Time tracking that connects directly to invoicing, with project budget alerts and expense tracking for hourly freelancers.
Harvest's core value proposition is that tracked time flows directly into invoices without manual data entry. You track hours against a project, and when it's time to invoice, Harvest pulls those hours into an invoice automatically. You review, adjust if needed, and send. For hourly freelancers who bill weekly or monthly, this removes the most tedious part of the invoicing process — calculating hours from a spreadsheet or time tracker export and entering them into an invoice template.
Each project in Harvest can have a budget — either in hours or in dollars. As you track time, Harvest shows you how much of the budget has been used and alerts you when you're approaching the limit. This is genuinely useful for fixed-price projects where you've estimated a certain number of hours. If you're at 80% of your estimated hours with 50% of the work done, you know early enough to have a conversation with the client rather than discovering the overrun at the end.
Harvest lets you log expenses against projects — software subscriptions, travel costs, contractor fees, or any other project-related cost. These expenses can be included in client invoices, either at cost or with a markup. For freelancers who pass through expenses to clients, having expenses and time in the same tool simplifies the invoicing process significantly.
Harvest integrates with Asana, Trello, Basecamp, and several other project management tools. The integrations add a timer button to tasks in those tools, similar to Toggl's browser extension. If you already use one of these tools for task management, the Harvest integration means you can track time without switching to a separate app. The Stripe and PayPal integrations allow clients to pay invoices online directly from the invoice email.
The free plan is limited to one seat and two active projects. For a freelancer with more than two active clients, this is a significant constraint. The paid plan at $12/month per seat removes the project limit and adds more detailed reporting. The free tier is useful for testing the workflow or for freelancers with a very small number of active projects at any given time.
Harvest is best suited for freelancers who bill hourly and have multiple active projects simultaneously. The time-to-invoice workflow saves the most time when you're tracking hours across several clients and generating invoices regularly. For project-based freelancers who bill a fixed amount per project, the time tracking is still useful for internal estimation, but the invoicing integration is less central to the value.