Workpuls Teramind ActivTrak Hubstaff DeskTime Time Doctor RescueTime Kickidler Veriato Work Examiner
OVERVIEW
Price $6/user/month $6/user/month $7.20/user/month $7/user/month $7/user/month $9.99/user/month $6/user/month $9.99/user/month $150/licence/year $60/licence (lifetime)
Free trial 7 days 7 days No 14 days 14 days 14 days 30 days 7 days Yes 30 days
Ease of use Very easy Difficult Very easy Easy Easy Very easy Very easy Very easy Very difficult Easy
TRACKING METHODS
Unlimited (tracker working 24/7)
Fixed (defined working hours)
Automatic (when computer is connected to a specified network)
Manual (start/stop)
Project based (track time only on projects)
GENERAL MONITORING FEATURES
Stealth mode
App and website usage
Real-time monitoring
Offline time tracking
Attendance
Activity levels
Keylogger
Geolocation
Remote desktop control
Website/activity blocking
SCREENSHOTS AND RECORDING
Screenshots
Screenshots on demand
Screen recording
PRODUCTIVITY FEATURES
Productivity trends
Websites and apps labeling
Category labeling
Productivity alerts
ADVANCED SECURITY FEATURES
User behavior analytics
Data loss prevention
Advanced file and web monitoring
REPORTING
Productivity reports
Team reports
Timelines
Email reports
Access management
PLATFORMS
Web
Mac desktop app
Windows desktop app
Linux desktop app
Mobile app iOS, Android iOS, Android iOS, Android iOS, Android iOS, Android Android
Browser extension Chrome Chrome Chrome
Other Citrix, VMware Chrome OS
OTHER
Support Phone, email, online Phone, email, online Phone, email, online Email, online Phone, email, online, in-person Online Phone, email, online Email, online, Viber, Whatsapp Phone, email, online, support ticket Phone, email, online
Knowledge base
Video tutorials
Integrations comming soon
API
Deployment cloud, on-premise cloud, on-premise, AWS, Azure cloud cloud cloud cloud cloud on-premise cloud, on-premise on-premise
Kronos Humanity Timeclockplus Tsheets Wheniwork Deputy Replicon Jibble EbilityTimeTracker OnTheClock BeeBole
OVERVIEW
Price(per month)Available upon requestFrom $2 per userAvailable upon requestFrom $6.40 per user+$16Free for up to 75 usersFrom $2.50 per userBasic plan:$30 for 5 users+$5 per additional userFrom $1.50 per employeeFrom $4 per user+$8From $2.20 per user$5.99 per user per month
Free trial30 days14 daysYes14 days14 days14 days30 days30 days,no credit card required
Ease of useDifficultEasyDifficultVery easyEasyEasyDifficultVery easyEasyEasyEasy
FEATURES
Timecard management
Scheduling
Shift Trading
Timesheets
Break time management
Real-time tracking
PTO Management
Payroll
Invoicing
Client billing
GPS tracking
Clock out reminders
Alerts
Manual time
PUNCH-IN METHODS
Web app
Mobile app
Time clock device
Time clock kiosk
Facial recognition
Fingerprint scanning
Geofencing
Group punch-in
REPORTING
Visual reports
Email reports
Time rounding
MANAGEMENT
Permissions
Manager approvals
Add time for others
Integrations
PLATFORMS
Web
Android app
iOS app
Mac desktop app
Windows desktop app
Linux desktop app
OTHER
SupportPhone and onlinePhone and onlinePhone,chat and onlinePhone and chatEmail and onlineChat and phonePhone,email,chat and onlinePhone and onlinePhone,email,chat and onlinePhone and onlineOnline chat and video support in English,French,and Spanish
Knowledge base
Video tutorials
Community forum
API
Workpuls Hubstaff Toggl TimeDoctor Harvest TimeCamp Timely Everhour Tick TMetric
OVERVIEW
Price (per month) $6 per user $5.83 per user $9 per user $9.99 per user $10.80 per user $5.25 per user $99 for 5 users $7 per user $19 for 10 projects $5 per user
Free trial 7 days 14 days 30 days 14 days 30 days Yes 14 days 14 days 30 days 30 days
Ease of use Very easy Difficult Difficult Very easy Easy Very easy Easy Difficult Very easy Difficult
TIME TRACKING METHODS
Manual
Start/stop buttons
Automatic time mapping
IN-DEPTH TASK AND PROJECT ANALYSIS
Screenshots
App and website usage
Activity levels coming soon
Real-time tracking
TASK AND PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Project adding
Project templates
Project status
Task assignment
Task priorities
Budgeting coming soon
Mark billable/non-billable hours
Payroll calculation
Invoicing
ALERTS
Idle time reminders
Deadline alerts coming soon
Budget alerts coming soon
REPORTING
Client login
Productivity analysis
Email reports coming soon
PLATFORMS
Web
Mac desktop app
Windows desktop app
Linux desktop app coming soon
iOS app Beta
Android app
Browser extension Chrome Chrome, Firefox Chrome Chrome Chrome, Firefox Chrome Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Edge
OTHER
Support Phone and online Email and online Email and online Online Online, email and phone Email, online and support ticket Email and chat Email and chat Email Chat
Knowledge base
Video tutorials
Integrations coming soon
API
On-premise hosting

Some companies have more money than others, some have a bigger number of employees, others have better tools, a couple of the good ones have more impactful ideas. All of these things can serve to give a business an upper hand when trying to beat the competition. But there’s one thing that you just can’t get more of - time. There are 24 hours in a day, for big global multimillion-dollar corporations and small 5-person startups alike. That’s why it’s how you use that time that very often distinguishes successful companies from those less successful ones.


