Hubstaff is a time tracking software built for remote teams. The company was founded in 2012 and their fully remote team is “based” out of Indianapolis, Indiana.
Hubstaff offers several productivity monitoring features like an app and URL tracking, optional screenshots, and customizable reports. It’s designed to give you insight into how your remote team is spending their time so you can help them be more efficient.
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Now I’m not big on the over-the-shoulder nature of these tracking programs, and have only ever looked at the Elance screen reports a handful of times. The best way to make sure your virtual assistants are working? Have some deliverable. If it’s not getting done, then you have a problem — otherwise, why bother with the micromanaging?
If you’re interested, Hubstaff comes with a 14-day free trial so you can check it out and see how you like it.
Table of Contents
Hubstaff Intro Video
Note: The video says the software is “100% free.” There is a free plan but the features and functionality are quite limited.
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Hubstaff Features
Hubstaff includes a wide range of team management features with time tracking at its core. Its productivity monitoring capabilities help you focus on doing work instead of tracking it, eliminating the need to ask team members what they’ve worked on.
Interview with Hubstaff Co-Founder
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How Hubstaff Works
Using Hubstaff is as simple as choosing a task to work on and then tracking time to it. Once you’ve set up your projects in your organization, they will automatically appear on the time tracker so you can start working right away.
You’ll be able to see the total hours tracked by your team, the average activity rate between team members, and how much you have spent on projects on the dashboard. You can customize it to show other statistics.
The tracked time is automatically converted into online timesheets, which you can quickly review and approve. This saves your team a lot of time on manually preparing them, with the added benefit of being more accurate and easier to organize than paper-based or spreadsheet-type timesheets.
Payroll is automatically processed once timesheets are approved. Hubstaff will automatically calculate the payment amount based on each team member’s hourly rate and the total time they have worked.
Hubstaff Tasks
Hubstaff Tasks is a project management tool built to streamline collaboration in remote teams. It has a Kanban-style interface that lets you organize tasks with cards, boards, and visual elements like checklists and colored labels.
With its Sprints feature, teams can assign tasks to different sprints — current, future, or backlog. This is designed to help you with prioritizing the right tasks so you can finish projects more efficiently.
Hubstaff Tasks also has automated workflows, daily stand-ups, and a roadmaps feature. It integrates with Hubstaff so you can track time to your projects as well.
Hubstaff Talent
Hubstaff Talent is a free resource for companies looking to find remote talent across the globe, with no fees, no markups, no middlemen. Companies can use the Hubstaff database to find and hire the highest quality freelancers from around the world.
You can find all sorts of freelance talent, but the pool is skewed toward developers, digital marketers, and creatives.
Hubstaff Alternatives
The biggest alternatives to Hubstaff both in terms of virtual staffing and the tracking tool are the freelance platforms of Elance and oDesk, mentioned above, as well as the Philippines-specific jobs board, OnlineJobs.ph.
Your Turn
Have you found a virtual assistant or other remote team members through Hubstaff? If so, please leave a quick review of your experience below to help others with their hiring decision.
Unfortunately, I have had to give Hubstaff Talent a very bad review. I encountered a rogue web developer on the website. He caused us a world of problems. Hubstaff Talent does not even have a rating system for companies to leave feedback on Freelancers found via their system; unlike Upwork and Freelancer both of which have fully transparent rating systems.
I contacted Hubstaff Talent support and was told that they have not yet built in a rating system into their software; even though from my correspondence with the Hubstaff Talent representative it seems as if a number of companies have been asking for it.
I, for one, will NOT be using Hubstaff Talent again until there is an even playing field for companies to leave feedback about the Freelancers encountered via the platform. Otherwise, as a company we are simply leaving ourselves wide open to the nefarious activities of some very unethical and scrupulous individuals…as we found out!
I cancelled my account and they reactivated it automatically about 50 days after i cancelled.
We use their monitoring tool for many projects and have been extremely satisfied with their service so far – thank you
We actually use Hubstaff personally for our 15+ Virtual Assistant & Management Crew.
It’s been really good and Dave’s team is really great with communication and open to suggestions of feature requests.
Although there are “cheaper” solutions out there, Dave really has thought of a lot of things that make all of our lives easier and reading the negative review I had to chime in and give our honest opinion after 2 months of switching and we love it.
Thanks Hubstaff team!
J Hunter
Founder VA Staffer
We use Hubstaff for our entire workflow every day. Has never failed us. I found it extremely easy to get up and running and I have a team of 15 contractors. Highly recommended. Dead accurate time tracking.
Unable to get this working as Norton was blocking it. Tried for ages with live support but in the end gave up. Some of our staff have low IT skills so this isn’t a good solution for us. We did ask if they could help by remote access but they said no.