The HARVEST Blog

After months of hard work, we are thrilled to finally unveil the new Harvest Timesheet.

This new timesheet is a giant step forward from the previous version. The interface is redesigned from the ground up. We sweated over every pixel and interaction, down to the timer animation on the “Stop” button. The codebase has been rewritten from scratch, and the new timesheet now has a stronger and more reliable engine that will serve us well for years to come. We think you’re going to be pleased with the resulting product – a faster, simpler, smoother, and more powerful new Harvest Timesheet:

Continue Reading …

A few weeks ago after lunch, Matt and Paul started talking about the fact that October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. They wondered if there was something that Harvest could do to support the cause. As others joined in the conversation, it became obvious that almost everyone in the office had been impacted by breast cancer in one way or another. We decided to make something happen.

This month Harvest is donating $10,000 to The Breast Cancer Research Foundation® (BCRF). We decided on BCRF because 91 cents of every dollar spent by the organization goes directly towards breast cancer research and awareness programs. This is an impressive statistic for such a large organization; one we can get behind.

But this isn’t about the money. What we really care about here is awareness. With that in mind, we’re letting our customers change their Harvest color scheme to pink during the month of October (company admins will see a message on their dashboard). We hope that seeing the pink navigation bar will encourage you to ensure that all the people in your life follow the appropriate protocol for early detection.

We hope that during this month you will take some time to think about your health and how you can detect and prevent all forms of cancer.

Basecamp is a popular web-based project management application by 37signals which we’ve been using since 2006. Earlier this year, 37signals launched an all new version that is fast, simple and powerful. For some users of the new Basecamp, there was only one thing missing: the ability to track time.

While Harvest has long supported the previous version of Basecamp (aka Basecamp Classic) with an integration that synced projects and people, we heard from many customers that they needed just a little more — they needed to track time on specific to-dos. With that in mind, we decided to rethink our approach to the integration.

Today, we’re very excited to announce a seamless way to track time in Basecamp. Unlike most integrations which can feel disjointed, we really mean it when we say seamless. With the help of the official Harvest Chrome Extension, you can now track time for your to-dos right inside Basecamp. To see what we mean, take a look at the video below.

With Harvest for Basecamp, you can do your project management and collaboration in Basecamp, and your time tracking, reporting and invoicing in Harvest.

To get started with Harvest for Basecamp, simply do the following:

• Use the Google Chrome web browser (it’s a great browser and it’s free)
• Install the Harvest Chrome Extension
• Log into Basecamp, find a to-do and start tracking time.

That’s it! We hope you enjoy this new integration and thanks for using Harvest.

Track time the modern way. Try Harvest for free today. 

There’s a brand new Harvest Timesheet coming your way next week. It’s faster, simpler, roomier, and better designed. Here’s a quick video demo of the new day view:

The new timesheet is completely re-written and re-imagined, driven by one goal: to make it faster and easier to track time.

From our customer research, we found that most people love the simplicity of our current timesheet. But there are a few fundamental problems: the project and task selectors can get long and make it hard to find things once you have too many projects, the timesheet becomes “stale” if you leave it open in your browser without manually refreshing, and if you use the day view (like most of us here), it’s a hassle to review your progress for the week. The new timesheet design solves these problems, and we believe you will be pleased with the new experience.

From a technical standpoint, the new timesheet is a necessary fresh start for our team. The code behind the current timesheet has served us well for the past six years, but it has become difficult to maintain and nearly impossible to enhance. We applied everything we learned from our new mobile timesheet to create fast, approachable code. The experience for customers is markedly improved, and the robustness of the code will allow future improvements to be delivered much more quickly.

We cannot wait to show you the fruits of our labor next week. We believe you are going to love how snappy everything feels, and we hope the faster timesheet means that you can spend less time tracking time, and more time on the important things.

9/26 Update: A couple of notes to clear up some confusion:

• There will be a new timesheet week view. The new week view has been redesigned and rewritten from scratch, and will be just as fast and easy as the new day view.
• Timestamps will be supported. The new timesheet is not taking away any feature you’ve grown used to. For those who prefer to track time based on start and end times, not only will you be able to continue doing so, we have made a couple of small but useful improvements to the interaction.

When I joined Harvest a little more than a year ago, I was really excited about the work we do here. However, there was one project in particular that I really wanted to get involved in – WalkaboutNYC. The event had 2 successful runs prior to my joining Harvest, and I was very excited to work with Karen (WalkaboutNYC’s organizer), Danny, and  Shawn to see if we could blow it out.

The idea that kept rising to the top of the list for all of us was to run another event that was built around Harvest’s customers. The original WalkaboutNYC features Harvest’s peers in the NYC technology ecosystem. This new event would be for and about the Creative Agencies that we are proud to have as our customers.

All that background is to share how excited we all are that this vision has become a reality. On October 19th, 2012 we will be running the first ever WalkaboutNYC Agency Edition. We also have a brand spanking new site to celebrate this event.

The 17 companies who have bravely volunteered to open themselves up to curious New Yorkers on October 19th are paving the way for what we hope will be an annual tradition. If you are in NYC on 10/19 and run an agency that you’d like to have featured in this year’s WalkaboutNYC, please contact us. If you’re just curious how these agencies work and would like to meet the folks behind the scenes, RSVP today.