There are, naturally enough, many obstacles in this pursuit for greater efficiency of business processes, but one of the most commonly cited ones are definitely ineffective meetings. Now, of course, they can never be totally done without, but very often they waste more time than they should. And usually with no valuable results at the end to justify it.

This is probably the reason why you see more and more productivity tips that go along the lines of ‘cut down on meetings’. This is a pretty good piece of advice, but how can you do this without taking anything valuable out of the decision-making process?


That’s exactly what this article is here to help you discover. We’re going to give you five actionable tips on how to make your meetings more efficient and more effective, including what you should do to prepare, how to get a hang of the time you spend in them using a time tracking app, and a couple more.


So let’s get right on to it!


1. Have a Clear Objective


The biggest problem about managing meetings and not letting them take up too much of your time is the fact that they’re a habit for so many teams. You have a day in a week, for example, when it’s just meeting time. It’s all under the guise of needing to ‘catch up’, ‘review the strategy’, ‘see where we’re at’, etc. But the truth is, in many cases, you don’t need a meeting.


So, the first thing to do is devise a new management strategy - only have a meeting when there’s actually something to discuss. For instance, there’s a problem that you need several employees in order to solve, something is radically changing and you need to get everyone up to speed, there’s a new project that you have to plan and organize, or something along those lines. Everything less pressing than this can probably be shared one-on-one, in a group text, or in an office memo. The point is - every meeting should have a clear objective that needs to be worth spending multiple man-hours on.


2. Limit Meeting Time


If you let your meetings run their course indefinitely, or for ‘as long as it takes’, they’re almost always going to take more time than needed and there’s a very real possibility that you’ll eventually go off-topic (provided you had one in the first place). This time can be much better used for working on tasks. So, the second tip is to set a clear timeline for every meeting and stick to it.


Time tracking app, as you may know, is primarily used for computer-based tasks, but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t use it to track your non-billable hours as well, like time on meetings in this case, since you can manually fill in offline time or simply define meetings as one of the tasks. Start the software and see how long each meeting takes. When you set the end time, try to stick to it as closely as you can. Periodically, you can review your time tracking app data in order to see how much time you spend in them and analyze whether it could be less.


3. Get Participants to Prepare


The next useful tip for having efficient meetings is to get all of the people who are going to participate in it, including you, to prepare in advance. This means that you should all take some time before the meeting, maybe even designate that prep time as a task in your time tracking app, to come up with ideas and solutions. Jot down your suggestions, do a little bit of research if necessary, and come to the meeting prepared.


This way, meetings will revolve around concrete and researched suggestions, so they will be better structured and more likely to stay on topic. You also won’t need to waste time trying to brainstorm ideas and then shaping all of them, just to end up discarding half of it. You’ll see that coming to the meeting prepared will cut the time it takes dramatically, while still enabling you to get valuable takeaways out of it.


4. Only Call In the Necessary People


A common mistake when it comes to organizing team meetings is calling in too many people. Just because you need to talk about the content strategy of a certain project, it doesn’t mean that backend developers working on it need to attend the meeting as well. Only call in the people who absolutely need to be there - the ones who can provide value and/or get value out of it.


If you cut down the number of people attending the meeting, you’ll both save the ‘uninvited’ people a lot of time, and you’ll save yourself a lot of time because you’ll only get the input from the people that the topic actually concerns.


5. Schedule Meetings at an Unproductive Time of Day


This advice might sound a bit odd, but if you decide to adopt our tip to come to meetings prepared, you’ll see that it actually makes a lot of sense. If meetings are the time when you just present your suggestions, solutions and opinions, you don’t really need to be your most productive self to make the best of it.


Check your time tracking app to see what the least productive time of day is for the team that needs to meet, and schedule your meeting then. This is a part of the ‘organize your day according to your productivity’ strategy, which emphasizes that you should let your employees work on important and demanding tasks when they’re experiencing a peak in productivity. But when your time tracking app suggests that the productivity is slipping off, that’s when you can schedule a meeting and use the time that would be spent lazily browsing Facebook to discuss ideas.


Conclusion


Contrary to many people’s beliefs, meetings don’t have to be this time-wasting thing you just have to do, which ends up being totally useless 9 times out of 10. If you organize them properly, have a clear goal and structure, they can prove to be not only efficient but also truly valuable to everyone on your team.


We’ve reserved a 7-day free trial for you….

Want your hybrid or remote team to be more productive?

