Intro Staff Productivity Software
When choosing a time monitoring tool, it’s important to comprehend the many different types of tools out there. Tools such as Mavenlink, Wrike, and Zoho Projects all feature robust time tracking features for professional services businesses. However, the time tracking features in these tools are available only as part of bigger project management (PM) suites. Because of this, you are paying much more cash for things like file storage, in-app discussion, progress reports, and change management. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you’ll find pure play time monitoring tools like Hubstaff (which begins at $5 per month per user) and TSheets, our Editors’ Choice instrument for time tracking. Staff Productivity Software
Attributes and Utilization
Hubstaff’s user interface (UI) is designed with a appealing left-rail blue navigation bar which leaves plenty 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 provides you an overview of the number of hours your employees have worked this day and the number of hours they’ve worked over the past seven days. You will also see a list of each member, their most recent jobs, and how active they’ve been over the past week. This is a strong PM data visualization that lets you instantly differentiate between workhorses and do-nothings, and it immediately calls to focus projects that are getting more than enough attention and projects that are being disregarded.
There are two ways to add time in Hubstaff: You are able to build manual timesheets with past 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 likely did with pen and paper during the analog era of time tracking. Essentially, you work your change, you add time to your timesheet, and you also sign off on it. This is a fairly standard method of monitoring time. Regrettably, because Hubstaff does not let you add future time, you can not use the platform for a shift organizer. Administrators can allow users manually edit previously submitted timesheets, and they’re able to force users to need a reason to ensure they’re actually adding hours they worked. Admins can also set up the system to remind users to start tracking time should they have not clocked into the machine in a little while.
The second, and most bothersome, way of monitoring moment in Hubstaff is using the stopwatch feature. In every solution we tested, this component can be found within the boundaries of your web browserevery solution that’s, except for Hubstaff. With Hubstaff, you’re required to download a native desktop application that lives within a separate window. In it, you can choose your job, press Start, and your own timer will begin counting. When you are done, your action and your screenshots will be sent to the main hub. The native app is going to take a picture at random periods of up to three shots per hour depending on how often the admin wants to spy on employees. Screenshots can be partly fuzzy to not record sensitive information on every catch, but a lot of the display is left unsullied that you’ll still get a sense of whether the screen is really on work-related or play-related content. This can be an annoyingly complicated and convoluted means to manually monitor time, especially if you’re jumping from task to task throughout 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 apps is exactly the same as it is 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 different stages.
The Schedules tab lets you assign times and dates for workers to do the job. It is possible to set a minimum number of hours to work, a lunch break duration, and you can make it a recurring shift. The program’s reporting applications is terribly basic: You’ll receive access to weekly, daily, project, and penis view reports as well as a”habit” report which allows you filter information from the above reports. When compared to the PM solutions within this course, Hubstaff’s reporting is downright embarrassing so, if your target is to learn and evolve according to if and how your employees handle time, you would be much better off working using Zoho Projects, our Editors’ Choice for PM.
Click here to sign up for Hubstaff
Admins receive notifications when they’ve reached weekly staffing and budget limitations. Invoices are automatically calculated and made based on the time each employee worked, in addition to their related pay rate. You can set up automatic citizenship through PayPal, which enables you to automate payments based on time monitored within the application. Remember: Users do not need to send time through for approval, therefore automatic payments will be made whether employees were wrong or right about the amount of hours they worked. There is not any reminder for managers to double-check every timesheet before automatic payments go out thus, if you’re worried about making bogus payments, then you can place PayPal payments to manual. Staff Productivity Software
Cost And Options
Hubstaff has been constructed to provide you with Big Brother-level oversight into when workers are working, what they are doing while they operate, and what you really want to cover them when the work is done. The Fundamental $5-per-month plan gives you access to easy time tracking tools, an employee payment schedule manager, 24/7 support, and user settings that can be managed on an employee-by-employee basis. Additionally, this program enables you to keep track of whether your employees are operating by letting you record screenshots while they function as well as monitor mouse and keyboard activity during changes. Of the five tools we analyzed, Hubstaff is the only tool that provided this amount of insight into how workers are progressing. Although keyboard and screen monitoring are helpful (albeit over-reaching) features for a change monitor, Hubstaff’s implementation leaves much to be wanted (more about this later).
The 9-per-user-per-month Premium program includes all you’ll find in the Basic plan, but you will also have access to Hubstaff’s application programming interface (API) to integrate the application with other third-party software. The Premium package also comes with a lightweight schedulingtool that gives administrators the power to assign shifts and delegate tasks from within the console. Premium customers can also use the tool to create invoices and make PayPal payments mechanically. Clients that pay annually will receive two months free (for both price tiers).
