PinoyRemote
If a new client just told you to install Hubstaff, take a breath. Hubstaff for Filipino VAs is one of the most common setups in remote work today: it is a time tracker that runs on your computer while you work, takes occasional screenshots, measures your keyboard and mouse activity, and turns your tracked hours into your pay. Nothing about it is a trap, but it feels intimidating the first time, especially the screenshot part.
I have been a VA since 2020, and time tracking has been part of hourly remote work for as long as I have been in it. Clients who pay by the hour want proof of work, and tools like Hubstaff are how they get it. The first time you see a tracker take a screenshot of your own screen, it feels strange, maybe even a little insulting. That reaction is normal, and it fades fast once you understand what the tool is actually doing and, just as important, what it cannot do.
So in this guide, I will explain how Hubstaff actually works in plain terms: the timer, the screenshots, the activity score everyone stresses about, how the pay side works, who pays for the software (not you), and what it can and cannot see on your computer. By the end, you should be able to start that timer without the kaba.
Key takeaways
- Hubstaff only tracks while your timer is running. Hubstaff says it stops tracking and uploading data the moment you stop the timer or quit the app, so your off-hours are yours.
- Screenshots are taken up to 3 times per 10-minute block by default, and your client controls the frequency. You can view your own screenshots, and there is even a blur option clients can turn on.
- Your activity score is just the percent of seconds with keyboard or mouse input per 10-minute block. It is not a keylogger, and Hubstaff itself says a good score depends on the role.
- The client pays for Hubstaff, not you. Plans run from $4.99 to $25 per user per month as of 2026. If a “client” asks you to pay for the seat, treat that as a red flag.
Table of Contents
Why do clients require Hubstaff for Filipino VAs?
Clients require Hubstaff for one simple reason: they are paying for hours they cannot see. When your client is in the US or Australia and you are here working from home, the tracker is their proof of work. It answers “did I get the hours I paid for” without daily check-in calls or awkward pakialam messages.
This is extra common for us because the Philippines is one of the biggest VA markets in the world, and the agencies and small business owners who hire here lean on tracking tools heavily. Hubstaff itself markets directly to BPOs and virtual assistant services, and one of its featured customers, Affordable Staff, is an outsourcing firm running Philippine-based teams that says it saved $4.2 million over 12 years using the platform (Hubstaff customer stories, accessed July 2026).
On OnlineJobs.ph, many employers use the site’s own free tracker, TimeProof, which works on the same idea: it logs your time and takes screenshots at random intervals as proof of work (OnlineJobs.ph, accessed July 2026). So if you build a career as an hourly VA, some version of this software will probably follow you around.
Here is the reframe that helps: the tracker is not there because the client assumes you are lazy. It is there because trust has not been built yet, and screenshots are cheaper than trust. Early in a client relationship, Hubstaff actually protects you too. Your logged hours are your evidence when an invoice gets questioned, and your screenshots prove the work happened. A client who pays for a monitoring tool is also, in a weird way, showing you they intend to pay for real hours, which is more than you can say for the fake clients I covered in my post on VA job scam red flags.
How does Hubstaff time tracking work?
Hubstaff tracks time through an app you install on your computer, and it only records while you press start. You download the desktop app (Windows, Mac, or Linux), sign in to your client’s organization, pick the project or task, and start the timer when you begin working. Stop it when you take a break or finish. Hubstaff’s own FAQ is clear on the boundary: the app works only while the timer is running, and it stops tracking and uploading data as soon as you stop the timer or quit the app (Hubstaff FAQ, accessed July 2026).
Under the hood, Hubstaff slices your work into 10-minute blocks. Each block gets its own activity data and screenshots, and your timesheet is just the total of those blocks. This matters because everything your client sees, the hours, the activity percent, the screenshots, is organized around those 10-minute segments.
Then there is idle detection. If your keyboard and mouse go quiet, Hubstaff notices. On the plans that include it, clients can set an inactivity warning that pops up after 5, 10, or 20 minutes of no input (or a custom interval, or never), asking if you are still working (Hubstaff Support, accessed July 2026). What happens to that idle time depends on the organization’s setting: the default prompts you to keep or discard it, some setups keep it automatically, and stricter setups discard it automatically.
Practical translation: if you step away to answer the door or reheat your kape, either stop the timer or expect the idle prompt when you come back. Answer it honestly. Keeping idle time you did not work is the fastest way to lose a client’s trust, and the system is literally built to catch it.
How do Hubstaff screenshots work, and who sees them?
