Introduction Productivity Apps For Mac 2016

When choosing a time tracking tool, it is important to comprehend the various types of tools out there. Tools like Mavenlink, Wrike, and Zoho Projects all include powerful time tracking features for professional services companies. On the other hand, the time monitoring features in these 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 shift management. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you’ll discover pure play time tracking tools like Hubstaff (which starts at $5 a month per user) and TSheets, our Editors’ Choice tool for time tracking. Productivity Apps For Mac 2016

Attributes and Utilization

Hubstaff’s user interface (UI) was created with a appealing left-rail blue navigation bar that leaves plenty of room around the right-hand side of your screen for data entry and analysis. When you 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 that day and the number of hours they’ve worked over the past seven days. You’ll also find a list of each member, their most recent jobs, and how active they have been over the last week. This is a solid PM data visualization which allows you immediately differentiate between workhorses and do-nothings, and it instantly calls to attention projects that are becoming more than sufficient attention and projects that are being neglected.

There are two ways to put in time in Hubstaff: You can build manual timesheets with previous hours worked, or you may use the stopwatch feature on Hubstaff’s native desktop app. Together with the timesheet feature, you log your hours as you probably did with pencil and paper through the analog era of time monitoring. Basically, if you work your change, you add the time to your own timesheet, and you also sign off on it. This is a fairly standard procedure of monitoring time. Regrettably, because Hubstaff doesn’t allow you to add future time, you can not use the platform as a shift organizer. Administrators can let users manually edit formerly submitted timesheets, and they’re able to force users to require a motive to guarantee they’re actually adding hours that they worked. Admins can also set the system up to remind users to start tracking time should they have not clocked into the system in a while.

The next, and most frustrating, way of tracking moment in Hubstaff is by using the stopwatch feature. In each solution we tested, this element can be found within the boundaries of your internet browser–every solution that’s, except for Hubstaff. With Hubstaff, you’re expected to download an native desktop application that resides within another window. In it, you can select your job, press Start, and your timer will start counting. When you’re done, your activity and your screenshots will be sent to the main hub. The native app is going to take a photo at random intervals of up to three shots per hour based on how frequently the admin would like to spy on workers. Screenshots can be partly fuzzy to not capture sensitive information on every catch, but enough of this screen is left unsullied that you’ll still get a sense of whether the screen is really on work-related or play-related content. This is an annoyingly complicated and complicated means to manually monitor time, especially if you’re jumping from task to task throughout the day. Hubstaff must find a way to add 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 apps is exactly the same as it’s on the desktop app. The mobile programs let admins monitor movements via GPS tracking. This gives you an summary of just how much movement was done by your employee by capturing location information at different stages.

The Schedules tab enables you to assign dates and times for employees to work. It is possible to put a minimum number of hours to work, a lunch break interval, and you can allow it to be a recurring change. The tool’s reporting applications is horribly basic: You’ll receive access to weekly, daily, project, and member view reports in addition to a”habit” report which lets you filter data from the above reports. When compared to the PM options within this class, Hubstaff’s coverage is utterly embarrassing so, if your goal is to understand and evolve according to when and how your employees manage time, you’d be better off working using Zoho Projects, our Editors’ Choice for PM.

Click here to sign up for Hubstaff

Admins receive notifications when they have reached weekly staffing and funding limits. Invoices are automatically calculated and created depending on the time each worker worked, as well as their associated pay rate. You can set up automatic citizenship through PayPal, which lets you automate payments based on time monitored within the application. Keep in mind: Consumers do not need to send time for approval, therefore automatic payments will be made whether employees were wrong or right about the amount of hours that they worked. There is no reminder for supervisors to double-check every timesheet ahead of automatic payments move out thus, if you are concerned about making bogus payments, then you can set PayPal payments to manual. Productivity Apps For Mac 2016

Cost And Alternatives

Hubstaff has been constructed to provide you with Big Brother-level oversight into when workers are working, what they are doing while they work, and what you need to cover them as soon as the job is done. The Basic $5-per-month plan gives you access to easy time tracking tools, an employee payment program manager, 24/7 support, and user settings which can be managed on an employee-by-employee basis. Moreover, this program lets you keep track of whether your employees are operating by allowing you document screenshots while they work in addition to monitor keyboard and mouse action during changes. Of the five tools we’ve analyzed, Hubstaff is the only instrument which provided this amount of insight into how workers are progressing. Although keyboard and screen tracking are helpful (albeit over-reaching) attributes for a shift screen, Hubstaff’s implementation leaves much to be desired (more on this later).

