Introduction Time Office Software Free Download

When choosing a time monitoring tool, it’s important to comprehend the various kinds of tools available. Tools such as Mavenlink, Wrike, and Zoho Projects all feature robust time monitoring features for professional services companies. However, the time tracking features in these tools are available only as part of larger project management (PM) suites. As a result, you are paying a lot more cash for things like file storage, in-app chat, progress reports, and shift management. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you will find pure play time tracking tools such as Hubstaff (which starts at $5 a month per user) and TSheets, our Editors’ Choice tool for time tracking. Time Office Software Free Download

Attributes and Usage

Hubstaff’s user interface (UI) was created with a appealing left-rail blue navigation bar that leaves plenty of room around the side of your screen for data entry and analysis. When you log into the system, you’ll be taken to the main dashboard, which provides you an summary of how many hours your employees have worked this day and the number of hours they have worked over the previous seven days. You’ll also see a list of each member, their latest jobs, and how busy they have been over the last week. This is a strong PM data visualization that allows you instantly differentiate between workhorses and do-nothings, and it instantly calls to focus projects that are becoming more than sufficient focus and projects that are being neglected.

There are two methods to add time in Hubstaff: You can build manual timesheets with past hours worked, or you can use the stopwatch feature on Hubstaff’s native desktop program. With the timesheet feature, you log your hours since you probably did with pen and paper through the analog age of time monitoring. Basically, if you work your shift, you add time to your own timesheet, and you sign off on it. This is a pretty standard method of monitoring time. Unfortunately, because Hubstaff doesn’t let you add future time, you can’t use the platform as a shift planner. Administrators can let users manually edit formerly submitted timesheets, and they can force users to need a motive to guarantee they’re really adding hours that they worked. Admins can also set the system up to let users to start tracking time if they haven’t clocked to the system in a little while.

The second, and most frustrating, way of monitoring time in Hubstaff is by using the stopwatch feature. In every solution we tested, this element can be found within the boundaries of your web browserevery solution that is, except for Hubstaff. With Hubstaff, you are required to download a native desktop application that resides within another window. In it, you can select your project, press Start, along with your timer will start counting. When you’re done, your activity and your screenshots will be sent to the main hub. The native app will take a photo at random intervals of up to three shots per hour based on how often the admin would like to spy on workers. Screenshots can be partly fuzzy to not record sensitive information on each grab, but enough of this screen is left unsullied you’ll still get a sense of whether the display is really on work-related or play-related content. This can be an annoyingly complex and convoluted means to manually track time, particularly if you’re jumping from task to task throughout the day. Hubstaff must discover 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 programs is exactly the same as it is 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 worker by capturing location data at different stages.

The Schedules tab lets you assign times and dates for employees to work. It is possible to put a minimum number of hours to operate, a lunch break interval, and you’ll be able to make it a recurring change. The program’s reporting software is terribly basic: You will get access to weekly, daily, job, and penis view reports in addition to a”custom” report which lets you filter information from the aforementioned reports. When compared to the PM solutions within this course, Hubstaff’s reporting is utterly embarrassing so, if your target is to learn and evolve according to if and how your employees manage time, you’d be much better off working using Zoho Projects, our Editors’ Choice for PM.

Click here to sign up for Hubstaff

Admins receive notifications once they have reached weekly staffing and funding limitations. Invoices are automatically calculated and made based on the time each employee worked, as well as his or her related pay rate. It is possible to set up automatic payroll through PayPal, which enables you to automate payments based on time tracked inside the tool. Keep in mind: Consumers do not have to send time through for approval, therefore automatic payments will be made whether employees were right or wrong about the amount of hours that they worked. There’s not any reminder for managers to double-check each timesheet ahead of automatic payments go out thus, if you are concerned about making false payments, then it is possible to set PayPal payments to manual. Time Office Software Free Download

Price And Options

Hubstaff was constructed to provide you with Big Brother-level oversight into when workers are working, what they’re doing while they work, and what you really want to cover them as soon as the job is finished. The Fundamental $5-per-month plan provides you access to simple time monitoring tools, a worker payment schedule supervisor, 24/7 support, and user settings which may be handled in an employee-by-employee basis. Additionally, this plan enables you to keep track of whether or not your employees are working by allowing you record screenshots while they work as well as monitor mouse and keyboard action during shifts. Of the five tools we analyzed, Hubstaff is the only tool which provided this amount of insight into the way that workers are progressing. Although screen and keyboard tracking are useful (albeit over-reaching) attributes for a shift monitor, Hubstaff’s implementation leaves much to be desired (more about this later).

