Background Productivity Software Personal
When choosing a time tracking tool, it’s important to understand the many different kinds of tools available. Tools such as Mavenlink, Wrike, and Zoho Projects all feature robust 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 are paying a lot more cash for things like file storage, in-app discussion, progress reports, and shift administration. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you will discover pure play time tracking tools such as Hubstaff (which starts at $5 a month per user) and TSheets, our Editors’ Choice instrument for time tracking. Productivity Software Personal
Attributes and Usage
Hubstaff’s user interface (UI) was created with an attractive left-rail blue navigation bar that leaves lots 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 the number of hours your employees have worked that day and the number of hours they’ve worked over the previous seven days. You will also see a list of every member, their most recent jobs, and how busy they’ve been over the past week. This is a solid PM data visualization which lets you instantly differentiate between workhorses and do-nothings, and it immediately calls to attention projects that are becoming more than sufficient focus 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 can use the stopwatch feature on Hubstaff’s native desktop app. Together with the timesheet attribute, you log in your hours as you likely did with pen and paper during the analog age of time tracking. Essentially, you work your change, you add the time to your timesheet, and you sign off on it. This is a pretty standard method of tracking time. Unfortunately, because Hubstaff doesn’t let you add future time, you can not use the platform for a shift planner. Administrators can let users manually edit previously submitted timesheets, and they can induce users to require a reason to ensure they’re really adding hours they worked. Admins can also set up the system to let users to start monitoring time if they haven’t clocked to the system in a while.
The next, and most bothersome, way of monitoring moment in Hubstaff is by using the stopwatch feature. In every solution we analyzed, this element can be found within the confines of your web browser–every alternative that’s, except for Hubstaff. With Hubstaff, you are expected to download an native desktop application that lives within a separate window. In it, you can select your project, press Start, and your own timer will start counting. When you are 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 3 shots per hour depending on how frequently the admin wants to spy on workers. Screenshots can be partially blurred not to record sensitive information on every grab, but enough of the screen is left unsullied that you’ll still get a sense of if the screen is really on work-related or play-related content. This is an annoyingly complicated and complicated means to manually monitor time, particularly if you’re jumping from task to task through the day. Hubstaff must discover 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 programs let admins monitor movements via GPS tracking. This provides you an overview of just how much movement was done by your worker by capturing location information at distinct stages.
The Schedules tab enables you to assign dates and times for employees to do the job. You can put a minimum number of hours to work, a lunch break duration, and you can allow it to be a recurring shift. The program’s reporting applications is terribly basic: You will get access to weekly, daily, job, and member view reports in addition to a”custom” report which lets you filter information from the above reports. In comparison to the PM solutions in this class, Hubstaff’s reporting is utterly embarrassing so, if your goal is to learn and evolve based on when and how your employees manage time, you would be better off working using Zoho Projects, our Editors’ Choice for PM.
Click here to sign up for Hubstaff
Admins receive notifications once they have attained weekly staffing and funding limits. Invoices are automatically calculated and made depending on the time each worker worked, in addition to his or her associated pay rate. You can set up automatic citizenship through PayPal, which lets you automate payments based on time tracked inside the tool. Keep in mind: Users do not need to send time for acceptance, so automatic payments will be made whether employees were right or wrong concerning the number of hours that they worked. There is not any reminder for supervisors to double-check each timesheet before automatic payments move out so, if you’re worried about making false payments, then it is possible to set PayPal payments to guide. Productivity Software Personal
Price And Options
Hubstaff has been constructed to give you Big Brother-level oversight into when employees are working, what they are doing while they operate, and what you want to cover them when the job is finished. The Basic $5-per-month program gives you access to simple time tracking tools, an employee payment schedule supervisor, 24/7 support, and user settings that can be handled on an employee-by-employee basis. Moreover, this plan lets you keep track of whether your employees are working by allowing you document screenshots while they function as well as monitor keyboard and mouse activity during changes. Of the five tools we tested, Hubstaff is the only instrument that offered this level of insight into the way that workers are progressing. Although keyboard and screen tracking are useful (albeit over-reaching) attributes for a change monitor, Hubstaff’s implementation leaves much to be wanted (more about this later).
The $9-per-user-per-month Premium plan includes everything you’ll find in the fundamental program, but you will also have access to Hubstaff’s application programming interface (API) to integrate the tool with other third-party applications. The Premium package also comes with a lightweight schedulingtool that provides administrators the capability to assign changes and assign tasks from inside the console. Premium clients can also use the application to create invoices and make PayPal payments automatically. Clients that pay annually will get two weeks free (for both price tiers).