By default, Hubstaff takes up to 3 screenshots per 10-minute block through the desktop app, at random moments within that window. Your client (the organization owner or admin) controls the setting: they can set it to once, twice, or three times per 10 minutes, reduce it, or turn screenshots off for specific people (Hubstaff Support, accessed July 2026). If you use more than one monitor, it captures each active screen. Teams that want heavier coverage can pay for an add-on that raises it to 10 screenshots per 10 minutes, but that is an extra cost on the client’s side, not the normal setup.
Who sees them? The organization owner, admins, and managers with permission, and you. You can open your own activity page and view every screenshot taken of your work, which I recommend doing in your first week so the invisible thing becomes a visible, boring thing.
Hubstaff also offers a blur option that clients can enable, which blurs the screenshot content so activity is visible but text on your screen is not readable, and once applied the blur cannot be reversed (Hubstaff Support, accessed July 2026). If you handle sensitive information for another client or your own banking on the same machine, it is completely reasonable to ask your client to enable blur, or better, keep personal tabs off your work sessions entirely.
Two more details worth knowing. First, Hubstaff says it does not record video of your screen, so it is snapshots, not a livestream (Hubstaff FAQ, accessed July 2026). Second, deleting is not a loophole: as a regular user you can delete a block of activity, but that deletes the tracked time along with the screenshot, so you lose the pay for that segment too. Only owners and managers can delete a screenshot and keep the time (Hubstaff Support, accessed July 2026). The system is designed so you cannot keep paid time while quietly removing its proof. Honestly, that is fair, and it protects VAs who work honestly.
What is a good Hubstaff activity score?
Your activity score is the percent of seconds in which Hubstaff detected any keyboard or mouse input. Every second of a 10-minute block (600 seconds) is labeled active or inactive. A mouse move, a click, a scroll, or a key press makes that second active. Active seconds divided by 600 is your activity percent for that block (Hubstaff Support, accessed July 2026). That is the whole formula. It does not measure how hard you type, what you type, or whether your output is good.
So what counts as good? The honest answer, and Hubstaff’s own answer, is that it depends on the role, and Hubstaff openly warns against setting one universal number for everyone.
In a Hubstaff blog post on activity (updated 2025), their own role examples show customer support agents living inside a helpdesk often hitting 65% to 85%, marketers who read and write a lot landing around 40% to 60%, and project managers who sit in calls all day sitting at 25% to 35% while still doing their jobs well (Hubstaff blog, accessed July 2026). Watching a training video, reading a long document, or being on a Zoom call all look like “low activity” to the tracker, because your hands are off the keyboard even though your brain is fully at work.
This is where activity score anxiety comes from, and I want you to handle it with communication instead of tricks. If your work that day was call-heavy or reading-heavy, message your client before they ask: “Activity will look low today, I was on onboarding calls from 9 to 11.” That one sentence beats an hour of nervous mouse-wiggling. And please do not use auto-jigglers or clicker apps. Hubstaff sells clients an unusual activity detection feature made to catch exactly that pattern, and getting caught faking activity does not just lose you the client, it can end your platform account and your reputation. As someone who has occasionally screened applicants myself, I can tell you clients talk about this stuff.
How do you get paid through Hubstaff?
Hubstaff turns your tracked hours into pay: your client sets your hourly rate in the system, your approved hours are multiplied by that rate, and the payment is sent through a connected payment provider. As of 2026, Hubstaff’s payroll integrates with Wise, PayPal, Payoneer, Bitwage, and payroll platforms like Deel and Gusto (Hubstaff Support, accessed July 2026). The money never sits inside Hubstaff. It goes directly from your client’s payment account to your receiving account, so what you need on your side is simply a working Wise, PayPal, or Payoneer account under your own name.
Clients can pay manually per period or set automatic payroll on a schedule: weekly, twice a month, bi-weekly, or monthly (Hubstaff Support, accessed July 2026). Ask which schedule your client uses during onboarding, so you can plan your bills around it instead of guessing kung kailan darating ang sweldo.
The provider fees are where your pesos quietly leak, so compare routes. The numbers below are rough fees to expect on each route as of 2026. They are charged by the payment providers, not by Hubstaff, and they change by country and currency, so treat them as a guide and confirm the live fee before you commit:
| Payment provider | Rough fee to expect | Notes for you |
|---|---|---|
| Wise | Usually under 1% of the transfer | Often the strongest peso conversion; my personal pick |
| PayPal | Around 2% to 3% of the amount | Plus PayPal’s own conversion spread when you withdraw to pesos |
| Payoneer | About $3 per transfer | Flat fee hurts more on small weekly payouts |
| Bitwage | 0% to 3.5% depending on funding method | Less common with PH VAs |
In my experience getting paid as a VA since 2020, I started with PayPal, moved to Wise, and tried Payoneer, and Wise has been the best overall for me. If your client gives you a choice of payout method inside Hubstaff, run the numbers first with my comparison of GCash, Wise, PayPal, and Payoneer, or the head-to-head on Wise vs Payoneer for the Philippines. Even a 2% fee on a $600 month is $12 gone, every month, for nothing.
