Five years ago, we created Harvest with two goals: to take the pain (and ugly) out of time tracking, and to create a powerful report that’s easy to read by normal people like you and me. What we came up with was a deceptively simple and visual interface on top of layers of complex data. You can quickly glance at a report and find out what projects are consuming the most of your business’s time, and click one button to see distribution of billable hours.
Over the years, the reporting tool became more sophisticated with even more data: billable amount, budget, invoiced vs uninvoiced hours, etc. Frankly, the original interface structure is not holding up to the amount of data points Harvest supports today.
Late last year, we set out to improve Reports. We started with a customer survey, and thanks to your participation, we received a ton of amazing feedback. We sifted through your comments and boiled everything down to a few major goals, providing us with a solid direction as we began our overhaul of Reports. We’ve been working hard on this project since January, and have internally nicknamed the project “Reports 2.0.” Here’s a preview:
We’ve broken up the goals into different milestones, and the initial release of Reports 2.0 is coming Tuesday, March 8th. Here are some of the highlights that you can expect:
Blazing fast report render – Our development team rebuilt the reporting engine from scratch, taking advantage of some of the cool, new things that came from Rails 3.
A spanking new Staff report – This is one of the highest requested reports from the survey, and we added a few bells and whistles to make it easier to scan the report.
Improved navigation and data layout – You’ll see a brief summary of important data points on top, and a clearer table structure makes it easier to digest numbers and details.
And there are many more improvements and surprises for you to uncover next week. Our design and development team have poured their hearts into this project and it’s a work of beauty. We can’t wait to share the fruits of our labor, and thank you all for your patience, support and feedback!
As we head into the new year, we recognize that tax season can be very difficult for businesses large and small. Face this tax season confidently by attending a live webinar and Q&A on how to use integrated finance apps that you can find on the Google Apps Marketplace. We’ll be hosting the webinar with Google and leading online financial apps Shoeboxed and Outright.
Harvest, along with Shoeboxed and Outright, will show you how Google Marketplace apps can help you organize your financial documents, streamline invoicing, and aggregate your accounting information. We’ll demonstrate how easy it is to seamlessly manage your accounts payables and receivables through Harvest, and how our contextual gadget in Gmail streamlines invoicing activities.
Please join us on Wednesday, January 26, 2011, 11:00 a.m. PST / 2:00 p.m. EST: Register now!
activeCollab is a popular project management & collaboration tool that you can set up on your own server or local network. Thanks to developer (and Harvest customer) Andreas Schempp, activeCollab users can now install a module which allows for time that is tracked in activeCollab to easily be submitted to Harvest.
Like Basecamp, time tracked with activeCollab is toward specific to-dos — making it difficult to run reports and generate an invoice with the time you’ve tracked. This module helps you convert those specific to-dos into higher level tasks in Harvest (where generating invoices and reports is a breeze). Here’s a quick demo video that shows how the Harvest & activeCollab integration works:
Harvest for your iPhone allows you to track time and expenses on-the-go, with or without a network connection. Start and stop the task timers or enter durations with notes while you’re on the road.
Need to submit receipts with your expenses? With Harvest for your iPhone, you can snap photos of your receipts and attach them to your expense entries in Harvest. It’s a great way to stay organized.
Hat tip to CrazedCoders (the creators of the Co-op iPhone companion, iCo-op) for helping us launch this app. Enjoy and let us know what you think!
We just released another small, but useful feature on your timesheet. On the Day View, after you click on “Edit” for a time entry, you’ll see a link “Change Date” on the lower right corner:
Click on it and you’ll see a date field for you to move the entry to another date.
Hope you find this new feature useful, and let us know if you have any questions for feedback.
Today we’re launching one of the most requested features for Harvest: the ability to record start and end time on timesheets.
Right now, when you record time in Harvest, you can only put in the duration of a task (such as “1 hour“). With this new feature, instead of typing in the duration, you can put in the start and end time of the task, such as “9am-12pm“. Harvest will then calculate the duration for you and record the start/end times, which are then shown on the timesheets, time reports, and invoices. Here’s a quick demo video of how it works:
To get this started, just go to Manage > Account Settings, click on the Edit Preferences button and turn the feature on under Timesheet timestamps. Once the timestamp feature is enabled, go back to the timesheet’s day view. In place of the duration field, you’ll now notice two new fields for start and end time. Here are some tips on how to use the new fields:
To start the timer: leave the fields blank, or type in the start time and leave the end time blank.