Click here to sign up for Hubstaff
In comparison to TSheets, its closest competitor in our roundup, Hubstaff is fairly priced, especially given the added monitoring features that are unavailable in competitive tools. TSheets offers a fundamental free account, as well as a $4-per-user-per-month account that charges a $16 base fee per month for teams who have fewer than 100 users, along with a $80 foundation fee per month for teams with over a hundred users. The base fee, which Hubstaff doesn’t charge, makes TSheets marginally more expensive than Hubstaff, even at Hubstaff’s Premium level.
If you’re more interested in these hulky PM solutions, then you’ll need to pony up a little more money. Mavenlink’s cheapest plan that includes time tracking costs $39 per user per month. Zoho’s cheapest time tracking plan is $25 per month for an infinite number of consumers (that is a pretty good deal if you need all of the extra PM features). Wrike’s cheapest time tracking plan costs $24.80 per user per month.
What Should Be Added
Editor’s note: Since our first review of Hubstaff, the business has released a significant update in late 2018 that specifically addressed certain feature weaknesses or omissions, including adding a internet timer, fleshing out reporting options, and adding activity levels and monitor tracking. We’ll be analyzing these features shortly and you’ll see the results in an upcoming update to this review.
Aside from its draconian screengrab and keystroke tracking, Hubstaff does not do a very good job allowing for deeper shift supervision. For instance, Hubstaff doesn’t allow advanced tracking. If you operate a trucking business and you are less concerned about how many hours each trucker drove than the distance driven, then there’s no way to manage that in Hubstaff. Users can add notes to a empty text field, but that data will not be mixed into accounts. This means that you can not use it to find out about who is working, how they are working, and what they are generating (aside from the amount of hours monitored ). TSheets not only gives you this option, it gives you the ability to create six additional customizable advanced monitoring fields. You can even add a question for every clock-out (i.e.,”Was there an incident? Yes. No.”) Along with the system forces the consumer to reply to the questions at the close of each change or else they won’t have the ability to clock out.
As hardcore as Hubstaff is all about monitoring work, the tool doesn’t permit for IP address restrictions, which means your employees can say they are working from the office 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 virtually every other tool we analyzed. Hubstaff also doesn’t enable admins to require users to snap a photograph when they report to work. I suppose it is overkill to generate somebody take a selfie before you get started recording their display and tracking their keystrokes, but TSheets enables you to set this as a necessity (which makes sense, particularly if you’re monitoring tasks done out of a computer, such as retail, construction, or amusement work). The software also doesn’t let users clock via a phone call, which is a component TSheets along with other service providers make available for workers who don’t have a smartphone.
Monitoring Employee Work
We’ve touched on how some of Hubstaff’s more Enormous Brother-like attributes factor into time tracking. However, the platform also has many of the hallmarks of employee tracking tools. Hubstaff’s employee monitoring attributes include keystroke logging, URL and application monitoring, 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, for example 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 however, it will monitor the activity provided via the mouse and keyboard, giving companies a calculation of how busy the employee is. This data all winds up around the Hubstaff dashboard from the Task tab. This is where you can then pick a user from 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 programs an employee visited or opened and how long they had been there. The Reports module can subsequently run custom questions on vectors such as program usage mapped against time and action. Hubstaff incorporates with project and job management tools like Asana and Trello to filter reports by particular tasks or projects to monitor productivity.
One unique employee tracking feature offered is GPS location tracking through Hubstaff’s mobile app. While the cellular app can’t take screenshots or catch mobile app and website activity, it allows you to monitor and log location for employees working in the area. While the depth of monitoring surveillance and data features can not step up to a grid application such as Teramind, our Editors’ Choice for employee monitoring, Hubstaff has a useful choice of attributes for employers that want a little more oversight. Staff Productivity Software
Conclusion
Hubstaff is a easy-to-administer, feature-rich, time monitoring tool. If you are 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 moves via GPS monitoring.
Regrettably, if you’re looking for a platform that goes the extra mile to enable customization, irregular data entry, or a more sophisticated reporting structure, then Hubstaff won’t be perfect for you. Additionally, in case you opt for another program, your employees will thank you for not requiring them to download a secondary program for monitoring time–especially once you consider that every other tool we examined makes this potential within the boundaries of their online UI. Staff Productivity Software
Click here to sign up for Hubstaff