Harvest

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.