Harvest Review: Best Time Tracking Software in 2025?

Are you tired of messy timesheets and wrong project guesses?

Imagine tracking your team’s hours easily, and making invoices simple.

Let’s see if Harvest can make your work easier and help you make more money.

In this Harvest review, we will look at its features, cost, and how people use it.

This will help you decide if it is the right tool for your businesses.

Harvest

Ready to take control of your time tracking? Harvest boasts over 100,000 customers and integrates with dozens of popular business tools!

Try Harvest for free Harvest alternatives Harvest tutorial

What is Harvest?

Harvest is a simple tool that helps you track time.

It lets you easily record your time on different tasks and projects.

You can use it to create accurate timesheets for billing clients.

Harvest also helps you see where your team’s time is going, so you can better manage projects and create budgets.

It’s designed to make time tracking less of a chore and more helpful for your business.

Plus, it offers reporting features so you can analyze your team’s productivity and identify areas for improvement.

Whether freelancing or managing a large team, Harvest can help you make the most of your time.

Who Created Harvest?

Harvest was founded by Danny Wen and Shawn Liu. 

They wanted to create a simple time-tracking tool that we would enjoy using. 

The company started small, focusing on making time tracking less painful.

Their vision was to build software that helps businesses understand where their time goes so they can work smarter, not harder.

Today, Harvest is used by thousands of businesses around the world.

Top Benefits of Harvest

• Project Management: Track your team’s time spent on each project. This will help you stay on budget and avoid overruns.
• Accurate Invoicing: Create professional invoices based on tracked time. Get paid faster and with less hassle.
• Insightful Reporting: Harvest provides reports showing where your time and money are going. Based on this data, you can make better business decisions.
• Team Collaboration: Keep everyone on the same page with shared project timelines and time tracking.
• Integrations: Harvest connects with other tools you love, like project management and accounting software, streamlining your workflow. While it doesn’t offer food delivery or a menu, it delivers key data.
• Improved Productivity: By understanding where your time goes, you can identify time-wasting activities and boost productivity. It helps you live more efficiently.
• Better Resource Allocation: Check who’s available and how much time they have. This will help you assign tasks effectively.
• Data-Driven Decisions: Harvest is a reliable source of truth about your team’s time. It allows you to make informed choices about projects and resources, and you can dine out knowing your business is running smoothly. This product helps.

Best Features

Harvest is a helpful tool that lets you track time and manage your business.

It’s great for freelancers and teams. It helps you keep track of where your time goes so you can get paid correctly.

Harvest makes it easy to understand how your projects are doing.

It has a clean and simple design. This makes it easy for anyone to use.

1. Time Tracker

Harvest’s time tracker is at the heart of its functionality.

It’s designed to be intuitive and easy for us to use, whether on a desktop, mobile device or even through a browser extension.

You can start and stop timers, manually enter hours, and track time against specific tasks and projects. 

This granular tracking ensures accuracy and provides a clear picture of where your team’s time is being spent.

No more guessing or estimating – Harvest gives you the data you need.

2. Reports & Analytics

Beyond simply tracking time, Harvest provides robust reporting and analytics.

You can generate various reports, including project summaries, team performance reports, and client billing summaries, to visualize your time data.

These reports provide valuable insights into project profitability, resource allocation, and productivity.

Use this data to identify areas for improvement and make smarter business decisions.

3. Invoice Tracker

Harvest streamlines the invoicing process by allowing you to create professional invoices directly from your tracked time.

You can customize invoices with your branding and easily send them to clients.

The tracker records which invoices have been sent, paid, and outstanding, simplifying your billing workflow and helping you get paid faster.

4. Integrations

Harvest integrates with other business tools, such as popular project management software, accounting platforms, and communication apps.

These integrations eliminate the need for manual data entry and create a more connected and efficient workflow.

Connect Harvest with the tools you already use to maximize its value.

5. Project Manager

Harvest includes essential project management features that help you effectively organize and manage your projects.

You can create projects, assign tasks to team members, set budgets, and track progress.

While not a full-fledged project management platform.

Harvest’s project management tools and time-tracking capabilities are great for keeping projects on track and within budget.

6. Budget Monitoring

With Harvest, you can set a budget for each project.

As you track your time and expenses, the tool will show you how close you are to that budget.

You can get alerts when you are getting close to your limit.

This helps you avoid spending too much money or time. You can view your budget by time or by money.

This gives you flexibility in how you manage your projects.

7. Team Scheduling

Harvest also has a feature called Harvest Forecast.

