Intro Project Time Tracking Software Free

When choosing a time tracking tool, it is important to understand the many different kinds of tools available. Tools such as Mavenlink, Wrike, and Zoho Projects all include powerful time tracking features for professional services businesses. However, the time tracking features in such 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 discussion, progress reports, and change management. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you will find pure play time monitoring tools such as Hubstaff (which begins at $5 per month per user) and TSheets, our Editors’ Choice tool for time tracking. Project Time Tracking Software Free

Characteristics and Usage

Hubstaff’s user interface (UI) is designed with an attractive left-rail blue navigation bar which leaves plenty of room around the right-hand 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 the number of hours they have worked over the previous seven days. You’ll also find a list of each member, their latest tasks, and how active they have been over the last week. This is a strong PM data visualization which lets you instantly differentiate between workhorses and do-nothings, and it immediately calls to focus projects that are becoming more than sufficient focus and jobs that are being disregarded.

There are two methods to put in time in Hubstaff: You can construct manual timesheets with past hours worked, or you may use the stopwatch feature on Hubstaff’s native desktop program. Together with the timesheet feature, you log in your hours as you probably did with pen and paper during the analog era of time monitoring. Basically, if you work your change, you add the time to your own timesheet, and you sign off on it. This is a fairly standard method of monitoring time. Unfortunately, because Hubstaff does not let you add future time, you can not use the platform for a shift planner. Administrators can let users manually edit formerly submitted timesheets, and they’re able to induce users to require a motive to ensure they’re really adding hours that they worked. Admins may also set the system up to let users to start tracking time if they have not clocked to the system in a little while.

The next, and most frustrating, way of monitoring time in Hubstaff is by using the stopwatch feature. In each solution we analyzed, this component can be found within the boundaries of your internet browser–every alternative that is, except for Hubstaff. With Hubstaff, you’re required to download an native desktop application that resides within a separate window. In it, you can choose your project, press Start, along with your timer will begin counting. When you are done, your action and your screenshots will be transmitted to the main hub. The native program will take a photo at random periods of up to 3 shots per hour based on how often the admin would like to spy on workers. Screenshots can be partly fuzzy to not capture sensitive information on every catch, but a lot of this 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 complicated means to manually monitor time, especially if you’re jumping from task to task throughout the day. Hubstaff must find a way to bring the stopwatch and screengrab components 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 app. The mobile apps let admins monitor movements via GPS monitoring. This gives you an overview of just how much movement was performed by your worker by capturing location data at distinct stages.

The Schedules tab enables you to assign times and dates for employees to work. You can set a minimum number of hours to operate, a lunch break duration, and you’ll be able to make it a recurring change. The tool’s reporting software is terribly basic: You will get access to weekly, daily, job, and member view reports as well as a”habit” report that allows you filter information from the aforementioned reports. In comparison to the PM solutions within this class, Hubstaff’s reporting is utterly embarrassing consequently, if your target is to learn and evolve according to if and how your employees manage time, you would be much better off working with Zoho Projects, our Editors’ Choice for PM.

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Admins receive notifications when they’ve attained weekly staffing and budget limitations. Invoices are automatically calculated and created depending on the time each worker worked, in addition to their associated pay rate. It is possible to set up automatic citizenship through PayPal, which lets you automate payments based on time monitored inside the tool. Remember: Consumers don’t need to send time for approval, therefore automatic payments will be made whether workers were right or wrong about the amount 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 false payments, then it is possible to set PayPal payments to guide. Project Time Tracking Software Free

Cost And Alternatives

Hubstaff was constructed 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 done. The Basic $5-per-month plan provides you access to simple time tracking tools, an employee payment program supervisor, 24/7 support, and user settings that may be managed on an employee-by-employee basis. Moreover, this program enables you to keep track of whether or not your employees are working by letting you document screenshots while they work in addition to monitor keyboard and mouse activity during changes. Of the five tools we’ve tested, Hubstaff is the only instrument that provided this level of insight into the way that employees are progressing. Although keyboard and screen tracking are helpful (albeit over-reaching) features 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 discover in the fundamental plan, but you will also have 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 provides administrators the power to assign shifts and delegate tasks from within the console. Premium customers can also use the application to create invoices and make PayPal payments automatically. Customers that pay yearly will get two weeks free (for both price tiers).

