becoming more than enough attention and projects that are being neglected.
There are two ways to add time in Hubstaff: You can construct manual timesheets with past 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 probably did with pen and paper during the analog age of time monitoring. Essentially, you work your change, you add the time to your own timesheet, and you also sign off on it. This is a pretty standard procedure of monitoring time. Regrettably, because Hubstaff does not allow you to add future time, you can not use the platform for a shift planner. Administrators can allow users manually edit formerly submitted timesheets, and they can force users to require a motive to guarantee they’re actually adding hours that they worked. Admins can also set up the system to remind users to begin monitoring time should they have not clocked into the system in a while.
The second, and most bothersome, way of tracking moment in Hubstaff is by using the stopwatch feature. In each solution we tested, this component is available within the confines of your web browser–every solution that’s, except for Hubstaff. With Hubstaff, you are required to download an native desktop application that resides within a separate window. In it, you can choose your project, press Start, and your own timer will start counting. When you are done, your activity and your screenshots will be transmitted to the main hub. The native app is going to 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 partially blurred to not capture sensitive information on every grab, but a lot of the display is left unsullied you’ll still get a feeling of if the display is really on work-related or play-related content. This is an annoyingly complicated and complicated way to manually track time, particularly if you’re jumping from task to task throughout the day. Hubstaff must find a way to add the stopwatch and also screengrab components to the cloud-based architecture to simplify ease of use.
Tracking time in real-time on Hubstaff’s Android and iOS apps is exactly the same as it’s on the desktop app. The mobile programs let admins monitor motions via GPS tracking. This gives you an overview of how much motion was performed by your employee by capturing location information at distinct stages.
The Schedules tab lets you assign times and dates for workers to work. It is possible to set a minimum number of hours to operate, a lunch break duration, and you can allow it to be a recurring change. The tool’s reporting applications is terribly basic: You will get access to weekly, daily, project, and penis view reports in addition to a”habit” report which allows you filter data from the above reports. When compared to the PM options within this class, Hubstaff’s reporting is utterly embarrassing so, if your target is to learn and evolve based on when and how your employees handle time, you would be better off working with Zoho Projects, our Editors’ Choice for PM.
Click here to sign up for Hubstaff
Admins receive notifications once they have reached weekly staffing and budget limits. Invoices are automatically calculated and created based on the time each employee worked, as well as their related pay rate. You can set up automatic citizenship through PayPal, which enables you to automate payments based on time tracked within the application. Remember: Consumers do not need to send time through for acceptance, therefore automatic payments will be made whether employees were right or wrong about the number of hours they worked. There’s not any reminder for supervisors to double-check each timesheet before automatic payments move out so, if you are concerned about making bogus payments, then you can place PayPal payments to manual. Light Track App
Cost And Options
Hubstaff was built to give you Big Brother-level oversight into when employees are working, what they’re doing while they operate, and what you want to pay them as soon as the work is finished. The Basic $5-per-month plan gives you access to easy time monitoring tools, an employee payment program supervisor, 24/7 support, and user preferences that can be managed in an employee-by-employee basis. Moreover, this plan lets you keep track of whether or not your employees are working by letting you record screenshots while they work in addition to monitor keyboard and mouse activity during changes. Of the five tools we tested, Hubstaff is the only tool which offered this amount of insight into the way that employees are progressing. Although screen and keyboard monitoring are helpful (albeit over-reaching) attributes for a change 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 Basic program, but you’ll also have access to Hubstaff’s application programming interface (API) to integrate the tool with other third-party software. The Premium bundle also has a lightweight schedulingtool that gives administrators the capability to assign changes and delegate tasks from within the console. Premium customers may also use the application to make invoices and make PayPal payments mechanically. Clients that pay yearly 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 fairly priced, particularly given the extra tracking features that are unavailable in competitive tools. TSheets supplies a fundamental free accounts, as well as a $4-per-user-per-month account that charges a $16 base fee a month for groups with fewer than 100 users, along with an $80 foundation fee monthly for groups with over a hundred users. The base fee, which Hubstaff does not charge, makes TSheets slightly more costly than Hubstaff, even in Hubstaff’s Premium degree.
