Harvest - Avis

I started my marketing agency in 1999. I used manual, paper solutions for time tracking for the first few years. After much research we found Workamajig in 2004 to switch to an online solution. It served its purpose for many years but everyone struggled with it and found it not user friendly at all. After many attempts we found Harvest in 2018. I played with it for a few days at the end of a month then ripped the bandaid and switched to it on the 1st of a month. It was SO user-friendly everyone loved it out the gate and we have never looked back. It's so great for time tracking and quick insight into projects and budget status at the client, project and task level. I love it!

It's very hard to complain about Harvest. I really love it. I do wish it had the ability to set budgets for staff by clients/projects so we can see how booked up our team is and better manage their time allocation. There is a second-party project Harvest syncs with to try to do this, but it does not work the way we needed it to so we dropped it after a brief trial.

The only thing good I can say that I like about Harvest is that it is pretty easy to use. You simply search the client or project name, indicate whether it is a billable or non-billable task and then set the timer. There is also a space to elaborate on the specific details of the task being done.

What I like the least about this software is that the tracking is too granular. Employees that are subject to using it feel like Big Brother is watching and that the employer doesn't trust them. It also doesn't allow for any explanation of extenuating circumstances. For example, if an employee is tracking within Harvest and is expected to track in real time, there is no way to explain a computer glitch or if a system crashes in the middle of a task and the employee has to re-do the task from the beginning. In addition, if you are a billable employee, you are literally tethered to your computer all day, as you must "Harvest" every minute of your day if the employer wants an accurate read of activity. It is tedious and demeaning.

Working in a creative field, I am a person who detests tracking time and invoicing. It takes me out of flow and into a space that doesn't really foster creative ideas or spark the imagination. Harvest makes the process about as painless as possible (let's be real, tracking time will never be entirely painless) and frees me up to focus on what I do and how I best deliver value to my clients and team. For clients that prefer to pay by credit card, it allows you to deliver the invoice via a web portal with the ability to pay via PayPal with your cc.

I still feel that the project setup scenarios could be simplified and / or streamlined. I've used Harvest for over 10 years and they have consistently added features and addressed certain gray areas that the software couldn't really account for, but I do think that if they were rebuilding the platform knowing what they know now, they would make it even more straightforward and simple from that standpoint.

The best part about this software--the price. There is a free option for new freelancers, and for my first year, I strictly used that. Even the free version is highly robust. However, I quickly realized I needed something a bit more custom, and I've upgraded to the paid version, but even that is very reasonable.

I don't really like that you can't send contracts. I feel like if the program includes estimates, it should also have a contract-sending option. I understand it integrates with other contract platforms, but those were so very expensive-—or just didn't appeal to me.

Exceptionally easy to use. Intuitive interface design that's obviously been user tested and refined. Every button and feature is exactly where you'd expect it to be.

This software does one thing really well – timekeeping. We've tried using solutions that try to do more and have gone back to Harvest because there's nothing we don't like about it.

We love Harvest and its features. From time tracking to billing and invoicing Harvest has helped us grow our business and keep on top of the projects we are working on.

There are other similar products on the market that offer the ability to send contracts and proposals, as well as products for bookkeeping that integrate many of the same features for not much more in total cost.

Timesheets workflow, high-level time spent/remaining visibility

Doesn't support sub-tasks, loosely integrated with our project management software (Teamwork)

Harvest certainly offers a very user-friendly interface. When you log on, it's immediately apparent how to use the software for the basic need of time tracking. The interface is set up to reflect the current week, with the days of the week displayed left to right, and the time you've tracked for each day displayed below it. Each day is broken up into time tracked according to a specific project. If using Harvest in the way our company does, you can create project codes to reflect different projects, so you'll be able to track how long you or your employees are spending on individual projects, or even separate types of tasks within that project.

I do wish there was a a sort of "Week So Far" tracker feature, that appeared as its own tab in the top menu bar, or perhaps was totaled at the bottom of the screen on the current day's time sheet. At the moment, if you'd like to see the hours you've spent on different projects summed up so far in a given week, you would have to either click into each day, and add up the hour totals yourself, or you go to the "Reports" tab, then click on "Team," then click on your own name under that, where then you would be able to see the total number of hours you've spent on different projects that week. This seems like a simple feature that should be more accessible, or at least more clear to navigate to.

Harvest is a super-simple app which manages all our client payments and invoicing/reminders for our clients and integrates with Stripe for a seamless payment process. We use it every day and can bill clients in $ or other currencies easily, and provide them downloadable pdf's, payment portals and other functionality (using external app integrations) with ease.

The in-built feature set is quite limited. To get integration with contract software, proposal software etc. you need further subscriptions with other companies. It would be ideal if it was all built-in. Also, it's missing a huge feature which should be standard on all invoicing apps - The ability to send automated client statements. At any time we may have 5-20 invoices outstanding for some client accounts and, even after 4 years using Harvest we have to manually send links and individual invoice reminders. It's by far the biggest downside of the software and is a big limitation.

Reporting is a big asset especially virtually. you can easily assign task to individual developer or to the whole team. Track them what is going on and allocate and manage the budget. It is intelligent enough to suggest what part of your project is infected or going strong and you can make your decision accordingly.

Not very easy to work on it initially but once you are familiar with it then it is going along very nicely. There is need of improvement in there mobile app and also costing is bit tricky as rate change is not very helpful. Moreover for user or developer it is hard to catch his time sheet as summary is not very helpful.

* The API is easy to work with and works well. * We use Harvest for billing/invoicing, and it saves HR/accounting lots of time.* It gives us data on billable/nonbillable work hours we have been able to examine to restructure the way we work on projects to reach our financial goals. We've already seen progress towards these goals and we could not have made these realizations without Harvest.

The 'payment type' (i.e. net 15, net 30, custom, etc.) is set static at a default--having the ability to customize this per client would be very helpful.Its sales tax functionality is quite limited, even with Quickbooks integration.The desktop Harvest app is a little 'buggy', but nothing that we can't work around.

Harvest is extremely easy to use. It requires no special training in order to get in and get to work. It's easy to edit your entries (i.e. start one project and hop to another, add and edits notes, etc.) I appreciate that it lets me know via email if I've accidentally left my timer running, so I can fix it. I get weekly time summary reports so I can see where my billable time has been spent. And I can run reports to see how much time overall has accrued on each project. I used to be spotty at completing timesheets, but this app makes it easy to do. Our small marketing agency does a great job now of tracking time, which has enabled us to negotiate project costs with clients more accurately.

There is nothing that is difficult to use.