A Review of our Time Tracker Software

I work at a small, but quickly growing consulting startup. At first, time-tracking was a significant pain for me and the owner. I spent a lot of thought trying to automate my personal time-tracking and had decent success using FogBugz and Paymo. However, no matter what I tried, I was still required to spend about 3 hours a month (1.5 hours per billing period) exporting my time records into an acceptable MS Excel format to be given to the client. I understand that there was even more work done by the owner, as he made sure every consultant’s format was the same, copy-and-pasted records into one huge spreadsheet, and invoiced the client based on this report. What a mess! That was time that should have been spent on client work, advancing the projects to which we were assigned and making more money in the process. Thankfully, after some brainstorming and research, our company standardized on Harvest for time tracking.

What we wanted was an affordable, centralized solution that could track time and enable invoicing for all employees at the company. Harvest has delivered even more than we thought we needed! Included with our monthly payment, we receive a mobile app, API use, and expense tracking.

 

Design

One thing I like about Harvest is that it is definitely a modern-looking website that is continually being updated. The site is also intuitive and visually appealing. It was not long before we learned how to make an invoice online.

 

Usefulness

Simply put, Harvest saves us time. What used to take me 90 minutes at the end of each billing period now takes me 5. It’s also very easy to manage and create invoices. I think it’s fair to say it’s worth the money considering we keep paying the fee every month.

In addition to its advertised features, online time tracking provides insight and transparency into key aspects of our business:

• Employees’ work habits
• Progress of projects and budgets
• Real-time snapshots of what work is currently being performed

 

The Time Tracker App

Members of our team have used the Harvest Time Tracking app for Android and iPhone. It is pure icing on the cake. It has its limitations but it saves me a lot of time in 2 particular use cases.

Expense Tracking

I can easily keep my expenses organized with this app. The best feature is the ability to add expenses and to take a picture of any receipt as soon as I receive it. By making it so simple, it encourages the habit of inputting expenses almost instantaneously, reducing the likelihood of losing track of a receipt or forgetting about a meal. It can be humorous to see a few members of our team out to eat on a business trip as we all take out our phones to take pictures of our separate receipts.

Stopping a Running Timer

Simply explained, the smartphone app gives me mobile access to my online time sheet. This is especially useful if I leave the office to run an errand or go home for the day but absent-mindedly leave my timer running. I can quickly take out my phone, open the app, and stop the running timer. It syncs with the Harvest server soon after.

 

The iPhone app does have some limitations. The key item I’d like to see improved is the ability to edit time entries (which is possible on the website). As explained in my most common use case above, if I leave a timer running I might remember to stop it while I’m on the go. It would be nice to be able to edit the time entry to change the end time to be earlier (when I actually stopped working). As it is now, I have to remember to go back and change that time entry the next time I’m in front of my computer.

 

API

I’m not yet a connoisseur of web APIs, but Harvest seems to have a good one as far as I’m concerned. As an experiment, I wrote a simple website in just a few hours to display whether or not I am working at any given moment.

 

Integrations

I haven’t yet had the need for many of these but it is encouraging that Harvest time tracking integrates with many common software-as-a-service tools such as InDinero, Twitter, ZenDesk, and HighRise.

 

Summary

It should come as no surprise that I consider Harvest to be some of the best small business software I’ve used. It runs the core of our business and draws few complaints. It’s especially easy to bring on new consultants, requiring almost zero training. In that case we typically say something like “just use Harvest for time tracking.” And they do…