Active and idle time
Measured from real keyboard and mouse activity rather than from the app simply being open. Idle time is shown separately instead of being quietly counted as work.
Attendance · Leave · Time tracking
Employee management, attendance & time tracking software
Run attendance, leave, work hours and workforce activity from one portal. Employee Desk covers attendance, leave, holidays, employee records, projects, daily work reports and an optional desktop time tracker for Windows · macOS · Ubuntu.
- 7-day free trial, no card needed
- Admins are free
- Windows · macOS · Ubuntu
- No keystroke logging, ever
The short answer
What does Employee Desk do?
One employee record drives every module, so attendance, leave, work and payroll data never have to be reconciled across three tools.
01 / Time off
Attendance and leave
Shifts with a grace window and late policy per employee, automatic lunch deduction, every leave type with balances that accrue on their own, and one holiday calendar the whole company shares.
Attendance software → 02 / OutputProjects, tasks and reports
Projects with a code, a manager and members. Tasks carry an assignee, a priority and a completion percentage. Daily work reports are written against a project with hours and completion.
Workforce management → 03 / Measured timeDesktop time tracker
A native app for Windows · macOS · Ubuntu that measures active and idle time from real keyboard and mouse activity, works offline, and takes screenshots only if you turn them on.
Desktop tracker → 04 / ControlReports, roles and retention
Attendance, tracked time and work reports over any date range, on screen and out as CSV. Custom roles scoped to own, team or all, an audit log, optional two-factor sign-in for admins and a revocable list of signed-in devices.
Employee management → 05 / PayPayroll and payslips
Salary templates, loss of pay from absences explained day by day on the payslip, payslip PDFs, loans with EMI, PF, ESI and PT, and a bank transfer sheet.
Payroll → 06 / AccountYour own workspace
Every organization gets an isolated workspace with its own logo, roles and settings. Sign up yourself for a 7-day free trial with no card, then pick a plan billed in rupees through Razorpay.
Pricing →
Attendance
Attendance that matches how your shifts actually work
Most attendance software assumes one office, one start time and one policy. Real teams have three shifts, a grace window that varies by role and half a dozen people on permanent work-from-home.
- Per-employee shifts. Own start time, grace window and late policy, so no single rule has to fit everyone.
- Lunch breaks deducted automatically and kept out of paid hours.
- Late, half-day and absent derived from the policy rather than typed in by an admin.
- Admin corrections when someone forgets to punch in, stamped with who corrected the record and when.
- Month-end CSV that goes straight into payroll without a pivot table in between.
Read more about employee attendance software or the attendance documentation.
Leave
Leave balances that maintain themselves
Every leave type your handbook already lists, with balances that accrue monthly and approvals that take one click instead of an email thread.
- Sick, casual, paid, work-from-home and short leave, each with its own rules, and half-day leave for the first or second half.
- Balances accrue monthly on their own, up to a cap, with carry-forward on or off per leave type.
- Approve or reject in one click, with the full history attached to the employee record.
- One holiday calendar everyone sees, so attendance stops flagging days nobody was meant to work.
- Team calendar so a manager can see who is out before approving another request for the same week.
Time tracking
Work hours, measured rather than estimated
Tracked time answers a specific question: how many hours went into which project, and how much of that time was actually active. It is not a productivity score and it is not a ranking.
Time against projects
Hours land against a project and a task, so the number you bill a client or budget a sprint against comes from the same record the employee already filled in.
Offline-safe
The desktop app keeps recording without a connection and uploads the backlog when it returns. A dropped Wi-Fi connection does not leave a hole in the day.
Transparency and privacy
Work time, measured — not guessed
Monitoring software has a reputation, most of it earned. Here is the full list of what the desktop app records and what it will never touch, published so your team can read it before you roll it out.
What it records
- Active and idle time, from real keyboard and mouse activity
- The application or window title in use, sampled through the day
- Screenshots at a random interval you bound, each tagged with the activity percentage — only if you enable them
- Keystroke and click counts, as a measure of activity only
- Start and stop times, signed in with the same portal account
What it never does
- Record what you type. The content of what is typed never leaves the machine
- Touch the camera or the microphone
- Run after the employee has stopped it, or while the machine is asleep
- Hide. The tray icon stays visible the whole time it is recording
- Read personal files, browser history or messages
Employees see every screenshot taken of their own screen, in the same gallery their manager uses, and get a notification each time one is captured. Monitoring people without telling them is how teams lose trust, so the product will not do it. Read the full position on privacy, what monitoring means here and how long data is kept.