This helps you see what your team is working on. You can see who is busy and who has time for a new project.

This helps you plan work for your team and make sure no one is overworked.

It’s a great way to see your team’s workload at a glance. You can drag and drop projects to easily adjust schedules.

8. Client Management

Harvest lets you keep a clear record of all your clients.

You can see all the projects and invoices related to each client in one place.

This makes it simple to manage your relationships and keep all your information organized.

It helps you quickly find a client’s history. You can also add notes to a client’s profile.

9. Time-Off Management

Harvest helps you manage your team’s time off.

You can set up holidays and sick days in the system. When a team member requests time off, you can quickly approve or deny it.

This keeps everyone’s schedule clear and simple to understand.

It also makes sure time off is included in your team’s schedule planning. You can see planned time off right next to project work.

Pricing

Pros and Cons

Alternatives of Harvest

Harvest Compared

Personal Experience with Harvest

Our team used to have a hard time with project work.

It was time consuming to see what everyone was doing. We wanted to make things better, so we started using Harvest.

We chose the pro plan and created a Harvest account right away.

Our team learned to start tracking time with just a click on the desktop app.

This helped us get a better handle on our project progress each week.

• Accurate Billing: We could time and invoice clients easily. Harvest helped us see all the billable hours and non billable hours. We could send invoices directly from the app. This led to accurate billing for every project.
• Smart Reporting: We used Harvest’s reporting to get a clear view of our work. The advanced reporting gave us a deep look at our time tracking data. We could see how much budget was used and check the cost rates for different tasks. The time based reporting helped us see how profitable our work was.
• Easy Expense Tracking: The expense tracking feature was a big help. We could keep track of all our spending on different projects. We didn’t have to worry about losing receipts.
• Simple Invoicing: The invoicing tool made it simple to create client invoices. We could turn our tracked hours into an invoice and send invoices in no time.
• Stay on Top of Work: We used the app to start timers for specific projects. This helped us keep track of our work every day. The tool also let us use our Google Calendar to plan our work. We could get all the harvest data we needed with a few clicks.

The free plan gives you a great way to start using the tool with a limited number of projects and users.

You can add time entries to track your work and get a feel for the app.

We could also use the app to sign in easily and access our projects from anywhere.

While there is a special tool for pull requests from GitHub, we mainly used the features for our team’s work and had great phone support when we had questions.

Final Verdict

Harvest is a powerful time-tracking and project-management tool that can benefit businesses of all sizes.

It simplifies time tracking, improves invoicing, and provides insights into project profitability.

While it has some minor drawbacks, its strengths outweigh its weaknesses.

Harvest is worth considering if you’re looking for a user-friendly and feature-rich time-tracking solution.

It can help you save time, improve accuracy, and boost your bottom line.

Ready to streamline your workflow? Start your free Harvest trial today and see how it can transform your business!

Frequently Asked Questions

More Facts about Harvest

• What it does: Harvest is a simple tool used by freelancers and small teams to track time and send bills (invoices).
• How to track time: You can track your time however you prefer. You can type it in later, or use a timer while you work.
• Where to use it: You can use Harvest on your computer, in a web browser, or on your phone.
• Easy to use: The design is simple and clean. New users can learn how to use it very quickly without making many mistakes.
• Visual reports: The app creates charts and graphs. These help you see how your team spends its time and if you are staying within your budget.
• Project views: You can look at a weekly schedule to see everything your team did that week at a glance.
• Invoicing: Harvest helps businesses turn their hours into invoices so they can get paid online.
• Custom bills: You can make your invoices look professional. You can add your logo, explain what you did, and automatically calculate taxes.
• Expenses: You can take photos of receipts and track the money you spend on projects. You can organize these expenses so you know which client to charge.
• Works with other apps: Harvest connects with other popular tools like Asana, Basecamp, and Trello. This lets you track time without leaving those apps.
• Pricing: There is a free plan for one person with two projects. The “Pro” plan costs $12 per person each month and lets you do much more.
• Free trial: You can try the Pro plan for free for 30 days to see if you like it. You do not need a credit card to sign up for the trial.
• Who it is for: Best for freelancers, consultants, and small- to medium-sized businesses.
• Money and currency: Harvest works with different types of money (currencies), so it is good for businesses that work with people in other countries.
• Support: If you have a problem, customer support answers quickly through live chat. Users generally rate the software highly.
• Missing features: Harvest is great for time and billing, but it does not do payroll (paying employees) or complex team scheduling.
• Cost for big teams: Because you pay for every single user, Harvest can get expensive for very large companies compared to other tools.