Click here to sign up for Hubstaff
Compared to TSheets, its closest competitor in our roundup, Hubstaff is reasonably priced, particularly given the added monitoring features that are unavailable in competitive tools. TSheets offers a basic free account, in addition to a $4-per-user-per-month accounts that costs a $16 base fee per month for groups who have fewer than 100 users, and an $80 base fee monthly for groups with more than a hundred users. The base fee, which Hubstaff doesn’t charge, makes TSheets slightly more expensive than Hubstaff, even at Hubstaff’s Premium degree.
If you’re more interested in these hulky PM alternatives, then you will need to pony up a little more money. Mavenlink’s cheapest program that includes time monitoring costs $39 per user per month. Zoho’s cheapest time tracking plan is $25 a month for an unlimited number of users (which is a fairly good deal if you want all of the excess PM attributes ). Wrike’s cheapest time tracking plan costs $24.80 per user per month.
What Should Be Added
Editor’s note: Since our first overview of Hubstaff, the company has released a major update in late 2018 that specifically addressed certain feature flaws or omissions, such as adding a internet timer, fleshing out coverage choices, and adding activity levels and monitor monitoring. We’ll be analyzing these attributes shortly and you’ll see the results in an upcoming update to this review.
Besides its draconian screengrab and keystroke monitoring, Hubstaff doesn’t do a very good job allowing for deeper change oversight. By way of instance, Hubstaff does not 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’s no way to handle that in Hubstaff. Users can add notes to an empty text field, but that information will not be blended into reports. As a consequence, you can’t use it to find out about who’s functioning, how they’re functioning, and what they are producing (aside from the amount of hours tracked). TSheets not only provides you this option, it provides you the ability to make six additional customizable innovative tracking fields. You might also put in a question for every single clock-out (i.e.,”Was there an episode? Yes. No.”) And the system forces the consumer to respond to the questions at the end of every change or they won’t be able to clock out.
As hardcore as Hubstaff is about monitoring work, the application does not permit for IP address limitations, so your workers can say they are working from the workplace but they can actually be operating from a cruise ship in the Bahamas (unless they are using the cell program to monitor time). This is a normal feature that’s available in virtually every other tool we tested. Hubstaff also does not enable admins to require users to snap a photograph if they report to work. I suppose it is overkill to generate somebody take a selfie right before you start recording their display and monitoring their keystrokes, but TSheets enables you to set this as a requirement (which makes sense, especially if you’re tracking tasks done outside of a computer, such as retail, building, or entertainment work). The software also doesn’t let users clock in via a telephone call, which is a component TSheets and other service providers make available for employees who do not have a smartphone.
Monitoring Employee Work
We’ve touched on how a number of Hubstaff’s more Big Brother-like features factor into time monitoring. But the platform also offers a lot of the hallmarks of worker tracking tools. Hubstaff’s employee monitoring features include keystroke logging, URL and application tracking, GPS and location tracking, and action screenshots.
As soon as you set your customers and they download the timer program onto their machine, the desktop app not only monitors time but will take screenshots randomly or in custom intervals, such as three screenshots each minute. This applies not just to the user’s main screen but any connected monitors too. Hubstaff does not log keys but it will monitor the action provided through the mouse and computer keyboard, providing employers a calculation of just how active the employee is. This info all winds up around the Hubstaff dashboard in the Activity tab. This is where you can then pick a user in the drop-down menu to see their screenshots correlated with activity data.
When it comes to program and URL tracking, Hubstaff goes beyond simply tracking time to learn what sites and programs a worker opened or visited and how long they were there. The Reports module can then run custom questions on vectors like program usage mapped against time and activity. Hubstaff incorporates with job and task management tools like Asana and Trello to filter reports by particular tasks or projects to monitor productivity.
One unique employee monitoring feature supplied is GPS location monitoring through Hubstaff’s mobile app. While the mobile app can not take screenshots or capture mobile app and website activity, it allows you to track and log place for workers working in the field. While the thickness of monitoring surveillance and data features can’t measure up to a powerhouse tool for example Teramind, our Editors’ Choice for worker tracking, Hubstaff includes a useful selection of features for companies that want a bit more oversight. Productivity Software Personal
Wrap-up
Hubstaff is a easy-to-administer, feature-rich, time monitoring tool. If you’re diligent about tracking employee behaviour while on the clock, then there’s no better software accessible than Hubstaff. You’ll have the ability to log screenshots, monitor keystroke volume, and route movements via GPS tracking.
Unfortunately, if you’re trying to find a platform which goes the extra mile to enable customization, irregular data entry, or even a much more sophisticated reporting arrangement, then Hubstaff won’t be right for you. Additionally, in case 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 examined makes this potential within the confines of their web-based UI. Productivity Software Personal
Click here to sign up for Hubstaff