Definitely, it is not a monkey job when it comes to searching for how to increase your team and hire freelancers. It seems all your efforts are directed towards a single goal. It consists of the efforts made to find the right person with the right competencies for your projects. Thus, in order to ease your labor, we’ve come up with some key points to be taken into account.

What does the To Do List Consist of when You are Going to Hire Freelancers?

1. Choose Where to Look for the Freelancers

There are several freelance websites and platforms for posting your job vacancy. There are also opportunities for showing the most suitable candidates for your job position. There are cases when you can examine some reviews related to freelancers or their jobs. For instance, Upwork and Freelancer can assist you in carrying out the process of hiring freelancers.

2. Know the ABC’s 

There is a key point to be remembered when you are going to hire freelancers who deserve to be employed (it doesn’t matter if he/she is a designer, a programmer, etc.). You should have some knowledge related to this domain. In such a way, you will ensure fruitful collaboration and successful freelance projects.

3. Ask Your Chums

Do not feel embarrassed when asking for reviews, recommendations, or opinions from your friends and acquaintances. Also, you can ask the candidate to provide you with some feedback listed by their previous clients. 

4. State the Requirements 

Take into account the goals, budget, deadlines, and outcomes of your project. They help you to elicit the most needed qualities when you are going to hire a freelance web developer or a programmer.

Pay attention to the professional experience, schedule of the working time, solicited wages, etc. Do not forget that when working with freelancers, even in remote tasks, it is significant to show respect for their cultural, ethnic, or moral differences.

5. Select the Top 3 Candidates

You should be prepared to understand the following fact. Because these hiring platforms support an enormous number of users, your candidates’ list will probably be huge. Thus, as a piece of advice, it is welcome if you skim the list of the most qualified ones by reading their portfolios.

Almost each web developer, freelance designer, or other representative of freelance services possesses samples of their projects. You can assign them a new task, or you can just trust the validity of their previous experience.

6. Perform the Interview

In order to have an effective interview, you should prepare some of its points. Decide upon the following points. Ponder about the means you are performing it through, the questions you would ask, a test, the style of the interview, and the hiring contractual conditions. 

7. Decide Upon an Agreement

When it comes to freelance jobs, there are many factors to consider. For instance, some examples would be legal commitments, a freelance contract, an agreement of non-disclosure, etc.

When it comes to calculating the employee’s working hours, managers and business owners may encounter difficulties. It is significant to calculate the total pay correctly, fairly, and accurately. Using our free timesheet calculator, you will get a lot of advantages. Some of the benefits are the following ones:

1. due to automatic calculations, you can avoid errors when calculating the payroll;
2. easy and fast export to PDF or Excel;
3. for accounting management, you can print the time cards and save them in paper form, etc.

For this reason, LogWork has decided to provide you with comprehensive free weekly and bi-weekly time card calculators. Being powerful and accurate, they will definitely ease your work. These intuitive timesheets can be easily exported to PDF or Excel. Moreover, our free time clock allows you to easily print the time cards.

You can choose which one suits your business better: weekly or bi-weekly timesheet calculator. Try them ASAP! 

1. Weekly Timesheet Calculator

Our weekly timesheet calculator calculates the total working hours and wages. Employees should fill in two cells Time in and Time out when they start and finish their work. When there is a time break, the calculator automatically cuts down the time spent on breaks. Thus, it can reduce the amount of worked time per day. The daily hours worked can be viewed at the last right-side table column named Total.

Moreover, the user can select the Format type of the table, the one with 24 or 12 hours. However, after filling in the table, keep in mind that if you switch to another table format, all the data will be removed.

At the right-side top corner, you can see the cell called Calculate Gross Pay Totals. Below, you can fill in the rate per hour. In such a way, the calculator will count the amount of money earned in the cell called Gross pay. You can also view the total number of hours worked per week in the cell entitled Total hours.

If you add a tick to the line Include Gross Overtime Pay, the calculator automatically will count the overtime pay, displayed in the bottom cell of the third column. Overtime can be calculated over 8 hours per day or 40 hours per week. It can be calculated at a 1.5x or 2x hourly rate.

2. Bi-weekly Timesheet Calculator 

With a single click of the button, you can switch to our bi-weekly timesheet. LogWork time card calculator will count the entire amount of time worked for 2 weeks. Thus, the calculation principle is the same for both weekly and bi-weekly timesheets.

