Workplus Review - Understanding Employee Monitoring

Workpuls is an employee monitoring, time tracking and productivity measurement tool. And it is extensively featured in tool review sites, with many dedicating an entire section to a Workpuls review.Advancements in social media and digital technology have led to a corresponding rise in cybercrime and time mismanagement. And yet, some leaders remain undecided about employee monitoring because of the negative connotation surrounding the term. What you should know, is that employee monitoring and time tracking help businesses to comply with regulations, ensure remote workforce productivity and prevent insider attacks.To this end, A 2018 Insider threat report revealed that 94% of organizations monitor user behavior and activity online. The rise in the adoption of such tools and measures shows just how important it is for businesses to safeguard their interests.In this Workpuls review, the SorryIWasOnMute team will uncover its core features, pricing, pros, and cons. Here’s knowing that reading this will help you make an informed decision!Another great employee monitoring tool to check out is ActivTrak; our in-depth review will help you. Here is a list of the crucial features to look for when picking an employee monitoring software that best fits your organization's needs.

1. What is the Workpuls Employee Time Tracking Tool?

Workpuls started out as an employee monitoring tool before expanding its capabilities to include time and productivity tracking. Launched in 2015 by full-stack engineer Ivan Petrovic, Workpuls is based in San Francisco,California, U.S.Workpuls time tracking is used by 100,000+ users including Grammarly, OfficeDepot,Manpower and Montgomery Homes.The use cases that run on the Workpuls platform are work from home, remote monitoring, activity monitoring and productivity monitoring. The core features are employee monitoring, time and attendance, time tracking and automatic time mapping.

2. Workpuls Pricing

In our Workpuls review, we found four pricing plans, with their time tracking package being the most recommended plan.

Plan	Price	Features
Employee Monitoring	$4.8	Screenshotsreal-time monitoring, activities tracking, app and website usage,time and attendance,manual time entry,Productivity TrackingCategorizationReportsTimekeepingManager LoginEmployee Login
Time Tracking	$6.40	Everything in Employee Monitoring + 1)Project Management2)Time on Projects and Tasks
Automatic Time Mapping	$12	Everything in Employee Monitoring +1)Project ManagementTime on Projects and Tasks2)Automatic Time 3)Tracking Customized for Specific Industry
Enterprise	Cloud Or On-Premise	Everything, including project management,Time on projects and tasks, Auto Time trackingCustomization

3. Workpuls Alternatives

With the market full of options, it would be unfair of us to do only a Workpuls review without letting you know what your alternatives are. Here are a few to consider looking up;

Tool	Features	Pricing
Intervals	Project management. Time tracking Task management Reporting Document Storage	Lite $29 Basic $49 Not-So-Basic $69 Professional $99 Premium $149 TopShelf $199 Unlimited $259
7Pace Timetracker	TimeTracker	Start $5 Team $7 Ultimate $11
Hubstaff	Timetracking Geofencing Timesheets GPS Tracking Project budgeting Employee monitoring Mobile time tracking Payroll software Online invoicing Productivity measurement	Free - 1 user Basic $7 Premium $10 Enterprise $20
DeskTime	Automatic Time tracking Offline time tracking Cost calculation Absence calendar Screenshots Project tracking Pomodoro Timer Shift scheduling Private time option Invoicing	Free - 1 user Pro $95 Premium $125 Enterprise $ 190

4. Workpuls Features

4.1 Employee Monitoring

The Employee Monitoring facility within Workpuls generates behavioral analytics that tell employers how employees spend time. It further comprises the following sub-features:

4.1.1 App and Website Usage

The website monitoring feature lets you see which websites and applications your employees are accessing at an individual, team or company level.

4.1.2 Screenshots

Screenshots capture images based on rules. It detects attempts to visit and open malicious content and alerts you of such activities.

4.1.3 Activities Tracking

You can see the activities logs as well as idle-time per individual.

4.1.4 Stealth Mode

Choose to browse incognito without disrupting focus.

What SorryIWasOnMute Thinks

Companies can track online activity only if they have a complete log of all potential websites and applications that employees frequent when at work. That’s why I felt this feature is the most useful one within employee monitoring. It helps you identify unusual usage arising from accessing irrelevant or distracting content. Consequently, you can block access to such applications and websites and only let through those that are safe and important for work.

4.2 Time Tracking

Time tracking gives you proof of work by enabling you to track time on projects and tasks. The features comprise;

4.2.1. Project Management

Under project management, you can add new projects, tasks and delegate them to employees. You can also color-code priority, set milestones, deadlines and look at automatically created Kanban boards within the dashboard to track movements.

4.2.2 Time on Projects and Tasks

The time on projects and tasks informs managers of which team members are busy, freed up earlier than expected and can therefore be taken out and released onto the next activity. It helps you get to the root of struggling projects and make decisions to approve or reject actions.

4.2.3 Activities Tracking

Activity tracking is real-time and enables you to maintain a secure log and audit of employee activities between fixed hours.

4.2.4 Budgets

Assign costs to the project for a list of billable and unbilled work against effort hours. This helps you estimate your returns against expenses.

4.2.5 Timekeeping

The tool also syncs historical time-entries upto 24 months for you to see previous attendance records. Managers can set clear expectations on reporting times, availability and attendance based on timekeeping information.

