Key takeaways
- After an employee punches in, the agent records active, idle and break time automatically.
- Events queue when a connection drops and sync when it returns.
- Sessions left open past midnight are closed automatically and administrators are notified.
Manual timers fail in predictable ways: they are forgotten, started late or left running. The result is timesheets that need correcting, and numbers nobody quite trusts. Automated tracking removes the timer from the employee's day, and it can do that as employee time tracking without surveillance, because it works from presence signals rather than from what is on anyone's screen.
How it works
An employee installs the desktop agent and connects it with a single-use enrollment code. When they punch in, the agent runs in the background and reports keyboard and mouse presence as a simple active or idle signal. That is all active idle tracking software needs to do: the platform groups those signals into sessions and turns them into daily, weekly and monthly reports.
What keeps the record accurate
Breaks pause tracking, so they are never mistaken for idle time.
Meetings count as active time even without keyboard or mouse input, and no application or window details are recorded during them.
A session still open past local midnight is closed automatically, and administrators receive an Employee auto punched out notification.
If a computer loses its connection, the agent queues events and syncs them when it can.
What it does not record
The agent detects that typing or mouse movement happened, never what was typed. It does not take screenshots, record the screen, capture audio or use the webcam.
See automated time tracking and the activity level tracking page.