3. Special Features of LogWork Free Timesheet Calculator

After filling in the data for a week or two, you have the template fulfilled. At that moment, you can export the timesheet to PDF or Excel. If it is necessary, you can save them in paper form by printing.

You can click on the Clear table button to remove all the data inserted. In such a way, you will be able to design a new timesheet and add new values.

Gitlab.com is valuable service for businesses since it offers a great range of options and opportunities such as multifunctional reviews,  store management, issue tracking, activity monitoring, etc. Don’t hesitate to benefit from the privileges GitLab offers.

Today’s post aim is to cover the shortcoming that GitLab seems to have. In order to take advantage of the time tracking feature, we’ve compiled an amazing list of 10 the best GitLab integrations for time tracking that, undoubtedly, will suit your needs.

1. DeskTime

When you use DeskTime and GitLab integration you will get your work eased by automatic synchronization of your facts and figures. You will be able to view the productivity rate, to analyze time reports, to save time, to keep the track with the employers’ activities and deadlines, etc.

2. Time Tracking

Using Time Tracking, you get clear insights related to the time spent on various GitLab projects. There are many advantages for choosing Time Tracking such as slash commands, adding external users to projects, no need to switch from a tool to another, workflow management, comprehensive analytics and timesheets, etc. Moreover, you can set up the Chrome extension for Time Tracking and simplify your work. 

3. Clockify and GitLab Integration

In order to track time in GitLab using Clockify, you should just create your Clockify account and install its extension. There are many options that you can take advantage of, for instance, time reports analysis, project management, past entries editing, timesheets, etc.

Clockify has a lot of features that will “steal your heart”, e.g. it’s free forever, it has a personal dashboard, project tracking, integration with a lot of apps, unlimited number of users, export of data, etc. 

4. TMetric

GitLab time tracking is already possible by using TMetric integration. In 3 minutes, you get access to tracking the time spent on tasks and projects. You can analyze precious reports. It is so simple that you do not need any manual to install it.

5. Timely and GitLab Time Tracking

Timely offers more insights than GitLab. It provides automatic time tracking for any project or app you deal with. Due to the provided estimation, you get insights related to the duration of projects. You manage to optimize the productivity rate and to plan the workflow.

6. Hubstaff

GitLab integration with Hubstaff provides screenshots of employees’ computers and activity levels. Hubstaff app also allows tracking the GitLab issues. You can benefit from automatic timesheets. It’s easy to sort the reports and choose the best payment option. 

7. TimeCamp

GitLab integration with TimeCamp allows you to know how much time you’ve spent on various projects. There are many advantages of using TimeCamp, for instance, projects insights, suitable for big teams, timesheets design, etc. 

8. DueFocus

With DueFocus, you don’t switch between apps. Task estimation, activity monitoring, screenshots, time tracking are just some of the features that DueFocus offers. You can monitor your team in real-time. 

9. Timeneye

Just a few clicks and you get time tracking insights with Timeneye. All you need to do is to download and install Timeneye widget. Then, the time tracking button will be inserted into the GitLab project.

10. WakaTime

WakaTime helps to improve your coding. It provides automatic programming metrics, intuitive dashboard. It helps to improve productivity.

There are significant points that should not be overlooked when discussing the cons of working in an office. This is available when we speak about the dilemmatic question related to the work from home or in an office. It is important when we struggle to find a personal comfort zone. Don’t go blind by the employee benefits or employer’s insurances of working in an office.

In this blog post, you will find the arguments dealing with the disadvantages of working in an office. For more interesting things, read this article Zen Work from Home vs. Odd Work in an Office.

Are you always energetic when commuting daily?

The time and money spent on commutation can turn to be a decisive point for deciding to work from home instead of going to your workplace. This is available when we speak about saving those bucks and efforts. 

Have you ever injured yourself when working in an office?

That’s not just about your toe, finger, or about health insurance benefits packages. Working in an office makes you forget about the dynamic way of living. This is why office employees are more prone to the harm of their eyesights and backbones.

Have you ever argued with your sweetheart because of the working in an office system?

There could be some misunderstandings from his or her behalf. Moreover, this can lead to opting for doing office work from home till late hours for the sake of being home.

Have you ever felt the sense of boredom?

This issue is a normal thing because you spend a big part of your day in front of the big screens performing daily the same tasks and wasting your time being in a closed room. I’d say that office work is more likely for adult jobs than teen jobs.

Have you ever needed peace and quiet?