You can type in your time in the following format: 3, 3.15, or 3,15. Type in “a” or “p” for AM/PM. Or leave it blank and let Harvest figure it out.
Type in “.” (period) for the time now.
You can also set a preference for time format (12 hour vs 24 hour) on the Edit Preferences page under Account Settings.
Here are some limitations with the new feature that you should know:
Once you turn on the new feature, it will apply to the entire account. So everyone on your Harvest account will see the new start/end time fields.
Unfortunately, you will not be able to put in start/end time via any 3rd party tools (such as the Harvest Widget or iPhone app). You can still use those tools – and if you start a timer on your iPhone, Harvest will still record the start and end times. But if you add a duration on a widget or iPhone, there won’t be any timestamps saved.
The Week View will not be editable once you turn on timestamps.
We’re really excited about this new feature for Harvest Timesheets, and we hope you find it useful! Kudos to Barry for making this long-awaited feature live.
Thank you all for your feedback and support. Please let us know if you have any questions or feedback!
We just recently released a small, but useful new feature in Harvest: you can now copy over all rows from previous timesheet. Many of our customers work on similar tasks each day, and it’s a hassle to have to choose the same tasks and type in the same notes day in and day out. This new feature should make that process simpler.
On a new and fresh timesheet (the Day view), you will see a line that says, “Copy over all entries from a previous timesheet”. Click on the link, choose whether or not you want to copy over timesheet notes as well, and voila – a timesheet with all the rows from your most recent timesheet.
With a copied timesheet, you can quickly start timer and jump from task to task. On your next day, Harvest will remember what you chose and start the day with those same rows.
Any time you’d like to activate this – on a new day’s fresh timesheet, you’ll see a message on top that will let you clear all rows. Click on the link to clear all copied over rows, and Harvest will not duplicate timesheet again.
Hope you find this new feature useful, and please let us know if you have any questions or comments!
Last week we pushed through a major interface overhaul for our timesheet section. We’ve spent a lot of time thinking, designing, and tweaking the experience, flow, and interface elements on the timesheet – and we’re really excited about the latest improvements. Here’s a summary of what we have done, and why.
Overall Structure and New Skin
The new timesheet might look completely different from the old one, but we have maintained the overall architecture from the previous design. We experimented with different layouts that could have improved the experience and speed of the timesheet, but in the end, we decided to not introduce such a radical change for our current users.
The biggest change you’ll notice is the new silver, metallic skin. The old look was yellow and boxy – and completely out of date (it is three years old, after all). We wanted to sport a fresher, lighter look. We stripped out unnecessary lines and headers, rounded the corners, and increased the overall font size, so that you don’t need to squint your eyes to read the 11pt text. The add entry box is now part of the timesheet, so adding and editing entries shares the same look-and-feel.
Many of our customers depend on the Harvest Project Status reports to keep track of project progress, making sure that hours and costs are within budget. Today we’re excited to announce an improvement that will make the Project Status report even more useful: track project budget by project total costs.
To use this new feature, go to Manage > Projects, click on any of your billable projects. Under the Budget section, choose the option, Total project costs, and you will see a field for you to put in the estimated project costs. You’ll also notice a checkbox below for you to include project expenses or not – depending on your selection, Harvest will (or will not) include the expenses your team have accrued for the project as part of the total project costs. Make sure that you choose a billable option and put in an hourly rate. Harvest will then show you, visually, on the Project Status report, how your project is doing compared to the estimated costs.
Another small improvement to the project settings page: you can now put in a single project hourly rate. And of course, Harvest will take that hourly rate and calculate the costs on project reports, and will automatically fill in all the info on your invoices.
We hope you find these new improvements useful, and thank you for supporting Harvest! Please let us know if you have any questions, feedback or suggestions.
Published March 2nd, 2011 by Shawn Liu 
