With the rise of online work-from-home jobs and freelancing, our notion of a workplace is steadily changing. Now, our concept of a traditional workplace can be different from the rooms filled with individual cubicles that we were used to. HubStaff, a software from a company of the same name established in the United States, offers its services for traditional, distant, or even entirely online workplaces.
An employee monitoring software is used to monitor whether or not employees are keeping on with their responsibilities, as well as screen and be aware of unwanted or prohibited activity. Aside from monitoring behaviour, it can also be used to manage any sort of workplace and make it more productive.
Monitor Productivity and Improve Coordination with HubStaff Fresh Books and Hubstaff Integration
HubStaff includes the features that you would expect from an employee tracking software such as:
Online Activity Monitoring:
All of us know full well that social media kills productivity. All too often, a few swipes on any social networking app is going to wind up consuming hours of our time, even in the workplace. Assessing on important notifications from time to time is acceptable, but it is helpful if managers know when it’s becoming a problem. HubStaff can help track if employees use an excessive amount of social media and other applications that hamper productivity.
HubStaff can take note of the websites (and even the url of the specific page) that workers visit during work hours, in addition to the time they spend on it. Traffic from applications can also be tracked and the time spent on these is also listed.
The data is displayed neatly, and managers can see the page title of the visited webpages, the url, and the time spent, all in one glance. They can also visit the links displayed to verify if workers really are allowing time slide on websites unrelated to work.
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Display Monitoring
Tracking individual displays is too much of a hassle and can be quite awkward if done personally. But then, it’s necessary for when a remote workplace setup is in order where it’s impossible to handle employees in person.
HubStaff has a feature that can enable managers to take screenshots of their employees’ screens at a customizable time period, with 10 minutes as the default option. If this sounds too much of an invasion of privacy, then it could be set to have the screenshots be partly blurred. In this way, managers can determine if workers are working on their desks rather than playing games or watching movies, without exposing possible sensitive information.
It must be noted that workers would know that this feature is activated on their displays. Employees would also be able to look at the screenshots taken from their displays just so they’ll be ensured that this feature is implemented only for reasons related to work.
With that said, this still has an influence on the behavior of employees as knowing that their screens are tracked is enough of a reason for them to perform their tasks.
Monitor Activity on Computer Peripheral Devices
In standard office setups, the sound of keyboard strokes and mouse clicks can be enough of a measure of worker activity. HubStaff can detect keyboard strokes and mouse interaction and discover times of inactivity where none of these instances are present.
HubStaff can then compare the overall time where the mouse or keyboard is active to the overall time spent working. HubStaff believes a productivity rate of at least 60% as a good sign. Productivity rates of less than 60% can mean that an employee is taking too much time on the desk doing nothing, or if an employee is doing too slowly.
The dashboard for this tool shows the productivity rate of every member of the team. This way, the tool can also be used to see how many members of the team are working on a project at a given time.
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Work Limit Monitoring Fresh Books and Hubstaff Integration
Working overtime is also becoming more of a norm, even so in countries like Japan where it’s an unofficial standard. Reasons can vary from employees wanting to complete their tasks early, catch up on projects, and some are only workaholics who wish to be working as much as possible.
However, it’s been demonstrated that too much work can be detrimental as productivity and creativity declines without enough rest. There is a good reason why there is a standard 8 hours of work every day.
HubStaff can help managers monitor if employees are working too much hours per week. They could set the maximum time every week that workers can stay logged on for work. Following the maximum time has been reached, then the time tracking tool stops. In this manner, workaholic tendencies are suppressed, and that employees won’t be given the incentive to put in too much time to work and sacrifice personal and rest time.
Monitor the Location of Employees
Managers working with remote teams may find it tough to communicate and coordinate the team. Some employees may be leaping from place to place for work, and also be working from cafes or other workstations.
Setting up unplanned meetings can be difficult if workers are commuting from one place to another, or if they are doing field work.
Members of the team can install HubStaff on their telephones so that the employee location monitoring feature can be used. With this, managers and team leaders can monitor the location of their members during work hours.
HubStaff can display how much time employees spend on commuting between places and how long is spent on each location. From these data, managers can determine the best time to do rapid meetings.
As this needs employees to install HubStaff in their phones, this can be seen as overly intrusive of a tool. However, same as the rules on iOS and Android programs, employees will know exactly when their locations are being monitored.