There are many cases when you feel exhausted because of the annoyance, of much hustle, and human buzz. That’s about working in the office. Also, there are cases when the working atmosphere is under pressure.

These are just some of the top drawbacks that working in an office can cause. You should choose a kind of benefits and activities that mostly matter for you and for your professional growth.

It’s all about time!

Are you looking for a powerful time tracking solution for your team? Do you need to calculate the worked time till seconds? Do you need automatically generated reports on time? It doesn’t matter whether you are an employer, a CEO, or a freelancer searching for a time tracker! We are going to provide you with our all-in-one time tracking tool – an excellent solution for professionals. Moreover, it’s FREE. Benefit from its premium features. Why does our tool stand out in a crowd, and how does it change your working approach?

1. Simple and Easy

It’s simple and easy to track the team’s working time. In such a way, you will make your team more productive and focused on achieving the target. You just need to press the green start button when you start working on a specific task and then press the red stop button when you finish the task. Moreover, using time tracking software, you can work for different clients and projects.

2. Accuracy

The accurate time tracker tracks efficiently the hours across your project, clients, and team tasks. Everything is calculated till seconds, no more manual calculations. The LogWork time tracker provides real-time data, being exempt from committing mistakes. The reports are generated based on the data provided by the time tracker.

3. Intuitive Dashboard

Due to its intuitive dashboard, it is possible to see who is working and who is not at a particular moment. It also displays 4 categories of time worked: today, yesterday, this week, this month. This fact lets you analyze if the employee has overtime hours, or on the contrary, the employee did not reach the number of hours worked per month. In such a way, the time tracker will help you calculate correctly the payroll.

4. Automated Online Time Tracker

This automated online time tracking tool is much more efficient than simple Excel timesheet. Some of the weak points of using Excel timesheets include errors due to manual adding of data, delayed information on hours worked, etc. For more information, read our blog post – Excel Timesheet Templates vs. Online Time Tracking Software. Pros and Cons to Decide Which One Suits Your Business.

5. Mobile-Friendly

LogWork time tracker is mobile-friendly. So, you can work using your phone, being anywhere, waiting in a queue or sunbathing on the beach. Keep in mind that time is money!

6. Comprehensive Reports

Make use of LogWork comprehensive reports to keep a record of the working hours or present your time worked to your customer for payroll reasons. Thus, the working process becomes optimized, informative, and transparent. Moreover, in the reports, you will be able to see the percentage of time spent on a certain project, deciding which project has required more time to be accomplished.

The worked time is associated with particular tasks, projects, and clients. The total time worked is calculated automatically when the reports are being generated. LogWork generates 5 types of reports:

• Client Report 
• Project Report 
• Employee Report 
• Description Report
• Timesheet Report

7. Interactive Timeline

The interactive timeline offers helpful insights related to the time worked daily during a whole month. You can also get a broader analysis for various working days since LogWork stores the data for 2 years. However, as a client, you can delete the data if you want. 

In case you own a small business, or you are an entrepreneur, it is more likely that you are in search of some interactive and effective ways to increase employee productivity. So, which actions would you take to improve workplace productivity?

Find Here 9 Tips for Increasing Employee Productivity!

1. Exchange Ideas

Communication, exchange of ideas, and proposals are essential. It is key when it comes to answering the question of how to increase the productivity of employees.

2. Share the Tasks

Probably, you’ve already discovered your employees’ skills and hobbies. Thus, depending on these, you can share some of your duties with your colleagues. For instance, an introverted employee could be an expert in dealing with detailed and precise assignments.

3. Prioritize the Aims

In order to improve employees’ productivity, be transparent in terms of assigning specific goals. People who know exactly the arrangement of the requirements of their hard work are more likely to be productive at work.

4. Motivate Your Employees

In order to enhance productivity in the workplace, you should find the best ways to increase employee’s productivity through various incentives when they prove to do their best, such as a meal out with your staff, paid lunches, constructive feedback, free days depending on the assigned tasks, etc.

5. Don’t Disturb

Your priority should be the employees’ focus on big tasks. Thus, strive not to disturb them with less significant duties. The time to come back to the working process can be really lasting.

6. “Work out” the Employees’ Skills

There are many options that would avoid wasting your time when answering employees’ periodic questions related to their work. For instance, you can set a day to be dedicated to training your staff in order to increase productivity by solving various issues and questions, such as “How to improve the efficiency of your employee?” or “How to be productive at work?”.