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Compared to TSheets, its nearest competition in our roundup, Hubstaff is reasonably priced, particularly given the extra tracking features that are unavailable in competitive resources. TSheets supplies a fundamental free account, as well as a $4-per-user-per-month account that costs a $16 base fee per month for groups who have fewer than 100 users, along with a $80 foundation fee monthly for teams with over a hundred users. The base fee, which Hubstaff does not charge, makes TSheets marginally more costly than Hubstaff, even in Hubstaff’s Premium level.

If you’re more interested in these hulky PM solutions, then you’ll need to pony up a bit more money. Mavenlink’s cheapest plan that includes time monitoring costs $39 per user per month. Zoho’s cheapest time monitoring plan is $25 a month for an infinite number of users (that is a pretty solid deal if you want all of the extra PM features). Wrike’s lowest time tracking plan prices $24.80 per user per month.

What Ought to Be Added

Editor’s note: Since our original 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 coverage options, and adding action levels and screen tracking. We are going to be testing 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 supervision. For instance, Hubstaff does not allow advanced monitoring. If you run a trucking company and you are less concerned about how many hours a trucker drove than the distance driven, then there is no way to handle that in Hubstaff. Users may add notes to a empty text area, but that information will not be mixed into accounts. As a consequence, that you can not use it to find out about who’s functioning, how they’re functioning, and what they are generating (other than the amount of hours tracked). TSheets not only gives you this option, it provides you the ability to create six extra customizable innovative tracking 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 user to respond to the queries at the close of every shift or they will not have the ability to clock out.

As hardcore as Hubstaff is all about tracking work, the tool doesn’t permit for IP address limitations, which means your employees can say they are working from the office but they could actually be operating from a cruise ship in the Bahamas (unless they are using the mobile program to monitor time). This is a standard feature that’s available in virtually every other instrument we analyzed. Hubstaff also doesn’t enable admins to require users to snap a photo when they report to work. I guess it is overkill to generate somebody take a selfie right before you get started recording their screen and monitoring their keystrokes, but TSheets enables you to set this as a necessity (which makes sense, particularly if you’re tracking tasks done out of a computer, like electronic, construction, or entertainment work). The software also doesn’t allow users clock in via a telephone call, which can be a component TSheets along with other service providers make available for employees who do not have a smartphone.

Tracking Employee Work

We’ve touched on how a number of Hubstaff’s more Enormous Brother-like features factor into time monitoring. But the platform also offers a lot of the hallmarks of worker monitoring tools. Hubstaff’s employee tracking features include keystroke logging, URL and application tracking, GPS and place tracking, and action screenshots.

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

When it comes to application and URL tracking, Hubstaff goes beyond just tracking time to see what sites and programs a worker opened or visited and how long they were there. The Reports section can then run custom questions on vectors such as app usage mapped against time and action. Hubstaff incorporates with project and job management tools such as Asana and Trello to filter reports from specific tasks or projects to track productivity.

1 unique employee tracking feature supplied is GPS location tracking through Hubstaff’s mobile program. While the mobile app can’t take screenshots or catch mobile app and site activity, it allows you to monitor and log place for workers working in the area. While the depth of monitoring data and surveillance features can’t measure up to a grid application such as Teramind, our Editors’ Choice for worker tracking, Hubstaff has a useful choice of attributes for companies that want a bit more oversight. Project Time Tracking Software Free

Wrap-up

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

Unfortunately, if you’re trying to find a platform which goes the excess mile to enable customization, irregular data entry, or a much more advanced reporting structure, then Hubstaff won’t be right for you. In addition, in case you choose a different program, your employees will thank you for not requiring them to obtain a secondary app for tracking time–especially when you consider that every other instrument we examined makes this possible within the confines of their web-based UI. Project Time Tracking Software Free

Click here to sign up for Hubstaff