Harvest

Harvest is web-based time tracking and invoicing software built for agencies, consultancies, studios and independent professionals who bill clients for their hours. It launched in 2006 and has remained focused on a narrow job: record time against projects and clients, capture expenses, turn both into invoices, get paid, and report on the results. It is not a project management suite and not an accounting system, and understanding that boundary explains most of what it does well.

Time tracking is the foundation. Users start and stop a timer from the web app, a browser extension, desktop apps for Mac and Windows, or mobile apps for iOS and Android, or they enter hours manually into a weekly timesheet. Every entry is attached to a client, a project and a task, the three-level structure that makes reporting meaningful later. Time can be marked billable or non-billable, and rates can be set per project, per task, per person or as a default, so a senior consultant and a junior designer can be billed at different amounts on the same project without manual arithmetic.

Project budgets turn time data into early warning. A budget can be defined in hours or in fees, tracked at project or task level, and set to alert at a chosen percentage of consumption. This prevents the most common agency loss, which is discovering a project ran over its estimate only when the final invoice is prepared. Alerts go to project managers by email and appear in the interface, so overruns are visible while there is still time to change scope.

Timesheet approval and permissions support managed teams. Projects can require approval before time is counted, team members can be restricted to assigned projects, and administrators control who sees rates, budgets and reports. This is what makes the data trustworthy enough to invoice from without a manual review pass every month.

Invoicing is where the tracked time converts into revenue. Invoices are generated from unbilled time and expenses, with quantities and rates pulled straight from the entries, and can be edited before sending. Templates are customizable with a logo, colors, notes and payment terms. Invoices are sent by email or delivered through a hosted link, and can include a payment button so clients pay by credit card. Automated reminders chase unpaid invoices on a schedule, and payments and credits are recorded so the outstanding balance stays accurate. Estimates can be converted to projects and invoices later, closing the loop from proposal to payment in one tool.

Expenses handle the reimbursable side of client work. Users photograph a receipt on the mobile app or forward a receipt email to a Harvest address, and the expense is created with the image attached. Expenses marked billable flow onto the invoice alongside time, while internal costs feed profitability reporting instead. Unrecovered expenses are one of the quietest sources of margin loss in service businesses, which is why this small feature matters.

Reporting is comparatively strong for a tool of this size. Standard reports cover teams, projects, clients, tasks, invoices, expenses, budgets and capacity, filterable by date range, client, project, person and billable status. Unbilled time and unbilled expense reports identify revenue earned but not yet invoiced, which is directly useful for cash flow forecasting at month end. Reports export to CSV and PDF, and the data is available through a documented public REST API.

Integrations connect Harvest to the tools a service business already runs. Accounting sync exists for QuickBooks Online and Xero, which removes double entry for most small firms. Work management connections include Asana, Trello and Basecamp, and Slack allows a timer to be started from a channel. Zapier extends the reach to several thousand other applications. Harvest Forecast is a separate resource scheduling and capacity planning product from the same company, sold independently but sharing client and project data.

Harvest differs from competitors by refusing scope creep. Toggl Track and Clockify compete largely on free multi-user time tracking. Everhour and Timing embed timing inside other workflows. Project management platforms such as Asana, ClickUp and Monday have added timers and invoicing as secondary features, usually thinner than a specialist product. On the invoicing side, FreshBooks and Wave target small business billing with time tracking attached rather than the reverse. Harvest's position is that a firm whose revenue depends on accurately billing hours wants both halves of that job done properly.

Pricing as of late 2026 has four tiers. The Free plan costs nothing and is limited to one seat and two active projects, viable for a solo freelancer with a small client list but not for a team. The Teams plan runs at $9 per person per month billed annually, which is $108 per seat per year, or $11 per person per month billed monthly. The Enterprise plan runs at $14 per person per month billed annually, or $168 per seat per year, and $17.50 monthly, adding advanced reporting and administrative controls. Enterprise Plus is quoted individually. Annual billing carries roughly a 20 percent discount. A 30-day free trial needs no credit card, and seats can be added mid-cycle on a prorated basis.

One change in the pricing model deserves attention. Paid plans now combine a per-seat base rate with usage-based billing, so additional invoices, projects, clients and tasks beyond the included allowances are charged according to consumption. In practice this makes monthly cost harder to predict than the old flat per-seat model, and teams migrating from legacy plans have reported substantial increases. Anyone budgeting for Harvest should model expected invoice and project volume rather than relying on the headline seat price, and confirm current allowances on the vendor's pricing page.

Limitations are mostly about what Harvest deliberately excludes. There is no double-entry ledger, no VAT or sales tax return preparation and no year-end financial statements, so an accounting package remains necessary and Harvest syncs into one rather than replacing it. There is no payroll. Project management is light, with no dependency chains or Gantt charts. Time tracking accuracy depends on people actually starting timers, and no software solves that culturally. The usage-based layer adds billing unpredictability.

Harvest fits agencies, consultancies, law and accounting practices, design studios and freelance specialists who bill hourly or per project, need client-level profitability, and want invoices to come straight out of timesheets. It fits teams of two to a few hundred that need approval workflows and per-person rates. It does not fit product companies with no billable hours, teams wanting free multi-seat tracking, or businesses needing an accounting system in the same tool.

Against FreshBooks, Harvest has stronger time capture and project budgeting while FreshBooks has deeper small-business accounting. Against Toggl Track and Clockify it costs more per seat but ties time directly to invoicing and payments. Against ClickUp or Asana it is narrower and better at the billing half of the job. Against Xero or QuickBooks it is complementary rather than competitive, since the usual setup is Harvest for time and invoices syncing into an accounting system for the books. For a service business whose margin depends on billing every hour worked, that focus is the reason Harvest has survived in a crowded market for two decades.