The $9-per-user-per-month Premium plan includes all you’ll discover in the Basic 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 bundle also has a lightweight schedulingtool that provides administrators the power to assign shifts and delegate tasks from inside the console. Premium clients may also use the application to make invoices and create PayPal payments automatically. Clients that pay yearly will receive two weeks free (for both cost tiers).

Click here to sign up for Hubstaff

Compared to TSheets, its closest competitor in our roundup, Hubstaff is reasonably priced, especially given the added tracking 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, and an $80 base fee per month for groups with over a hundred users. The base fee, which Hubstaff doesn’t charge, makes TSheets marginally more expensive than Hubstaff, even in Hubstaff’s Premium level.

If you’re more interested in these hulky PM alternatives, then you’ll want to pony up a little more money. Mavenlink’s cheapest program that includes time tracking prices $39 per user per month. Zoho’s cheapest time tracking plan is $25 a month for an infinite number of users (that is a pretty good deal if you want all of 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 first review of Hubstaff, the company has released a significant upgrade in late 2018 that specifically addressed specific feature flaws or omissions, including adding a web timer, fleshing out reporting options, and adding activity levels and monitor monitoring. We’ll be testing these attributes shortly and you’ll see the results in an upcoming update to this review.

Besides its draconian screengrab and keystroke monitoring, Hubstaff does not do an excellent job allowing for deeper shift supervision. For example, Hubstaff does not allow advanced tracking. If you operate a trucking business and you are less concerned about the number of hours a trucker drove than the distance driven, then there’s no way to handle that in Hubstaff. Users can add notes to an empty text field, but that data won’t be mixed into reports. This means you can not use it to find out about who’s working, how they are functioning, and what they’re producing (other than the amount of hours tracked). TSheets not only provides you this choice, it gives you the ability to make six additional customizable innovative monitoring fields. You might even put in a query for every single clock-out (i.e.,”Was there an incident? Yes. No.”) And the system forces the user to respond to the queries at the end of each change or they will not have the ability to clock out.

As hardcore as Hubstaff is all about tracking work, the application does not permit for IP address limitations, which means your employees can say they are working from the office but they could actually be working from a cruise boat in the Bahamas (unless they’re using the cell program to track time). This is a standard feature that’s available in virtually every other tool we tested. Hubstaff also does not enable admins to require users to snap a photo if they report to work. I suppose it’s overkill to generate somebody take a selfie before you start recording their screen and tracking their keystrokes, but TSheets enables you to place this as a requirement (which makes sense, especially if you’re tracking tasks done outside of a computer, such as electronic, building, or amusement work). The program also does not let 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.

Monitoring 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 monitoring attributes include keystroke logging, URL and application tracking, GPS and place monitoring, and activity screenshots.

Once you set your customers and they download the timer program onto their machine, the desktop program not only monitors time but will take screenshots randomly or in custom intervals, such as three screenshots per minute. This applies not just to the user’s main screen but any attached monitors too. Hubstaff doesn’t log keys however, it does monitor the activity provided through the mouse and keyboard, providing companies 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 in the drop-down menu to view their screenshots connected with action data.

When it comes to program and URL monitoring, Hubstaff goes beyond simply tracking time to learn what websites and apps an employee visited or opened and how long they were there. The Reports module can subsequently run custom queries on vectors such as app usage mapped against time and action. Hubstaff incorporates with job and job management tools such as Asana and Trello to filter reports by specific tasks or projects to monitor productivity.

One unique employee tracking feature supplied is GPS location tracking through Hubstaff’s mobile program. While the cellular app can not take screenshots or catch mobile app and website activity, it allows you to monitor and log place for workers working in the field. While the thickness of tracking data and surveillance features can not step up to a powerhouse tool for example Teramind, our Editors’ Choice for worker monitoring, Hubstaff has a helpful selection of attributes for companies that want a little more oversight. Productivity Apps For Mac 2016

Summary

Hubstaff is an easy-to-administer, feature-rich, time monitoring tool. If you’re diligent about tracking employee behaviour while on the clockthen there is no better program accessible than Hubstaff. You’ll have the ability to log screenshots, track keystroke volume, and route movements via GPS tracking.

Unfortunately, if you’re looking for a platform that goes the extra mile to enable customization, irregular data entry, or a more advanced reporting structure, then Hubstaff won’t be perfect for you. Additionally, should you opt for another program, your employees will thank you for not requiring them to download a secondary app for tracking time–especially when you consider that every other instrument we reviewed makes this possible within the boundaries of their online UI. Productivity Apps For Mac 2016

Click here to sign up for Hubstaff