Table of Contents

What is Harvest?

Harvest is a time tracking and invoicing platform for service teams that need simple timers, budget monitoring, and client billing in one place. It focuses on collecting accurate time and expense data, turning those records into invoices, and producing reports that help managers measure utilization and project profitability.

Harvest competes with dedicated time tracking tools and broader accounting platforms. Compared with Toggl Track, Harvest emphasizes integrated invoicing and billing alongside tracking rather than only task-level time capture. Compared with QuickBooks Time, Harvest provides more streamlined project reports and built-in invoicing that link directly to tracked hours without requiring a separate accounting subscription.

All of this makes Harvest particularly well suited to agencies, consultancies, legal firms, and small professional services teams that need both accurate time capture and straightforward client billing. It does time tracking, billing, and basic project financial reporting well, and is aimed at teams that value simplicity and clear project-level insights.

How Harvest Works

Users start work with a one-click timer in the web app, desktop client, or mobile apps and assign each entry to a client, project, and task. Timers can be paused and resumed, entries edited later, and subtle reminders prompt team members to record time if they forget.

Project budgets can be set as hourly or fixed fees; Harvest tracks progress against those budgets and sends alerts when a project nears its threshold. Tracked time and billable expenses are collected into invoices that can be previewed and emailed to clients, and clients can pay directly from the invoice when payment integrations are enabled.

Reporting in Harvest aggregates time by person, project, client, task, and date range, making it possible to analyze utilization, billable rates, and profitability. Integration points with accounting and project tools let teams keep existing workflows while adding reliable time and billing data into those systems.