Project Progress Monitoring
HubStaff lets the whole team report on the progress of their tasks. HubStaff can then use this to offer a report on the status of every job on a weekly basis. On the team dashboard, managers can view each individual employee’s working hours and a summary of the completed and uncompleted tasks. The dashboard also shows whether workers are online.
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Payroll, Timesheets, and other Miscellaneous Features Fresh Books and Hubstaff Integration
Aside from monitoring employee productivity, HubStaff can also make it easier for managers and admins to handle payrolls and manage accounts.
Timesheet and Payroll Management
HubStaff can function as a virtual check-in and check-out mechanism for companies. And, better than conventional systems where timesheets can be cheated, the HubStaff timesheet tool can record the first keyboard stroke or mouse action of the day for each employee.
Managers can also pause the machine manually for breaks.
With HubStaff, maintaining a list of working hours and salaries is also made easier. HubStaff’s payroll managing tool can determine each employee’s payout depending on the hours logged for them. By linking their paypal accounts with HubStaff, then payment transfers are made simple. Money transfers for payroll can even be automatically set to weekly, monthly, or on a set period.
Job Tracking for Customers Fresh Books and Hubstaff Integration
Becoming transparent to clients is key for establishing trust for your company. HubStaff makes it effortless to communicate with customers, in addition to assure them that things are moving as agreed upon.
HubStaff makes it easy for clients to have a peek into the progress of jobs. This can be simply done by adding clients into the members tab. From there, they could see the phases of the project, as well as the pending and completed tasks.
Third party Applications Integration
HubStaff can integrate well with other project tracking tools such as but not limited to Asana and Trello. This is good news for business owners who are already using other project management applications.
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Employee Spying?
You might be wondering if using HubStaff to manage employees can be counterproductive as it might make an atmosphere of distrust between managers and team members. To ease your mind, you can be certain that HubStaff lets the entire team know of the entire monitoring system. Employees can be sure that their activities are monitored only during work hours, and exactly how they are being tracked.
However, as a company owner or manager, it is your responsibility to let your employees know beforehand that your workplace will be implementing HubStaff. Additionally, HubStaff should only be installed on the devices necessary for work where it would make sense to have implement a monitoring system.
To put it simply, HubStaff is a tracking system and not a surveillance system. Employees can be certain that only the instances of the keystrokes and mouse actions are recorded, and not the actual keystroke that they register. HubStaff will not let managers and admins know what exactly their workers are typing.
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Pricing
HubStaff has three paid programs that charge a fixed price per user per month. The Basic plan costs $7, while the Premium and Enterprise plans cost $10 and $20 respectively.
Only the Premium and Enterprise plans unlock attributes related to payroll management. The enterprise feature includes fleet monitoring and even a concierge accounts.
For those who are willing to pay on an annual basis, then the cost per person per month of the paid plans will be slashed down to $5, 8$, and $16, respectively.
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Verdict Fresh Books and Hubstaff Integration
It’s important to find the right software for your business since this will allow you to, in a way, outsource some of your tasks to the specific software.
You can be certain that HubStaff can flawlessly perform the job that it claims to do. The user interface is clean and intuitive, and isn’t in any way confusing, requiring only minimal orientation for employees not knowledgeable about the software.
However, it must be stated that not all companies might benefit fully from utilizing HubStaff. HubStaff is specially suited to modern desk jobs, and for projects where team members use computers for the majority of their time. Take jobs that take a lot of reading for instance, where employees might seem to be inactive based on computer interaction. The software might say that they are inactive, but they just might be at the top of a reading assignment in fact
Business owners should also not completely rely on the information that HubStaff collects to determine if their employees are being productive or not. HubStaff is simply a project management software using features and tools that can help you gauge the performance of workers and other members of the team. This is certainly not a virtual or artificial intelligence workplace manager.
All the same, HubStaff collects data seamlessly, and we all know that data helps you run your business effectively.
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FAQ Fresh Books and Hubstaff Integration
Q: Where do the screenshots go?
A: HubStaff shops the screenshots and other information using Amazon AWS.
Q: Is there a maximum number of group members that can use HubStaff?
A: The paid plans have a minimum of two users and limit of 350 users.
Q: Is implementing HubStaff in businesses completely legal?
A: HubStaff has complete legal permissions for use, and resources regarding them are available on their website. However, these are just based on United States laws. It is best to consult with a lawyer for international users.
Q: Can employees choose when they’re being monitored?
A: Yes, employees can manually start and end HubStaff monitoring and have it run in the background. HubStaff does not collect any data once tracking ends.