A new, useful feature for expenses has been launched today: you can now specify unit price and unit name for each expense category.  If you specify unit pricing, remember to give it a unit name (or it won’t work); and once you add the category, you can track it under Timesheets > Expenses, where you can record how many units you need to track – and Harvest will do the calculation for you.

This is just one of many updates we plan to bring to Expense tracking.  What other changes and improvements would help you and your team manage expenses?

If you are working or plan on working with the Harvest API and Ruby, we have some great news. An open-sourced Harvest API Ruby wrapper is now available thanks to the kind folks at Alexander Interactive.  This first release of the API wrapper and supports most of the methods in our API.  A big thanks to Kyle Banker at Ai for sharing this with us! If you’re a developer working with the Harvest API, please feel free to check out (or contribute) to this ongoing project.

We wanted to say ‘Hello’ to all our friends and Twitter followers and let you know that we’ve improved the integration between Harvest and Twitter, and  you are now able to start a timer remotely through Twitter.

It’s simple to stop and start a timer, as well as log expenses from anywhere by texting direct message commands to Harvest through Twitter. You can read all about how this works on our Harvest Twitter page. Now you can access Harvest anywhere you can send a text. We’re always looking to hear your ideas and feedback, so send us a tweet or an email and let us know how you are using Harvest.

We’ve added a bunch of new features to Harvest, right before we welcome the new year:

• Estimate by people hours. It works just like estimate by task hours, but you can now put in estimated hours by each person on each project.
• Duplicate invoice. On each invoice, you can now duplicate the invoice by clicking on the button More Actions > Duplicate.
• Quarterly recurring invoice. We added an option to send out recurring invoices each quarter.
• Optional project notes. By default, project notes are only shown to administrators on your account.  You can change that permission, so that project managers can also see the notes.  To do that, go to Manage > Account Settings.  Look under Preferences and you can edit the setting there.
• Department for people. You’ll find an extra field under Manage > People.  You can put in a department for each person, and then under Reports > Detailed Reports you can run reports for each department (note: this is only for Business Plan accounts).

Hope you find the new updates useful!

Here at Harvest, our goal is to help our customers track and organize their business’s time and money.  In line with this goal, we’ll be releasing a new Account Overview screen next week.  This screen allows our customers to see, at-a-glance, how much time has been logged recently, the amount of money collected via invoicing, how active projects are tracking against project estimates, and any bits about Harvest we may have published to this blog. And to get more information on any of the statistics on this screen, one simply clicks to drill down for more information.

We think the Account Overview screen will be a great way for individuals and teams to stay on top of their hours, project progress and invoices.  Look for this new screen in all account next week!

Note: Screenshot shows the Account Overview screen as seen by an administrator.  Project managers and normal users see information pertaining to their assigned projects and time only.

Update 6 Aug, 2008 – Account Overview is now available for all accounts!  Just click on the Reports tab.

Our iPhone app has been updated! Get the newest version →

The iPhone is a revolutionary mobile device, but more than just a great consumer product, it’s also an increasingly useful tool for professionals and businesses.    Today, we’re excited to announce Harvest’s contribution to the iPhone user’s productivity with an optimized time and expense tracking experience for your iPhone.

All the handiest features of Harvest are now available from your iPhone:

• Enter time and expense entries
• Track time in real-time using Harvest Timers.  Switch between tasks with one click.
• Optimized for the EDGE network, so Harvest is fast and responsive even when you’re not on a Wi-fi connection.
• Shortcut to the main Harvest site for your reporting and invoicing needs

The iPhone interface is available for all plans from FREE to Business.  To use it, just point your iPhone’s Safari to your Harvest account’s URL (subdomain.harvestapp.com), and add it to your home screen for a special Harvest icon.

Special thanks to Brian and Barry on our team for making the iPhone goodness happen.  Enjoy and let us know what you think!

Don’t have a Harvest account yet?  Sign up for free.

Learn more about Harvest for the iPhone.

As you may already know, you can use Twitter to send Harvest your expenses and stop a timer you’ve accidentally left running, all from the convenience of your phone, IM, or other Twitter interfaces. Recently, we’ve added a new feature so you can also enter time via Twitter. Check out the updated Twitter page for more details!

And if you’re on Twitter, be sure to follow Harvest on Twitter for behind-the-scene updates!

We’ve released some major additions to the Harvest API this morning: you can now access, add, or update your expenses and invoices via the API. Check out the latest documentation for more details.

On a related note, if you are working with the Harvest API in Ruby, you may want to take a look at Brian Cooke’s Ruby wrapper for Harvest. Thanks for creating a convenient Ruby wrapper for Harvest, Brian!

If you’re working on projects with the Harvest API, we’d love to hear about it!

We’re proud to release an integration with the popular messaging service, Twitter. You can now log expenses and stop running timers on Harvest while on the go right from your mobile phone via Twitter.

Read about the Harvest and Twitter integration.

If you’re already a Twitter user, follow Harvest on Twitter for off the cuff updates from Harvest headquarters.

Many of our users have been asking for a way to not only track their hours, but to track work-related expenses – such as materials, travel, and other miscellaneous expenses are incurred on the job. It’s out pleasure to say that this is now possible in Harvest!

Tracking Expenses

You can enter your expenses under Timesheet > Expenses. Each expense must be assigned to a date, a project, and a category. All expenses are tracked based on the currency for your company (which you can change via Manage > Account details), except for mileage, which you can track either as miles or kilometers.

Your expenses are grouped together by weeks – like your time. Timesheets are now a combination of time and expenses, so when you submit a timesheet, you are submitting both your hours and expenses for the week.

Manage Expense Categories

Managing the expense categories is simple. You simply go to Manage > Expenses. You’ll find a default set of categories that we have created for your account. Simply click on the row of the category that you’d like to edit or remove, and you’ll be presented with the form and options. Once you have logged expenses for a particular category, you will not be able to remove the category for data consistency reasons (but you can rename it).

Expenses Report

So now that you have tracked all the expenses, how do you run a report on them? Simply go to Reports > Expenses, and you’ll see a filter form to generate any kind of report you need – you can filter expenses by timeframe, client, project, person or category.

We hope you find the new expense tracking feature useful! Please let us know of any suggestions or feedback that you might have.