What SorryIWasOnMute thinks

The features that I liked best were the project management and time and task tracking. It's simple to add a project, name it, add people to it and label tasks based on urgency. The task tracking maps the time delegated people take, from the time they start working on it till finish. What I didn’t quite like was the time it takes for activity logs to sync despite hitting the refresh option more than once.

4.3 Time And Attendance

Workpuls time and attendance management starts capturing attendance from when employees login until they finish. It ensures that your employees are productive and are able to work while taking breaks to recharge. Features within time and attendance include;

4.3.1 Timeclock

You can enable time manually via The Workpuls Timeclock which tracks activity based on the time an employee logs in and logs out. This can be changed and customized according to a change in work hours, deadlines, break-times and idle-time to capture missed time.

4.3.2 Real-time attendance

Real-time attendance focuses on optimizing workloads such that staff can take timed breaks without work going off-track. The dashboard displays insights on time,attendance and productivity.

4.3.3 Time-reports

Workpuls’s timesheets enable individuals to enter time spent per task. Managers in turn can see who what was worked on, and by who. This enables them to see which projects are time and skills-intensive and ensure the right people are allocated for projects with high returns.

4.3.4 Time-Payroll

Workpuls syncs with financial systems and speeds up payroll and invoicing. You can align effort hours with costs assigned to project tasks to make budgeting transparent for clients, stakeholders and teams.

What SorryIwasOnMute Thinks

The budgeting and time components enable managers to estimate how much you’re spending per task against the time it takes to get it done. It also helps you know which activities are profitable and worth the effort investment, which is great!

4.4 Automatic Time Mapping

Workpuls’s automatic time mapping feature is an enhanced version of time tracking and can be used by architecture and insurance firms, design teams and enterprises. Enterprises can analyze their workforce’s work patterns and decide on optimizing, standardizing or outsourcing processes to improve efficiency. The project and time tracking tool can enable you to see the time spent per project phase in order to accurately estimate the project’s total completion time. Managers and team leads can accordingly identify the right number and type of skills to be released for the next job.4.4.1 Activity TrackingInsurance firms can track broker’s activities to make the claims process transparent. The time tracking tool tells you how long it takes your consultants to complete each stage of the claims process.4.4.2. Detailed reportsDeep dive into reports for duration and categorize priority and billable work above busywork in order to ensure that the workforce can spend their time on work that makes your business money.4.4.3 Automatic time trackingAutomatic time tracking is a feature that runs when employee activity is detected. It frees up the employee to focus on completing and marking work and enables them to review records before it is sent to their manager for approval. They can edit start and finish times and ensure the hours captured are a true record of their efforts.What SorryIWasOnMute ThinksI liked the time clock app because it tracks from the moment you log in to log out, while allowing you to adjust the counter by the number of, and length of breaks you take while working. I feel this helps you take guilt-free breaks, since you’re more mindful of what you’re doing on company time.

5. Workpuls Pros and Cons

The workpuls software primarily logs employee activity and tracks at-work hours. The features you get depend on the package you opt for. For example, project and task tracking are only available on plans from the time tracking plan onwards, but are absent in the employee monitoring plan. A few pros we found in our exploration of the tool are;

The ability to customize work hours, paid and unpaid time offs so that the time reporting is as accurate as possible.
You have the option to customize components and select a plan according to how many features you see fit for your business.
You can give employees access to their activity logs and reconcile time and effort information together.
Their customer support is quite hands on, accessible and knowledgeable, which speeds up the time to troubleshoot considerably.
You can label apps and/or websites as ‘productive’, ‘unproductive’ or ‘neutral’ at the group or individual level.
There are separate logins for client, employees and team leaders where the viewing pane is restricted by role. For example, clients can only see work relevant to what their project,and not the other projects or tasks employees may be working on. Employees can access their own timesheets and productivity data to see how their week is looking. And managers can review apps and websites and create a list for those approved sites that are relevant to their team’s work.
Rules and triggers for alerts can be created by managers, based on timelines, task urgency or constraint overruns.

One of the first things you’ll observe while on the Workpuls website, is that most features work the same way within the umbrella of time tracking, attendance and employee monitoring. From a layperson’s point of view, it's difficult to discern where the differences lie since the 7- day trial unlocks access to features at a surface level. Besides this, a few cons we observed include Stealth mode: we weren’t a fan, given that the monitoring and tracking happens without the employee being aware that it's happening. This is an optional feature that depends on your organization’s trust concerns.Email reports are not that flexible nor intuitive, which means you still have to go into the tool to verify what you get in your inbox. At present, the trial is only for 7 days, without the option to extend it. It would be nice to have this in order to fully explore the report analytics and graphical formats available on the desktop agent.

6. SorryIwasOnMute’s Rating

The team and I give Workpuls a solid 9/10 on ease of use and understanding. We were able to compile activity logs and see how employee data gets audited.The productivity labeling within web and apps usage helps you identify and block those sites or apps that are distracting your employees. In doing so, employees are encouraged to browse only those websites deemed fit for work.The time clock prevents buddy punching by mapping employee login to their schedule, so there are no discrepancies in time-reports.I particularly liked the attendance management and time clock features because it doesn’t impose a rigid schedule on employees. Rather, the focus is on staying productive by finding a balance between how you work and the number of breaks you take. This in turn enables employees to take charge of their own accountability; they can also review and finalize what’s entered on timesheets, project hours and tasks.Having read this detailed Workpuls review, are you to give it a try?