If you’re more interested in these hulky PM solutions, then you’ll want to pony up a little more money. Mavenlink’s cheapest plan that includes time tracking 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 solid deal if you need all the excess PM attributes ). Wrike’s lowest time monitoring plan costs $24.80 per user per month.
What Should Be Added
Editor’s note: Since our original review 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 coverage choices, and adding activity levels and screen monitoring. We’ll be analyzing these features shortly and you will see the results in an upcoming update to this review.
Besides its draconian screengrab and keystroke tracking, Hubstaff doesn’t do a very good job allowing for deeper shift oversight. By way of example, Hubstaff doesn’t allow advanced monitoring. If you operate a trucking business and you’re less concerned about the number of hours each trucker drove than the distance driven, then there’s no way to manage that in Hubstaff. Users may add notes to an empty text field, but that data won’t be mixed into accounts. As a consequence, that you can’t use it to learn about who’s working, how they are functioning, and what they are producing (other than the number of hours monitored ). TSheets not only gives you this option, it gives you the ability to make six extra customizable innovative monitoring fields. You can even put in a question for every single clock-out (i.e.,”Was there an incident? Yes. No.”) And the system forces the consumer to reply to the queries at the end of each shift or they won’t have the ability to clock out.
As hardcore as Hubstaff is all about monitoring work, the tool does not permit for IP address limitations, which means your employees can say they’re working from the workplace but they could actually be working from a cruise ship in the Bahamas (unless they are using the mobile app to track time). This is a normal feature that’s available in almost every other tool we analyzed. Hubstaff also doesn’t enable admins to need users to snap a photo if they report to work. I suppose it’s overkill to generate someone take a selfie right before you get started recording their display and monitoring their keystrokes, but TSheets enables you to set this as a necessity (which makes sense, especially if you’re tracking tasks done out of a computer, such as electronic, building, or amusement work). The program also does not let users clock in via a phone call, which can be a component 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 Enormous Brother-like features factor into time monitoring. However, the platform also offers many of the hallmarks of worker monitoring tools. Hubstaff’s employee monitoring attributes include keystroke logging, URL and program monitoring, GPS and location tracking, and action screenshots.
Once you place your users and they download the timer app onto their server, the desktop app not only monitors time but will require screenshots randomly or at custom intervals, such as three screenshots per minute. This applies not only to the user’s most important display but any connected monitors too. Hubstaff doesn’t log keys but it does monitor the activity provided through the mouse and computer keyboard, providing employers a calculation of just how busy the worker is. This data all winds up on the Hubstaff dashboard from the Activity tab. This is where you can then pick a user from the drop-down menu to see their screenshots connected with activity data.
If it comes to program and URL monitoring, Hubstaff goes beyond just tracking time to learn what sites and apps an employee visited or opened and how long they were there. The Reports section can then run custom questions on vectors such as program usage mapped against time and action. Hubstaff incorporates with job and task management tools like Asana and Trello to filter reports from specific projects or tasks to monitor productivity.
One unique employee monitoring feature supplied is GPS location monitoring through Hubstaff’s mobile app. While the cellular app can’t take screenshots or capture mobile app and website activity, it allows you to monitor and log location for employees working in the field. While the thickness of tracking data and surveillance features can not step up to a grid application such as Teramind, our Editors’ Choice for worker tracking, Hubstaff includes a helpful choice of features for employers that want a little more oversight. Light Track App
Wrap-up
Hubstaff is a easy-to-administer, feature-rich, time tracking tool. If you’re diligent about tracking employee behavior while on the clockthen there’s no better software accessible than Hubstaff. You’ll have the ability to log screenshots, monitor keystroke volume, and route movements via GPS monitoring.
Regrettably, if you’re looking for a platform that goes the excess mile to allow customization, atypical information entry, or even a much more sophisticated reporting arrangement, then Hubstaff will not be perfect for you. In addition, should you choose another system, your employees will thank you for not needing them to obtain a secondary app for monitoring time–particularly when you consider that every other instrument we reviewed makes this possible within the boundaries of their web-based UI. Light Track App
Click here to sign up for Hubstaff