Pricing
Published cloud prices, because you should not have to book a call to get one
Cloud is billed monthly per active user, plans from ₹59 per user/month + GST, with a 7-day free trial, no card needed. Per-user pricing — pay only for active employees; admins are free.
Cloud
Starter
Core HR, shifts and chat
₹59 / user / month
+ 18% GST
- Employee records
- Attendance
- Leave management
- Holiday calendar
- Custom roles & permissions
- Organization settings
- Session control
- Shifts & roster
- Team chat
Cloud · most chosen
Growth
Projects, tasks, work reports, timesheets and activity tracking
₹99 / user / month
+ 18% GST
- Everything in Starter, plus:
- Projects
- Tasks
- Daily work reports
- Timesheets
- Desktop time tracker (hours, active/idle)
Cloud
Pro
Screenshots, live productivity, planning, payroll and audit
₹149 / user / month
+ 18% GST
- Everything in Growth, plus:
- Screenshots, live board & retention
- Live screen capture, day timeline, browser tab history, top apps & pages, screenshots
- Productivity insights
- Workforce planning
- Payroll
- Audit log
Prices exclude 18% GST. Billed monthly per active user.
Need an on-premise deployment? Contact sales. Every plan is on the pricing page.
A look inside
The screens your team will actually use
Nine modules, one employee record. These are the screens an administrator and an employee spend their week in — and the employee sees the same data about themselves that their manager sees.
See all 32 screens, explained one by one, in the product tour.
Who it is for
Who uses Employee Desk
Built for companies that have outgrown a spreadsheet but do not want an enterprise HRMS rollout.
Software companies
Hours against projects and sprints, work-from-home attendance that is not guesswork, and a tracker developers can read the source behaviour of before it is installed.
For software companies →Digital agencies
Billable hours per client and per project, so the retainer conversation starts from a number rather than a memory.
For agencies →BPO and support teams
Shift attendance across rotating rosters, break tracking and adherence reporting for a floor that does not keep office hours.
For BPO →Staffing and consulting
Deployed staff working at client sites, timesheets that survive an audit, and per-client reporting you can attach to an invoice.
For staffing firms →
Comparisons
How Employee Desk compares
Honest comparisons, including the cases where the other product is the better fit. Feature claims are checked against public documentation and re-checked when we update the page.
| Employee Desk | Typical cloud tracker | |
|---|---|---|
| Attendance, leave and holidays | Built in | Add-on or absent |
| Keystroke content logging | Never | Varies by vendor |
| Employee sees their own screenshots | Yes, with a notification | Often admin-only |
| Screenshots can be switched off | Yes, per team | Sometimes |
| Published pricing in INR | Yes | USD, often per seat |
Questions
Frequently asked questions
What is Employee Desk?
Employee Desk is employee management software that keeps attendance, leave, holidays, employee records, projects, tasks, daily work reports and tracked work time in one portal. It runs as a cloud service with an isolated workspace for every organization. A desktop time tracker for Windows, macOS and Ubuntu is an optional add-on.
Are keystrokes logged?
No. Key presses and mouse clicks are counted to measure activity, but what is typed is never captured or transmitted. There is no keylogger in the product, on any plan or deployment.
Can employees see what is being recorded about them?
Yes, and that is deliberate. Every employee gets a notification the moment a screenshot is taken and can open the same gallery their manager sees. Nothing is collected quietly.
Does the desktop tracker work on Mac and Linux?
Yes. The tracker ships for Windows 10 and 11, macOS 11 and later, and Ubuntu 20.04 and later on an Xorg session. It is the same app and the same account on all three.
How often are screenshots taken?
At a random gap between a minimum and a maximum you set, from 2 to 10 minutes by default, and never more than 15 minutes apart. The gap is redrawn every time so it cannot be predicted or waited out. Screenshots can also be switched off entirely.
Does it work without an internet connection?
The desktop app keeps recording offline and queues everything locally. When the connection returns it uploads the backlog, so a dropped Wi-Fi connection does not leave a hole in the day.
What does Employee Desk cost?
Cloud is priced per active user per month, plans from ₹59 per user/month + GST, with a 7-day free trial, no card needed. Admins are free; you pay only for active employees. Full details are on the pricing page.
Can we use attendance and leave without the tracker?
Yes. The web portal is complete on its own for attendance, leave, holidays, employee records, projects, tasks, work reports, chat and reports. The desktop tracker is an optional add-on you roll out only where it makes sense.
Try it on your own team this week
Start a 7-day free trial, no card needed. Per-user pricing — pay only for active employees; admins are free.
- 7-day trial
- No credit card
- Cancel anytime