The $9-per-user-per-month Premium program includes all you’ll find in the fundamental plan, but you will also get access to Hubstaff’s application programming interface (API) to integrate the tool with other third-party applications. The Premium package also has a lightweight schedulingtool that gives administrators the capability to assign shifts and assign tasks from inside the console. Premium customers can also use the application to create invoices and make PayPal payments mechanically. 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 competition in our roundup, Hubstaff is reasonably priced, especially given the added tracking features that are unavailable in competitive resources. TSheets offers a basic free accounts, as well as a $4-per-user-per-month accounts that charges a $16 base fee per month for groups with fewer than 100 users, along with a $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 in Hubstaff’s Premium level.

If you are more interested in those hulky PM alternatives, then you’ll want to pony up a bit more money. Mavenlink’s cheapest plan that includes time monitoring prices $39 per user per month. Zoho’s cheapest time monitoring plan is $25 a month for an infinite number of users (that is a fairly good deal if you want all the extra PM features). Wrike’s cheapest time monitoring plan prices $24.80 per user per month.

What Ought to Be Added

Editor’s note: Since our first review of Hubstaff, the business has released a major update in late 2018 that specifically addressed specific feature flaws or omissions, such as adding a internet timer, fleshing out reporting options, and adding action levels and screen monitoring. We’ll be analyzing these attributes shortly and you will see the results in an upcoming update to this review.

Aside from its draconian screengrab and keystroke monitoring, Hubstaff doesn’t do a very good job allowing for deeper shift oversight. By way of example, 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’s no way to handle this in Hubstaff. Users can add notes to a empty text area, but that data will not be blended into accounts. As a consequence, that you can not use it to find out about who’s functioning, how they are functioning, and what they are generating (aside from the amount of hours tracked). TSheets not only gives you this choice, it gives you the ability to make six additional customizable advanced monitoring fields. You can even put in a question for every clock-out (i.e.,”Was there an episode? Yes. No.”) And the system forces the user to respond to the questions at the end of each change or they will not have the ability to clock out.

As hardcore as Hubstaff is about tracking work, the application does not allow for IP address limitations, so your employees can say they are working from the office but they can actually be working from a cruise boat in the Bahamas (unless they are using the cell app to track time). This is a normal feature that’s available in virtually every other instrument we tested. Hubstaff also does not enable admins to require users to snap a photo if they report to work. I guess it is overkill to generate someone take a selfie before you get started recording their display and monitoring their keystrokes, but TSheets lets you place this as a requirement (which makes sense, particularly if you’re monitoring tasks done out of a computer, like retail, building, or entertainment work). The software also doesn’t let users clock in via a telephone call, which is an element TSheets and other service providers make readily available for workers who don’t have a smartphone.

Tracking Employee Work

We’ve touched on how a number of Hubstaff’s more Big Brother-like features factor into time monitoring. However, the platform also offers many of the hallmarks of worker tracking tools. Hubstaff’s employee monitoring attributes include keystroke logging, URL and program tracking, GPS and location tracking, 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 at custom intervals, such as three screenshots per minute. This applies not just to the user’s main display but any connected monitors as well. Hubstaff doesn’t log keys but it will monitor the activity provided through the mouse and computer keyboard, giving companies a calculation of just how busy the worker is. This info all winds up around the Hubstaff dashboard from the Task tab. This is where you can then pick an individual in the drop-down menu to see their screenshots correlated with activity data.

When 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 app usage mapped against time and activity. Hubstaff integrates with job and task management tools like Asana and Trello to filter reports by specific projects or tasks 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 site activity, it allows you to monitor and log location for employees working in the field. While the thickness of monitoring data and surveillance features can’t step up to a powerhouse tool for example Teramind, our Editors’ Choice for employee monitoring, Hubstaff includes a helpful selection of attributes for employers that want a bit more oversight. Time Office Software Free Download

Conclusion

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

Unfortunately, if you’re trying to find a platform that goes the extra mile to enable customization, atypical data entry, or a more advanced reporting structure, then Hubstaff will not be perfect for you. Additionally, in case you choose another system, your employees will thank you for not needing them to obtain a secondary app for tracking time–especially once you consider that every other instrument we reviewed makes this possible within the boundaries of their web-based UI. Time Office Software Free Download

Click here to sign up for Hubstaff