How Does Hubstaff Track Employee Time Across Devices and Locations?
Hubstaff tracks employee time on desktop, web, and mobile, letting people log hours against tasks, projects, and clients. Workers can use a start-and-stop timer, and field teams can use GPS-based tracking to capture work time across locations. The same tracked time then feeds into productivity metrics, project budgets, and payments, so time data stays connected to reporting and costs rather than sitting in separate tools.
Where time tracking happens
Hubstaff is built as multi-device time tracking software, so the same account can record time from more than one kind of device:
- Desktop — for people working at a computer.
- Web — for logging time through a browser.
- Mobile — for people working away from a desk.
Because tracking runs across these devices, a team spread across offices, homes, and field sites can record time in one system instead of reconciling separate logs.
How hours are recorded
There are two main ways time gets captured:
- Start-and-stop timer — an intuitive timer that logs hours as work happens. This suits task- or project-based work where someone knows when a piece of work begins and ends.
- GPS-based tracking — used for field teams, so work time is captured accurately across locations rather than relying on memory or manual entry.
Time is logged against tasks, projects, and clients, which is what makes the data useful later for project tracking and profitability, not just payroll.
What happens to the time after it's tracked
Tracking is the input; the rest of Hubstaff turns that input into decisions:
| Tracked data | What it feeds |
|---|---|
| Time against tasks, projects, clients | Project budgets, margins, project spend |
| Activity rates, app and URL tracking, optional screenshots | Productivity monitoring |
| Hours by person and team | Workforce analytics, utilization trends, capacity gaps |
| Approved time | Automated global payments |
Productivity monitoring is customizable — settings and visibility for activity rates, app and URL tracking, and optional screenshots can be adjusted to fit a team's needs. The stated aim is transparency and performance support rather than micromanagement.
Turning approved hours into payments
Once time is tracked and approved, Hubstaff can send global payments based on approved time. Pay frequencies and approvals can be adjusted, and teams can be paid in multiple currencies across various payment integrations directly from the app, with visibility into payouts and costs.
What to check before adopting it
- Field vs. desk work — if your team works on-site, confirm GPS-based tracking fits your workflow; if everyone is at a computer, the timer plus desktop tracking may be enough.
- Monitoring settings — decide in advance which productivity features (activity rates, app/URL tracking, screenshots) you'll enable, since these are configurable and affect how the team experiences the tool.
- Payment needs — if you pay contractors or staff in multiple currencies, the automated payments feature is the relevant part; if you only need time records, that's a smaller use case.
- Trial terms — Hubstaff offers a free 14-day trial with no credit card required and cancel anytime, so you can test tracking across your actual devices before committing. See pricing for current plan details.
The core idea is that one tracked hour can serve several purposes at once: it records attendance, informs project profitability, feeds analytics, and becomes the basis for payment — provided the team tracks consistently across whichever devices they use.