Features
Everything AirStaff tracks, and every report you get back
Built for the manager who has fifteen minutes a week, not the analyst who wants a data warehouse.
The desktop agent
AirStaff’s agent is a small tray application for Windows and macOS. Staff clock in and out from it. While clocked in it records ten-minute time slots containing keyboard and mouse counts, an activity percentage, a periodic blurred screenshot, and the active application name and browser domain. It records nothing while clocked out, and nothing at all until the staff member has accepted a monitoring notice.
- Clock in and out
- From the tray app. Idle time is detected and never counted toward paid hours; long idles clock the person out automatically.
- Screenshots
- Detailed (low-res) by default: readable, but shrunk to a long edge of 1024px and compressed to roughly 50–90KB, never full resolution. Or Blurred at the moment of capture, so the raw frame never touches disk — roughly 35KB each. Or off. Always WebP, always small.
- Activity
- Keyboard and mouse events are counted per slot and expressed as an activity percentage. Contents are never captured.
- Apps and websites
- Active application name and browser domain. Full URLs are only recorded if the employer turns URL tracking on, and staff can see that setting.
- Offline work
- Slots are batched and sent idempotently, so a dropped connection does not lose or duplicate tracked time.
Reports
Each report exports to CSV and PDF, and can be emailed to you weekly.
- Team pulse
- Everyone sorted into on track, needs attention, or off — with the reason, not just a coloured dot.
- Red flags
- Found for you: hours well below a person’s own average, no clock-in by their usual start time, activity sliding several days in a row.
- Hours versus expected
- Tracked hours against each person’s contracted schedule, for any date range.
- Activity trends
- Activity over time per person and per team, so you can see a slide before it becomes a problem.
- Apps and sites
- Time by application and domain, grouped into categories you define — including a bucket for anything uncategorised.
- Attendance and work patterns
- Start and finish times, and a heatmap of when work actually happens across the week.
- Projects and cost
- Time tagged to projects and clients, with cost calculated from each person’s rate. Tier 2 and above.
- Weekly digest
- Monday morning in your organisation’s timezone: team health, who needs attention, and the week’s wins. Tier 2 and above.
Timesheets you can defend
Tracked time flows straight into a weekly timesheet grid for approval. Manual entries — the ones that cause arguments — are handled properly: each is flagged as manual, requires a reason, and keeps the original value, who created it and who approved it. If you would rather staff could not add time at all, one organisation setting turns manual entry off for everyone but managers and admins.
- Weekly grid per person and per team, with manager approval.
- Managers see only their own team; admins and owners see everyone.
- Full audit trail on every edit: original value, reason, author, approver.
- CSV and PDF export for payroll or client billing.
What staff get
Monitoring that people accept is monitoring that keeps working. Every staff member has their own view of exactly what the employer sees.
- My data: their hours, their screenshots, their activity — the same records the employer sees.
- Plain-English capture list: what is recorded, and what is never recorded.
- Consent status: which notice version they accepted and when.
- Download and request: one-click export of everything held about them, plus correction and deletion requests.
The detail of what is and isn’t captured lives on the privacy-first monitoring page.
Admin controls
- Screenshot mode
- Detailed low-res (the default), blurred at capture, or off entirely. Staff see the mode on their My data screen and in their monitoring notice.
- Retention
- Screenshot cap between 7 and 180 days. Up to 60 days is included; longer is a paid add-on.
- Idle threshold
- How long counts as idle before time stops accruing.
- URL tracking
- Off by default — domains only unless you turn it on.
- Manual time
- Whether staff may add manual entries, or only managers and admins.
- Alerts
- No clock-in 30 minutes past a person’s usual start; activity more than 20% below their four-week average for three days or more. Email or Slack webhook.
- Roles and teams
- Owner, admin, manager and staff. Managers are scoped to their own team on every screen and every query.
- Export and delete
- Self-serve export of the whole organisation, and self-serve deletion with a 30-day purge.
Questions people actually ask
How often does AirStaff take a screenshot of my staff’s screens?
Screenshots are taken periodically within each ten-minute tracked slot while the person is clocked in. By default they are detailed but low-resolution — readable, but shrunk to 1024px and compressed to roughly 50–90KB, never full resolution. An employer can switch to blurred captures — blurred at the moment of capture and stored at roughly 35KB — or turn screenshots off entirely. Staff see which mode is on.
Can a manager edit a staff member’s timesheet without them knowing?
No. Every manual entry or edit is flagged as manual, requires a reason, and stores the original value, who created it and who approved it. Staff see the same audit trail on their own timesheet.
Does idle time count toward the hours my staff are paid for?
No. The agent detects idle time using an employer-set threshold and does not count it toward tracked hours. A long idle period clocks the person out automatically rather than quietly accruing time.
Can managers only see their own team’s data?
Yes. Managers are scoped to their own team on every screen, and that scoping is enforced at the query layer rather than only hidden in the interface. Owners and admins see the whole organisation.
Can I export timesheets and reports for payroll or client billing?
Yes. Every report and every timesheet exports to CSV and PDF, and any report can be scheduled to email itself to you weekly.
Does AirStaff work if someone loses their internet connection?
Yes. The agent batches tracked slots and sends them idempotently when the connection returns, so offline work is not lost and reconnecting does not create duplicate time.
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