Intro Web Time Tracking Software

When choosing a time tracking tool, it’s important to understand the various kinds of tools available. Tools such as Mavenlink, Wrike, and Zoho Projects all include powerful time monitoring features for professional services businesses. On the other hand, the time monitoring features in such tools are available only within larger project management (PM) suites. Because of this, you are paying much more cash for things such as 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 such as Hubstaff (which begins at $5 per month per user) and TSheets, our Editors’ Choice instrument for time tracking. Web Time Tracking Software

Characteristics and Utilization

Hubstaff’s user interface (UI) was created with a appealing left-rail blue navigation bar that leaves lots of room on the side of your display for data entry and analysis. When you log into the system, you’ll be taken to the main dashboard, which provides you an overview of how many hours your employees have worked this day and the number of hours they’ve worked over the previous seven days. You’ll also see a list of every member, their latest tasks, and how busy they have 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 attention projects which are getting more than enough 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 may use the stopwatch feature on Hubstaff’s native desktop app. With the timesheet attribute, you log your hours since you likely did with pencil and paper through the analog age of time monitoring. Basically, if you work your shift, you add the time to your timesheet, and you sign off on it. This is a fairly standard method of tracking time. Regrettably, because Hubstaff does not allow you to add future time, you can not use the platform as a shift organizer. Administrators can allow users manually edit previously submitted timesheets, and they’re able to induce users to need a reason to ensure they’re really adding hours that they worked. Admins may also set the system up to let users to begin monitoring time should they haven’t clocked into the machine in a little while.

The second, and most frustrating, way of tracking moment in Hubstaff is by using the stopwatch feature. In each solution we tested, this component can be found within the confines of your web browserevery solution that’s, except for Hubstaff. With Hubstaff, you are expected to download a native desktop application that resides within a separate window. In it, you can select your job, press Start, along with your timer will begin counting. When you’re done, your action and your screenshots will be transmitted to the principal hub. The native program will take a photo at random intervals of up to three shots per hour depending on how often the admin would like to spy on employees. Screenshots can be partly fuzzy to not capture sensitive information on each catch, but enough of the screen is left unsullied you’ll still get a sense of if the screen is really on work-related or play-related content. This can be an annoyingly complex and complicated way to manually monitor time, particularly if you’re jumping from task to task throughout the day. Hubstaff must discover a way to bring the stopwatch and also 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 exactly the same as it’s on the desktop program. The mobile apps let admins monitor motions via GPS monitoring. This gives you an overview of just how much movement was done by your worker by capturing location data at different stages.

The Schedules tab lets you assign dates and times for employees to work. It is possible to set a minimum number of hours to operate, a lunch break interval, and you’ll be able to make it a recurring shift. The program’s reporting software is terribly basic: You will receive access to weekly, daily, project, and penis view reports in addition to a”habit” report that lets you filter information from the aforementioned reports. When compared to the PM options within this course, Hubstaff’s coverage is utterly embarrassing consequently, if your goal is to learn and evolve according to when and how your employees manage time, you would be better off working with 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 limits. Invoices are automatically calculated and made depending on the time each employee worked, in addition to his or her associated pay rate. It is possible to set up automatic payroll through PayPal, which enables you to automate payments based on time monitored within the tool. Remember: Users do not need to send time for acceptance, so automatic payments will be made whether workers were right or wrong concerning the amount of hours they worked. There’s not any reminder for supervisors to double-check each timesheet ahead of automatic payments go out thus, if you are concerned about making bogus payments, then it is possible to set PayPal payments to manual. Web Time Tracking Software

Cost And Alternatives

Hubstaff was constructed to give you Big Brother-level oversight into when employees are working, what they are doing while they operate, and what you really need to cover them as soon as the job is done. The Fundamental $5-per-month program provides you access to easy time monitoring tools, an employee payment program supervisor, 24/7 support, and user settings which may be managed in an employee-by-employee basis. Additionally, this program enables you to keep track of whether or not your employees are operating by letting 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 that provided this level of insight into how workers are progressing. Although screen and keyboard tracking are useful (albeit over-reaching) features for a change screen, Hubstaff’s implementation leaves much to be wanted (more about this later).

The 9-per-user-per-month Premium plan includes everything you’ll discover in the Basic program, but you’ll also have access to Hubstaff’s application programming interface (API) to integrate the application with other third party applications. The Premium bundle also has a lightweight schedulingtool that provides administrators the capability to assign shifts and delegate tasks from inside the console. Premium customers can also use the application to create invoices and create PayPal payments automatically. Clients that pay yearly will receive two weeks free (for both price tiers).