As a leader, you can provide constructive feedback to your employees. It will help you boost their performance, motivation and avoid misunderstandings.

7. Allow Freelancing

There are studies that demonstrate that employees who work from home are 13% more engaging than those who work in the office.

8. Encourage Leadership

It is stated that when your employees get the feeling of leadership over their own tasks and time, they become more productive and efficiency-focused. As a piece of advice, reduce the manager’s negative influence over the workers.

9. Bring in Receptive People

Keep in your mind that the best managers are receptive, caring, and tolerant when it comes to solving some troubles or deciding upon the issues that need to be paid attention to (e.g. the best banner for a newly arrived product, in case there is an issue related to the marketing).

Since the mid of the past century, managers and company owners have started to track their employees’ working time. This was a good technique for achieving productivity and honest payroll during the laboring process.  

There are several timesheet software and apps for tracking easily the working hours and even task performance. One of the requirements states that it should be simple and accessible in such a way that the employee’s timesheet will be authentic.

Time is the value of the XXIst century! It was confirmed that there is a myriad of software types that track the working time of each employee. Basically, they were divided into 2 groups:

1. Simple office team timesheets;
2. End-to-end management timesheet software types.

What are the Most Powerful Employee Timesheet Trackers?

LogWork Time Tracker

LogWork Time Tracker is a powerful time tracker with screenshots used by companies, freelancers, and remote workers. Take advantage of this solution and get real-time insights, increase productivity, and stay accurate with the help of the app, web, activity tracking, idle detection, customizable reports, mobile-friendly app, browser extension, and integrations. Try it for Free to see which plan works better for you!

WebWork Time Tracker

WebWork Time Tracker software monitors the use of apps and websites, takes screenshots, if necessary, and generates reports. It also functions as task management and a communication platform. Users can organize their whole work in WebWork, track it and chat at the same time.

DeskTime

It is a simple tracker which provides 3 opportunities – management, employee work rate, and monitoring. The nice thing about DeskTime is that this tool helps the employer to classify the visited sites into productive and non-productive.

Hours

Hours is based on time features such as tracking time, coloring it according to the project or task, and dragging the specified time on the timeline. It is good for people who don’t opt for sophisticated electronic timesheets.

TimeCamp

TimeCamp is a helpful software or an all-in-one time tracker that provides lots of additional features such as billing functionality, daily reports, and several integrations with different applications.

Hubstaff

It is a perfect timesheet app for businesses that deal with remote and traveling employees. Hubstaff controls a GPS tracker, this is why it is very precise when monitoring the working time of each employee. It also stores screenshots, and mouse and keyboard movement data.

Journyx

This timesheet app is one of the initial websites that provides time tracking tools for companies. Due to the fact that Journyx runs 2 versions- Enterprise and Business, it offers a top solution for any needs.

Toggl

Mostly, Toggl is a tool that is appreciated for its simple service and design. It produces reports which are printable at any time, and it is available both on the big and small screens.

TimeTrex

Among the costing money employee timesheet trackers which do not always seem to be a good option for startups, there are also free timesheet software and apps. One of these is TimeTrex. It tracks the employees’ time and attendance. It contains time schedules, and payroll sheets. 

Log My Hours

Log My Hours is really useful for freelancers, having elementary invoicing functions and being available especially for freelancers due to its Solo plan.

Time Clock Wizard

Time Clock Wizard is another tracking software that has a basic goal to monitor the employees’ presence at their working places.

Due to the process of globalization and to various marketing strategies that do work remotely, companies and businesses are in need of team collaboration tools and specific collaboration apps. 

They ensure the fact that each team member will get online access to different updates. They are expected to be able to interfere with any changes at any moment. 

The main focus of the collaboration tools for businesses is to manage the activities and incentives of everybody, either of an office employee or of a remote/freelance worker. 

In this blog post, you will get acquainted with the best collaboration tools. Besides those ones that require payment, we’ve listed free online collaboration tools, too.

Collabtive

The collaborative tool Collabtive is extremely useful for small and medium corporations being free and Internet-based. The tool presents the following options: tracking the working time, synchronization of the calendars, changes, download of the reports, etc.

Slack

Slack offers the opportunity to stay tuned, to communicate online with your crew. Thus, it is helpful for remote management. 

Trello

Based on an interface composed of cards, Trello offers the possibility to organize pieces of text, content, photos, to arrange the procedure of your projects. Moreover, this online collaboration tool is free.