One more thing: your rate is set in the system by the client, but it is negotiated by you. Hourly tracking makes underpricing very visible, because every peso you earn passes through that hours-times-rate math. If you are not sure your number is right, check my guide on beginner VA rates in the Philippines before you accept.
Who pays for Hubstaff, the VA or the client?
The client pays, full stop. Hubstaff charges per seat, and the organization that invites you owns the subscription. As of 2026, plans run from $4.99 to $25 per user per month depending on the tier and whether billing is monthly or annual (Hubstaff pricing guide, 2026):
| Plan | Monthly billing | Annual billing | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $7 per user | $4.99 per user | Basic tracking, limited screenshots |
| Grow | $9 per user | $7.50 per user | More screenshots, idle controls |
| Team | $12 per user | $10 per user | Payroll automation, unlimited screenshots |
| Enterprise | $25 per user | Custom | Big-company controls |
You do not need to memorize this table. You need it for one reason: if someone claiming to be a client asks you to pay for your own Hubstaff seat, “activation fee”, or “software deposit” before you can start, walk away. Legitimate clients treat monitoring software as their business expense, exactly like their own laptop. Payment requests flowing from worker to client are the classic scam direction, and I listed more patterns like this in my VA job scams red flags post.
There is no free Hubstaff plan, only a 14-day free trial, so a real client using Hubstaff has real money on the table for the tool. Small budget clients sometimes use OnlineJobs.ph’s free TimeProof instead, which is normal and fine. Both tools exist for the same purpose, so the advice in this post carries over.
One honest note
The prices, screenshot limits, and fees in this post are what Hubstaff and its support pages showed as of July 2026. Software companies change plans and features often, minsan walang abiso. Before you rely on an exact number, check Hubstaff’s live pricing page and your own client’s settings, because your organization’s setup (screenshot frequency, idle rules, manual time permissions) is decided by your client, not by the defaults in any article, including this one.
What can Hubstaff see, and what can it not see?
Hubstaff can see a lot while your timer runs, and nothing when it does not. That single boundary answers most privacy fears, so let us make it concrete.
While tracking, depending on the client’s plan and settings, Hubstaff can capture your screenshots, your activity percent, the names of apps you use and URLs you visit, and on mobile field setups, GPS location. What it does not do, per Hubstaff’s own documentation: it does not log your actual keystrokes (it only counts that a key was pressed, never which key), it does not record video of your screen, and it does not access your webcam (Hubstaff FAQ and Support, accessed July 2026). When you stop the timer, data collection stops. Hubstaff also gives you access to your own tracked data, so you can audit exactly what your client sees.
Your side of the boundary matters just as much. Track time only on work, and keep personal life off the tracked machine or at least off tracked hours. Do not open your online banking, personal email, or private chats while the timer runs, because a random screenshot does not know the difference between a work tab and your GCash balance. If you work nights for a US client, this discipline is extra important when you are tired, so build the habit early. My night shift tips for Filipino VAs post covers how I structure those hours without burning out.
On the rights side, monitoring is generally lawful here when it is transparent and tied to a legitimate work purpose, and our Data Privacy Act of 2012 (RA 10173) still applies to your personal data as a worker. In practice, you are entitled to know that you are being monitored and how. A decent client tells you the screenshot frequency and idle rules upfront. If they will not answer basic questions about their own monitoring setup, that tells you something about how they will handle bigger questions later, like pay disputes.
How do you work well under Hubstaff without stressing?
The VAs who thrive under tracking treat the tracker as a receipt printer, not a judge. A few habits get you there fast.
First, master the timer itself. Start it when you start, stop it for real breaks, and stop it at the end of your shift, every time. Forgetting the timer is the most common rookie mistake, and the fix is ugly: manual time entries. Hubstaff allows manual time only if your client enables the permission, manual entries show up flagged in a manual time edit report the client can review, and adding manual time over existing tracked time overwrites the captured activity (Hubstaff Support, accessed July 2026).
Some clients simply do not pay manual entries at all. So set an alarm for the start of your shift, put a sticky note on your monitor, whatever works. One forgotten 4-hour block is real money.
Second, batch your low-activity work and communicate it. Research, reading, and calls are legitimate work with ugly activity numbers, so tell your client when your day is heavy on those. Over time, this habit does something bigger: it teaches your client to read you through your reports instead of through your activity percent.
