Hubstaff Review

Hubstaff is a time-tracking and scheduling tool that essentially revolves around increasing transparency for distributed and mobile teams.

Who is Hubstaff for?

Hubstaff is a time clock software created by a distributed workforce company, so its main focus is on distributed teams, both large and small. If you're a startup looking to connect employee schedules across time zones, provide tools for team members and contractors to track hours, and manage timesheets, Hubstaff offers tools to do all of that.

Hubstaff's Features

Hubstaff offers so many cool features that cater to so many aspects of your business (scheduling, client management, project management, payroll). However, most of them are not available in a basic plan.

Scheduling

Scheduling is a premium feature in Hubstaff that can help you keep track of weekly schedules for shift work or just manage time-off requests and vacations (more premium features).

See when your employees are working in Hubstaff. Image source: Author

Through Hubstaff, you can allow employees to request time off, and you can approve it with the click of a button. You can also set rules and limits for PTO and create holidays or non-working days that apply to your entire staff.

Approve employee time-off requests (and see their PTO balance) with one click in Hubstaff. Image source: Author

Accountability

Hubstaff's product is more of a time-tracking app than a traditional time clock. However, you can set up geofencing rules that prompt employees to start tracking their time on the job as soon as they arrive at a worksite. Hubstaff is also working on providing a more traditional time clock option where employees can clock in from a workstation or kiosk.

To track time spent on tasks and projects, employees can use desktop and mobile apps, as well as a browser extension. To verify that employees are spending their time on work tasks, you can also choose to collect screenshots and track the apps and URLs your employees access while on the clock. This capability is included in all Hubstaff plans and is the core feature that the system revolves around.

Track time from your browser with Hubstaff's Chrome extension. Image source: Author

If you decide to upgrade to Hubstaff's scheduling tool, you can also track attendance to see whether your employees are showing up on time for their shifts.

See when your employees started tracking time in Hubstaff. Image source: Author

Budgeting

If employees or contractors use Hubstaff's app to track their time, their hours worked will sync with their timesheets. After approving timesheets, you can also choose whether you want to automatically send payments or send them manually via integrations with several payment apps. You can do this in a "Basic" plan, but you'll be limited to a certain number of payments in a given period. To track those payments, Hubstaff's payroll tool integrates with most popular accounting softwares.

While your employees are working, you can easily ensure that your payroll costs are staying on track with client and project budgets. You can also easily invoice clients from Hubstaff based on tracked hours and billing rates for different team members and tasks.

See how project budgets stack up against the hours your employees have worked. Image source: Author

Teamwork and collaboration

Hubstaff has its own project management tool, but it also integrates with popular tools like Asana, Trello, and Wrike so you can track employee time and project progress from Hubstaff. If you're using Hubstaff for scheduling, you can set up the system to send updates and alerts to both management and users.

Assign tasks within projects to your team members in Hubstaff. Image source: Author

Benefits of using Hubstaff

Using Hubstaff, you'll be able to make sure that your distributed team stays on task. If you employ hourly employees or contractors, you'll be able to accurately and fairly compensate them for their work. However, I think you'll see the most benefit out of using Hubstaff's "Premium" package, where all tools (time tracking, scheduling, payroll, budget management) are integrated in a central solution, saving you time (and therefore money) you might otherwise be spending toggling between systems. But to see those benefits, you'll have to decide if you want to pay more for the privilege.

Hubstaff pricing

Hubstaff is free for one user, which includes time-tracking, activity levels, limited screenshots, and limited payments. If you want more users and more features -- such as integrations, payroll, and unlimited job sites -- you'll need to upgrade to Basic ($7/month per user), Premium ($10/month per user), or Enterprise ($20/month per user).

Hubstaff pricing plans: Free, Basic, Premium, and Ent. Image source: Author

A 14-day free trial is available for all pricing tiers if you want to try out the software first.

Hubstaff's ease of use

For employee time-tracking purposes, Hubstaff is very easy to use. Just download a desktop or mobile app or their Chrome extension, press a button, and start tracking time. On the managerial side, you can easily toggle on or off the different time-monitoring methods, such as recording apps and URLs access or taking screenshots, in the settings.

While Hubstaff's time-tracking tool is pretty straightforward, you might find you need help setting up the more feature-rich trial or plan of the system. Those who need help navigating the solution will find that Hubstaff's self-help library is extensive. However, if you're looking for more hands-on help, you can also access Hubstaff's help desk or get in touch via their in-system live chat tool.

Getting started

All you have to do to get set up in Hubstaff is add and invite team members (including yourself) to use the system and then download a time-tracking app. You can then create projects and tasks for your team to work on to get more specific information on how employees are using their time.

I think the only issue with getting set up in Hubstaff that people might run into is how often you run into "premium" features and tools that are only accessible in a more expensive plan. Simple time tracking is available in all plans. However, if you want to streamline time tracking, schedules, client management, and payroll, you'll have to upgrade to the "Premium" version of Hubstaff, which starts at just under $10 per user, per month for smaller teams.