Yammer

Yammer is known as a collaboration platform which offers the chance to speak to your colleagues, to share files, and collaborate with them individually. It’s available both for mobile and desktop.

Mural

Among the given examples of online collaboration tools, we cannot neglect to mention Mural. It is famous for its creativity being open to files sharing, docs, etc. Thus, Mural supports your team to brainstorm, to inspire each other.  

Dropbox

There are several document collaboration tools that work with the drag-and-drop technique. One of them is Dropbox. It is acknowledged that it is used worldwide by many companies. 

Google collaboration tools (Drive, Docs, Hangouts)

Mostly, Google reacted to Microsoft collaboration tools. Consequently, they came out with project management collaboration tools such as Drive, Docs, Hangouts which are effective in terms of storage capacity, editing documents in real-time, or calling your employees to a conference. 

Zoho Projects

It is suitable for 10 MB depository. Even if there are both versions free and paid, Zoho Projects provides valuable features such as task management, docs usage in common, reports, time tracking management. 

BoardDocs

This productivity tool is a little different being based on cloud collaboration. BoardDocs is designed for schools boards, NGOs in order to deal with educational policies, solutions to various organizational issues, formulating the core goals, attaching files, work with agenda, video conferencing, etc. 

Social Tables

As online collaborative software, Social Tables is necessary to coordinate with an event, to gather organizers and participants, to solve issues related organizational points. 

Asana

Among the existing collaboration tools examples we’ve listed above, we would like to mention Asana, too. The given collaboration platform helps to track employees’ work, to form agendas for projects, to facilitate the communication between the team members, etc. 

We’ve searched for so long in order to establish the winner of the competition between Freelancer and Upwork. But finally, we’ve got significant data that will help you to make up your mind. There are many assumptions and attitudes towards these 2 marketplaces. Thus, you are free to choose your leader.

It is commonly known that these 2 platforms assure the fruitful collaboration between an employer and a freelancer all over the world. That’s the strong point when finding the most suitable freelance jobs being almost at home. 

Additionally, you can consult the article dedicated to the comparison between Upwork and Fiverr.

So, they both have a huge number of freelancers and registered clients. It is to be noticed that Freelancer has been awarded the title of the number 1 site of recruitment in 2016.

Our research of Upwork reviews opts for the fact that the assistance of the Upwork is better than that one which belongs to Freelancer. The reason is the number of opportunities. For instance, they both have available the following support: FAQ, live chat, email support. The Freelancer’s flaw consists of missing the call aid. On the other hand, Freelancer offers the users the possibility to see if the client is online or not. 

Upwork and Freelancer provide the bids for the projects. It is considered that on Upwork it is cheaper to get involved in various deals because of the tolerable Upwork fees. There are different risks to be held out. On Upwork you can come across the unskilled freelancers when hiring, long-term funding. Ob the other hand, on Freelancer you can find troubles with payment, etc. 

Dealing with freelance work, let’s compare the pricing types of both websites. We would like to state that Upwork offers free and quote-based options. Freelancer is more diverse because it offers free, monthly, and annual subscription privileges. 

It is to be stated that Upwork has the roots in the working system known as Elance and oDesk. But Freelancer is a genuine platform. Thus, Freelancer has its brand, and Upwork has its history.

Upwork vs Freelancer? Keep an Eye on the Chart Below

For the accessibility of the websites, it is important to refer to the available languages. Therefore, English is shared by both platforms. One of the strong points of Freelancer is that it is appropriate also for Dutch and Turkish speakers. 

There may be questions related to discovering the answers for How to work on Freelancer?, How to use Upwork effectively?, How to get paid on Upwork? The reviews are fair enough in expressing the main points of these 2 bossy platforms. So, Upwork is great for providing the following points: needs analysis, candidates shortlist, profile browsing, proposal reviewing, chat schedules, sending and receiving files, feedback sharing, mobile access, work diary, global Upwork payments, invoicing and reporting. On the other hand, Freelance goes well with free job posting, contest posting, custom offers, job sample viewing, no-cost chat, time tracker, secure payments, invoicing. 

There are various platforms similar to Upwork and Freelancer that provide freelance jobs, e.g. Fiverr, Clearvoice, etc.

To sum up, your decisive aim is to find your proper working platform which would protect and assure your work. We hope this blog somehow (at least) gives you hints guiding you towards your advantageous decision.