Harvest vs Time Tracker Comparison

Good time tracker that enables you to segment activities by task

Solid overall no major complaints with the software.

This is a must have app for software houses. After initial setup it helps with: - billing the client like a pro - transparency with the client - keep tracking of utilization of the devs - maintain records of works done

Some learning curve required. Also some habit needs to be acquired. After around 2 weeks teams acquired habit and remember to use time tracker correctly with issue tracker (tickets/jobs numbers).

A time tracker that has a chrome extension and integrates with my bookkeeping software - what is there not to like?

What I don't like is the fact that it'll only ask me if I've left my timer running for about 10 hours. I'd prefer to be able to check it to like 4 or 5-hour increments.

Harvest makes time tracking easy. You can use the embedded timer or input your own time. The integration with google calendar is clutch as it helps in populating meetings into the time tracker

Would like to duplicate events across time card to make tracking events even easier

I like having the Harvest desktop time tracker installed at the top of my desktop--I've found it really increases my awareness of how I'm spending my time. I bill hourly, so that is key!

I'm still figuring out how to use Harvest and it may just be overkill for my simple needs of tracking time. Setting up a new project takes a lot of time and I really don't need all the bells and whistles it offers because I have other tools for things like tracking expenses. I'm nearing the end of my free trial and on the fence about continuing with a paid subscription. I can't get it to track offline, so that it's an issue too--I like to work outside in parks and coffeeshops and be able to track offline. I know I can use the Harvest app on my phone but don't want to be toggling between devices.

Harvest tracks time. No more, no less. That's a beauty of it. Name your task and click start. It's that easy. You can quickly edit you task title and adjust your time. I also think the reports are helpful. It's nice to see where you've spent most of your time. I've tried a few competitors and they just try too hard. It took so long to start tracking that I needed a separate tracker just for my time tracker! Harvest integrates with a lot of project management softwares as well.

I don't particularly care for the expenses portion. But that's just because I don't often request expenses. I can't really speak to it's functionality.

Could not be easier to use. Takes two minutes to get going. Includes invoicing based on hours worked Reporting is detailed

A bit pricey for time tracker. Can add up if lots of users. No budget functionality for time-based project. For example, I'd like to allocate a weekly budget to a project and we notified when exceeded.

It's easy to track my time, set up projects, and check time-budget statuses. Harvest has almost everything I need in a time-tracking software, and isn't a pain to use.

If I'm adding time after the fact (instead of starting the tracking timer), I have to put minutes in as an hour format (i.e. five minutes would be :05). I have had to go back and change my entered time because of this (accidentally tracking 5 hours instead of 5 minutes). It can was confusing to find my monthly timesheet at first.

Harvest madness time tracking easy and painless, with different views (daily, weekly) that make it a breeze to review and submit timesheets.

The web version does not let you modify a timer that is currently running, so that your have to stop the current timer to make adjustments to it.

I love all of the reporting features Harvest offers. Its far more than just a time tracking or invoicing software! It will help your team stay on budget. Also, the integrations are great! I use it connected with Asana and the Chrome Extension so its always easy for me to quickly track my time.

Some of the initial setup with creating clients and learning all f the features was confusing. But its a really robust tool with a lot of features, so its expected that there might be a small learning curve if you're just switching from a simple time tracker.

Harvest is straightforward and easy to use. First-time users find it easy to learn navigating the platform. It can also be seamlessly integrated to project management programs such as ClickUp. It also has a built-in Invoicing feature for bout hours and expenses. Another awesome feature is being able to set budgets for every project, so you can have a quick overview of how much you have spent and can still spend on a project.

What I liked the least about Harvest is that once a person or a project has logged hours, the only option you have is to archive them, and not delete them. It seems to just clutter the workspace. One improvement that can be done is having a prompt whenever the tracker has been on for more than 5 hours, just to check if the timer has been left on, because sometimes we still forget to turn off the tracker.

I like how easy it is to use. I've used it as an employee and as a freelancer. It helps you identify just how long tasks really take, and how to bill accordingly. It also helps you find ways to improve efficiency over time.

It's a little stressful the way some companies want you to use Harvest. Sometimes I forget my tracker is still running, sometimes I forget to start it. And sometimes it feels like micromanagement.