The reason my longest client relationship has lasted about 5 years is not a high activity score, it is that I treated the business like it mattered to me, sent reports with solutions instead of just problems, and made the tracker irrelevant to the trust between us. That is the actual endgame: Hubstaff is how new clients trust you before they know you. Your work is how they trust you after.
Third, keep your own records. Screenshot your weekly Hubstaff totals before payday, keep copies of invoices, and note your rate agreements in writing. The tracker’s data belongs to the client’s organization, so if a relationship ends badly, your own records are what protect you.
Frequently asked questions
Does Hubstaff track me when the timer is off?
No. Hubstaff says the app only tracks while the timer is running and stops tracking and uploading data as soon as you stop the timer or quit the app. Your computer use outside tracked hours is not recorded.
Can Hubstaff see my passwords or read what I type?
No. Hubstaff states it does not store individual keystrokes. It only counts whether a key or the mouse was used during each second to compute your activity percent. But screenshots can still capture whatever is on your screen, so never open personal or sensitive tabs while tracking.
What is a good activity score on Hubstaff?
There is no single good number. It depends on your role, and Hubstaff itself warns against one universal benchmark. In Hubstaff’s own examples, support agents often run 65% to 85%, while people who spend their day in calls can sit at 25% to 35% and still perform well. Talk to your client about what is normal for your tasks.
Who pays for Hubstaff, me or my client?
Your client. Hubstaff charges the organization per seat, from $4.99 to $25 per user per month as of 2026. If a “client” asks you to pay for your own monitoring software before starting, treat it as a scam red flag.
How do I get paid through Hubstaff in the Philippines?
Your client connects a payment provider, and your tracked hours times your hourly rate are paid out through Wise, PayPal, Payoneer, Bitwage, Deel, or Gusto. The money goes straight from the client’s account to yours. For most of us, Wise usually gives the best final peso amount, but compare the fees for your own amounts.
Can I delete a screenshot I do not like?
As a regular user, deleting removes the whole block of activity, meaning the screenshot and the tracked time together, so you also lose the pay for that segment. Prevention is better: keep personal windows closed while the timer runs, or ask your client to enable Hubstaff’s screenshot blur.
What if I forget to start my timer?
You can add manual time only if your client has enabled that permission, and manual entries are flagged in a report the client can review. Some clients do not honor manual time at all. Message your client right away, explain what you worked on, and build an alarm habit so it stays rare.
The bottom line on Hubstaff for Filipino VAs
Hubstaff is not your enemy. It is a receipt machine for hourly work: it proves your hours, it powers your pay, and it only exists inside the boundary of your running timer. Learn the mechanics once, the 10-minute blocks, the screenshots, the activity math, the idle prompts, and the fear mostly evaporates, because there is nothing mysterious left.
As a VA since 2020 who has worked with multiple clients, I would advise you to aim past the tracker. Use it properly, communicate your low-activity days, keep your own records, and then make yourself so useful that your value is obvious with or without screenshots. Trackers monitor hours. Clients keep VAs who make their business easier. Be the second thing, and the first thing becomes just another app in your taskbar.
Sources
- Hubstaff, Pricing Plans (accessed July 11, 2026)
- Hubstaff, Pricing: Plans, Features, and Cost Analysis 2026 (accessed July 11, 2026)
- Hubstaff, Frequently Asked Questions (accessed July 11, 2026)
- Hubstaff Support, How are Activity Levels Calculated (accessed July 11, 2026)
- Hubstaff Support, How to Change Screenshot Frequency (accessed July 11, 2026)
- Hubstaff Support, Screenshot Blur for Organizations (accessed July 11, 2026)
- Hubstaff Support, How to Delete Screenshots (accessed July 11, 2026)
- Hubstaff Support, Idle Time Alert (Inactivity Warning) (accessed July 11, 2026)
- Hubstaff Support, Payroll Overview (accessed July 11, 2026)
- Hubstaff Support, How Do I Pay My Team (accessed July 11, 2026)
- Hubstaff Support, Automatic Payments and Payroll (accessed July 11, 2026)
- Hubstaff Support, How to Add, Delete, or Edit Time Manually (accessed July 11, 2026)
- Hubstaff Blog, How to Increase Hubstaff Activity (Without Gaming the System) (accessed July 11, 2026)
- Hubstaff, Global Payments Comparison: PayPal vs Payoneer vs Wise (accessed July 11, 2026)
- Hubstaff, Customer Story: Affordable Staff (accessed July 11, 2026)
- OnlineJobs.ph, TimeProof (accessed July 11, 2026)