Claim your free 7-Day full feature trial of Insightful today. Insightful’s actionable work insights make your team more productive, efficient and accountable.

Ready to Take Full Control Of Your Workplace?

Try the simplest solution today…

Start Free Trial
Business Management

Meetings Done Right: How to Make Them Purposeful and Efficient

Written by
Kristina Valjarevic
Published on
March 31, 2020

Some companies have more money than others, some have a bigger number of employees, others have better tools, a couple of the good ones have more impactful ideas. All of these things can serve to give a business an upper hand when trying to beat the competition. But there’s one thing that you just can’t get more of - time. There are 24 hours in a day, for big global multimillion-dollar corporations and small 5-person startups alike. That’s why it’s how you use that time that very often distinguishes successful companies from those less successful ones.


There are, naturally enough, many obstacles in this pursuit for greater efficiency of business processes, but one of the most commonly cited ones are definitely ineffective meetings. Now, of course, they can never be totally done without, but very often they waste more time than they should. And usually with no valuable results at the end to justify it.

This is probably the reason why you see more and more productivity tips that go along the lines of ‘cut down on meetings’. This is a pretty good piece of advice, but how can you do this without taking anything valuable out of the decision-making process?


That’s exactly what this article is here to help you discover. We’re going to give you five actionable tips on how to make your meetings more efficient and more effective, including what you should do to prepare, how to get a hang of the time you spend in them using a time tracking app, and a couple more.


So let’s get right on to it!


1. Have a Clear Objective


The biggest problem about managing meetings and not letting them take up too much of your time is the fact that they’re a habit for so many teams. You have a day in a week, for example, when it’s just meeting time. It’s all under the guise of needing to ‘catch up’, ‘review the strategy’, ‘see where we’re at’, etc. But the truth is, in many cases, you don’t need a meeting.


So, the first thing to do is devise a new management strategy - only have a meeting when there’s actually something to discuss. For instance, there’s a problem that you need several employees in order to solve, something is radically changing and you need to get everyone up to speed, there’s a new project that you have to plan and organize, or something along those lines. Everything less pressing than this can probably be shared one-on-one, in a group text, or in an office memo. The point is - every meeting should have a clear objective that needs to be worth spending multiple man-hours on.


2. Limit Meeting Time


If you let your meetings run their course indefinitely, or for ‘as long as it takes’, they’re almost always going to take more time than needed and there’s a very real possibility that you’ll eventually go off-topic (provided you had one in the first place). This time can be much better used for working on tasks. So, the second tip is to set a clear timeline for every meeting and stick to it.


Time tracking app, as you may know, is primarily used for computer-based tasks, but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t use it to track your non-billable hours as well, like time on meetings in this case, since you can manually fill in offline time or simply define meetings as one of the tasks. Start the software and see how long each meeting takes. When you set the end time, try to stick to it as closely as you can. Periodically, you can review your time tracking app data in order to see how much time you spend in them and analyze whether it could be less.


3. Get Participants to Prepare


The next useful tip for having efficient meetings is to get all of the people who are going to participate in it, including you, to prepare in advance. This means that you should all take some time before the meeting, maybe even designate that prep time as a task in your time tracking app, to come up with ideas and solutions. Jot down your suggestions, do a little bit of research if necessary, and come to the meeting prepared.


This way, meetings will revolve around concrete and researched suggestions, so they will be better structured and more likely to stay on topic. You also won’t need to waste time trying to brainstorm ideas and then shaping all of them, just to end up discarding half of it. You’ll see that coming to the meeting prepared will cut the time it takes dramatically, while still enabling you to get valuable takeaways out of it.


4. Only Call In the Necessary People


A common mistake when it comes to organizing team meetings is calling in too many people. Just because you need to talk about the content strategy of a certain project, it doesn’t mean that backend developers working on it need to attend the meeting as well. Only call in the people who absolutely need to be there - the ones who can provide value and/or get value out of it.


If you cut down the number of people attending the meeting, you’ll both save the ‘uninvited’ people a lot of time, and you’ll save yourself a lot of time because you’ll only get the input from the people that the topic actually concerns.


5. Schedule Meetings at an Unproductive Time of Day


This advice might sound a bit odd, but if you decide to adopt our tip to come to meetings prepared, you’ll see that it actually makes a lot of sense. If meetings are the time when you just present your suggestions, solutions and opinions, you don’t really need to be your most productive self to make the best of it.


Check your time tracking app to see what the least productive time of day is for the team that needs to meet, and schedule your meeting then. This is a part of the ‘organize your day according to your productivity’ strategy, which emphasizes that you should let your employees work on important and demanding tasks when they’re experiencing a peak in productivity. But when your time tracking app suggests that the productivity is slipping off, that’s when you can schedule a meeting and use the time that would be spent lazily browsing Facebook to discuss ideas.


Conclusion


Contrary to many people’s beliefs, meetings don’t have to be this time-wasting thing you just have to do, which ends up being totally useless 9 times out of 10. If you organize them properly, have a clear goal and structure, they can prove to be not only efficient but also truly valuable to everyone on your team.