It does what it does and it does it best! Time tracking on projects has never been so easy for our organisation. We have used multiple time trackers, but were never pleased with the wat we neede to register the hours we make for our clients. The mac, windows and iOS/Android apps work great. New projects are available instantly and starting / pausing the time tracker is wonderfully done. Managing the projects, budgets and tasks is really easy and if you like, you can integrate it with Harvest Forecast and plan your team ahead.

Harvest lacks decent support of monthly retainer 'projects'. It's not a show stopper for us, but it makes us do manual checks of the hours we make for our clients. I would love Harvest Forecast to be part of Harvest by default instead of the invoicing functionalities, since we use other software for that.

I needed a time tracker to use seamlessly with Basecamp. Did my research - I needed to be able to track time without using "Projects" in Basecamp. To my surprise, Harvest did this exactly how I needed it to work. I had contacted their customer service to ask if this would work, but event before they contacted me back, which was very quickly, I synced the programs and Whallah! It was done and easy. I was able to pull reports right away. Easy to enter, easy to change, easy to report, easy to....well...hopefully you get the picture - it was Easy!

Their options for just one person were exactly what I needed - so for me, there is nothing I didn't like. For larger groups - I would imagine this could get pricy.

Time tracking is a huge part of my life as a freelancer, so having a reliable tracker and database is critical. Harvest grew with me when I built an agency, allowing me to easily view the hours of my contractors and employees. I use the Mac app on a daily basis, then log into the web interface to get overall reports regularly. The speed of the reporting makes it easy to know how much I should be billing in a really quick manner.

The Mac app can have random hiccups that cause it to appear in random parts of the screen, and it doesn't let you do a lot of the admin work like adding new clients or projects. I've been a customer for many years, but it feels like the Harvest team has no innovative ideas to expand the service beyond its current scope.

I love that you can start and stop the clock when you're working on projects. Previously I used Quickbooks and had to enter my time after I finished a project, or keep track of the time and add it to the project later. Harvest's functionality allows me to keep better track of my time.

It would be nice to have a feature where you can request access to projects. Other than that, I have no cons for Harvest.

1) Clean, simple, easy to use interface for daily time tracking. 2) Ability to monitor team's time real-time 3) Ability to track real-time billable Revenue 4) Invoicing features 5) inexpensive

1) No real-time phone support. Originally, Harvest had real-time phone support, but a while back they (suddenly) changed their phone support from real-time to only scheduled appointments. We've often found that support appointments are not usually available until a while later in the same day, or often the next day, which has been difficult because there is no way to get quicker phone support if...

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Easy to use and customize. I also implemented the use of Harvest forecast which links with Harvest in order to help estimate utilization of our engineers. Prior to using Harvest, our time tracking process was very manual, and this has really made it so much easier.

There are lots of features that I'd love to be able to customize, such as budget overages (automatically being marked as non-billable). I also question the way that it calculates utilization, but I've just adapted and manually put together reports for myself and management team.

I use this software to track time for one of my clients. The time feeds into their accounting and I receive payment from time entered the very next week.

I don't have many dislikes about the software.

I really like the fact that it can be integrated into Asana and keep my task and times together. Is also very easy to look at past weeks and see in what projects you spend time.

From time to time it need to be refresh so it goes back to your actual day and time. It's an easy click fix.

The chrome extension makes this really easy to track the time you spend working on a particular client. With the click of a button you can select the client you are working on via a dropdown menu and you just hit 'start timer'. When you stop the timer you can also add in some extra details that are great when you're trying to report back on where your time has been spent. When you log into the desktop version you can view week by week and day by day. You also have access to a dashboard which visually represents where you spent your time.

Sometimes you leave the timer running - it's really easy to forget that it's running in the background. You don't get a notification until the next morning and so I often have to log back in to correct my time logged.

Harvest is an ideal time tracking and billing platform for small- to mid-size companies. Individuals track their time in the desired increments, and then can sub-track their time to particular projects or disciplines. For instance, if tracking time for Client A, time can be segmented into "Client A > Project Review," "Client A > Web Development," "Client A > Business Development," etc. It can flex to accommodate multiple professional disciplines, and provides tallies / time breakouts for each user. On the backend, fairly rich data can be gathered from the platform to analyze time distribution and analysis.

It requires time to setup and administrate multiple users, especially if it's one person doing this job. Additionally, to do it well, it requires a thoughtful plan to provide the necessary taxonomy of clients / projects / billing to be used across the organization. It is not as robust as other big, enterprise-caliber time tracking platforms (like Salesforce), but for an organization <50 users, it's a great solution.

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.