Leaving Hubstaff without losing timesheets or payroll

The agencies we talk to use Hubstaff for two things: hours their clients will accept, and a payroll number at the end of the period. The screenshots and activity scores come with it. Some clients ask for that evidence. Ask yours whether they look at it.

Tengu's Studio plan replaces the parts you actually use. Time is tracked on the quest the person is working on, reviewed every week, approved by an admin and exported per pay period. You can move people across one team at a time, each at the start of a pay period.

What you keep

A timer on every quest

Each member has one timer at a time, started from a quest: its row on the board, the quest drawer, the task view or Today. The timer lives on the server, so closing a tab or a laptop loses nothing. Starting a timer on a quest that isn't in progress moves it to the list's Started status, so the board stays true without a second click.

Time outside a quest goes on an activity, like a meeting, planning or code review, on its project when it has one. Admins name the activities and decide which ones bill.

Weekly timesheets

Weeks run Monday to Sunday. Each member reviews their week by day and project, fixes anything, and submits. Entries lock on submit. A week is due Monday at noon. Reminders go out Friday afternoon about the week in progress and Monday morning about the week that is due.

Mistakes get fixed the honest way. Manual entries and edits are allowed with a short reason, and every change is logged with who made it, what it was before and what it is now. A timer that runs past 10 hours is flagged on the timesheet. The end-of-day sweep asks about a timer that is still running and lets the member set the real end time.

Approvals

An admin approves each submitted week or requests changes with a note. Approved weeks are final. Operations can manage the team's lists and integrations, but they never approve timesheets and never see money.

Pay periods

Members are paid twice a month (1st to 15th, 16th to the end) or monthly, set per person on Admin > Members. The timesheet has a pay-period view that sums the period by project and week. Time is still fixed and submitted a week at a time.

Each member sees their own rate and their own pay on their timesheet: approved pay, and pay still waiting for approval. Nobody sees anyone else's.

Payroll export

From approved weeks, an admin downloads two CSV files per pay period:

• one row per person: name, email, hours, rate, amount, currency and a memo naming the period
• one row per person and project, with a total per person

The files are built for paying through Mercury, which is what we use, and open in any spreadsheet. When a rate changed inside the period, the rate column shows the effective average, so hours times rate still matches the amount.

Budgets that pause timers

Set a monthly budget per client or per project, in hours or in dollars of billable time. At 75% and 90%, the project's PM, its lead and everyone with time on it get an inbox warning that shows only the percentage. At 100% of a project budget, running timers on it stop and new ones can't start. Members see "This project is paused" with the name of the project lead, so nobody wonders whether to keep working unpaid. An admin extends it in one click.

Client budgets are for admins only and never stop timers. Their overruns show on the Capacity Hub.

Owners and admins also get budget alerts and a Monday brief as Slack DMs. They carry percentages, dates, counts and names, never dollars.

What you stop collecting

No screenshots. No activity levels. No idle detection. No online or away status. Not as a setting you can turn off: Tengu does not have them.

What clients get instead is better evidence. A quest with timestamps, its status history, time entries on that exact ticket, an approved timesheet and, when your repo is linked, a QA trail with screenshots of the work itself. That answers "what did we pay for?" more directly than a screenshot of someone's desktop at 10:40.

If a client contract requires screenshots, be honest with yourself about it. Hubstaff is built for that, and Tengu never will be. Keep Hubstaff for those people, and move everyone else.

How to move

1. Move one project team first

Pick one project team and a date that lines up with the start of a pay period, so that period is paid from one tool only. Invite them to Tengu, set their pay rates and pay period on Admin > Members, and have them start their timers from their quests. Everyone else keeps tracking in Hubstaff for now.

2. Run one full period

Let the first group submit their weeks, approve them, and download the payroll export. Compare it with what you would have paid from Hubstaff. When the numbers agree, move the next group.

3. Keep your Hubstaff history

Tengu starts from the day each person moves: it doesn't bring old Hubstaff hours in. Before you cancel, export the timesheet and payroll reports you need for past periods and keep them with your records.

What it costs

Time, timesheets, pay periods, payroll export, budgets, pay rates and the Capacity Hub are on the Studio plan: $12 per seat a month on the annual plan, $15 monthly, paid upfront, with no minimum. Everyone who can sign in takes a seat; client guests are free.