Click here to sign up for Hubstaff

In comparison to TSheets, its closest competition in our roundup, Hubstaff is reasonably priced, particularly given the added monitoring features that are unavailable in competitive tools. TSheets supplies a fundamental free accounts, as well as a $4-per-user-per-month accounts that costs a $16 base fee a month for teams who have fewer than 100 users, along with 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 those hulky PM alternatives, then you will want to pony up a little more cash. 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 consumers (that is a fairly solid deal if you need all of the extra PM features). Wrike’s cheapest time tracking plan costs $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 weaknesses or omissions, including adding a web timer, fleshing out reporting options, and adding activity levels and screen monitoring. We are going to be analyzing these attributes shortly and you’ll 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 change supervision. By way of example, Hubstaff doesn’t allow advanced monitoring. If you run a trucking company and you are less concerned about the number of hours a trucker drove than the distance driven, then there is no way to handle that in Hubstaff. Users can add notes to an empty text field, but that data will not be mixed into reports. As a consequence, that you can’t use it to find out about who’s functioning, how they’re functioning, and what they’re generating (aside from the number of hours monitored ). TSheets not only gives you this choice, it gives you the ability to create six extra customizable advanced monitoring fields. You can even add a query for every single clock-out (i.e.,”Was there an incident? Yes. No.”) And the system forces the consumer to reply to the queries at the end of every change or they won’t be able to clock out.

As hardcore as Hubstaff is about tracking work, the tool doesn’t permit for IP address limitations, which means your workers can say they’re working from the workplace but they can actually be operating from a cruise boat in the Bahamas (unless they’re using the cell program to monitor time). This is a standard feature that’s available in virtually every other tool we tested. Hubstaff also does not enable admins to need users to snap a photo when they report to work. I guess it’s overkill to make someone take a selfie before you get started recording their display and tracking their keystrokes, but TSheets lets you set this as a necessity (which makes sense, especially if you’re monitoring tasks done outside of a computer, such as electronic, building, or amusement work). The software also doesn’t allow users clock via a telephone call, which is an element TSheets and other service providers make available for employees who don’t have a smartphone.

Monitoring Employee Work

We’ve touched on how some of Hubstaff’s more Big Brother-like features factor into time tracking. But the platform also has many of the hallmarks of employee monitoring tools. Hubstaff’s employee tracking features include keystroke logging, URL and application tracking, GPS and place monitoring, and action screenshots.

As soon as you set your users and they download the timer program onto their machine, the desktop program not only tracks time but will take screenshots randomly or at custom intervals, for example three screenshots per minute. This applies not only to the user’s main display but any attached monitors as well. Hubstaff does not log keys however, it does track the action provided through the mouse and keyboard, giving employers a calculation of just how busy the worker is. This data all winds up on the Hubstaff dashboard in the Task tab. This is where you can then pick a user from the drop-down menu to view their screenshots correlated with activity data.

If it comes to program and URL tracking, Hubstaff goes beyond just tracking time to see what sites and apps a worker visited or opened and how long they had been there. The Reports module can then run custom queries on vectors like program usage mapped against time and activity. Hubstaff incorporates with job and job management tools such as Asana and Trello to filter reports by particular projects or tasks to monitor productivity.

One unique employee tracking feature supplied is GPS location monitoring through Hubstaff’s mobile app. While the mobile app can’t take screenshots or capture mobile app and site activity, it lets you monitor and log place for workers working in the field. While the depth of monitoring surveillance and data features can not step up to a grid application for example Teramind, our Editors’ Choice for employee monitoring, Hubstaff includes a helpful selection of attributes for companies that want a little more oversight. Web Time Tracking Software

Conclusion

Hubstaff is an easy-to-administer, feature-rich, time monitoring tool. If you are diligent about monitoring employee behaviour while on the clockthen there is no better software available than Hubstaff. You will have the ability to log screenshots, monitor keystroke volume, and route movements via GPS tracking.

Unfortunately, if you’re looking for a platform which goes the excess mile to allow customization, atypical information entry, or a more sophisticated reporting structure, then Hubstaff will not be right for you. In addition, in case you opt for another system, your employees will thank you for not needing them to obtain a secondary program for monitoring time–particularly once you consider that every other instrument we examined makes this possible within the boundaries of their web-based UI. Web Time Tracking Software

Click here to sign up for Hubstaff