All records in Harvest — clients, projects, tasks and people — can be either deleted or archived. In this post, I’ll explain the difference between deleting and archiving.

Deleting

Before a record in Harvest has any time or expenses tracked against it, it can easily be deleted by clicking the Delete link for the record under its profile in the Manage section of Harvest.

Archiving

Once a record has time or expenses tracked against it, then the Delete link for that record changes to an Archive link. Archiving a record preserves the time and expense entries for that record in your reports, but also allows you to get it out of the way when it’s no longer required.

When a record in Harvest is archived, the record moves from its Manage screen to an archived list. For example, when archiving a project, that project will be removed from the Manage > Projects screen and can be reactivated by clicking the Manage Archived Projects link. This same process is used for clients, tasks and people.

Including archived items in reports

Even though a record in Harvest may be archived, you can still report on time and expense entries for that record without reactivating it. To do so, select the Include Archived Items In Filters option when creating a detailed report.

Archived users and your Harvest subscription

The cost of a Harvest subscription is calculated based on the number of active users in your account. You can have as many archived users in your account as required.

After you archive a user, you can adjust your subscription on the Account Settings screen, or you can invite a new user to fill the empty space in the subscription. This is especially useful for companies that have part-time or seasonal staff, because one user spot can be used for several people without increasing the cost of the subscription.

For more help with Harvest, be sure to check out our Getting Started info and help documentation at http://getharvest.com/help/.

Harvest has three types of invoices: standard, recurring and retainer. Each of them has separate functions, and each of them mean different things in different industries. In this post, I’ll explain how they were designed in Harvest.

Standard Invoices

Standard invoices are what you would expect: a straightforward invoice that you can send to your clients, and something that clients can use to initiate an online payment. They can be created based on time and expenses or as free-form invoices.

Invoices based on time and expenses will import time and expenses from billable projects according to the client and timeframe that you specify. Free-form invoices do not pull in any time and expenses, so you can create an invoice from scratch.

Recurring Invoices

Recurring invoices are free-form invoices that are created on the interval that you specify — daily, weekly, quarterly or yearly. You have the option to have the recurring invoice be automatically sent to the client or to be saved as a draft that you can review.

Recurring invoices are best used for products or services that are billed cyclically (weekly, monthly, etc) and when those products and services do not need a reconciliation against a number of hours worked. Things like general consulting and web hosting would be good candidates for recurring invoices.

Retainer invoices

When a client pays for part of a project in advance and those funds have to later be reconciled against the work that has been done, then it’s best to use a retainer invoice to start the project.

Once a funded retainer is recorded in Harvest, when a project or phase of a project is complete, you can create a standard invoice and Harvest will give you the option to draw from the retainer to pay for all or part of the standard invoice.

If the standard invoice exceeds the retainer funds available, then the balance will be reflected on the invoice that you can then send to the client. If the retainer funds exceed the amount of the invoice, then the difference will be stored on the retainer and can be applied to a future invoice.

Recurring or retainer?

If payment is required on a regular and repeated basis for products and services, then use a recurring invoice in Harvest. If a reconciliation is required between an advance payment and the work that is subsequently done on a project, then use a Harvest retainer.

For more help with Harvest, be sure to check out our Getting Started info and other help documentation at http://getharvest.com/help/.

Earlier this year, we decided to provide internships to students who were interested in working in a technology company like ours. We saw it as a way for us to give back to the next generation of technologists and as a way for us to mentor bright young minds. We wanted to show them another option to use their craft beyond the usual campus tech-related recruiters like large businesses, consulting firms and banking institutions.

Our goal was to provide a program where interns would have a real-world problem solving experience. They’d learn how to work alongside our full-time team and gain exposure to the real challenges we’re solving.

In May, computer science major Anthony Chen joined us in New York. In August, Anthony put together a summary of his experience in the Harvest Academy, an internal blog where we share learnings and ideas. With Anthony’s gracious permission to repost, here’s what he had to say:

Continue Reading …

Today we’re excited to launch a new simple navigation. This new navigation is only one part of a larger effort to make Harvest better for tablets and touch devices, and clear up some usability issues. We’re launching this in preparation for a couple of big updates coming this Fall.

The new navigation is designed with larger click/tap areas, which make it easier to get around within Harvest. The new look is visually simpler and out of the way, allowing you to focus on the important bits below. It also introduces a new Profile Menu (click your profile photo in the upper-right of the new navigation) which offers quick access to your profile, weekly time report, and sign out. Tip: Add a profile photo if you haven’t already.

Note to Administrators: A common support question we hear is where an administrator can change their Account Settings. We’ve made now made Account Settings easier to get to by moving it from under the Manage tab to its new home: the Profile Menu.

Along with the visual updates, the code behind the navigation is much cleaner and lighter. We’re really excited to launch this upgrade. Enjoy, and let us know what you think.

Harvest has a unique and flexible way of creating invoice IDs that can suit a wide range of businesses. Here’s a brief description of how invoice IDs work in Harvest and how you can set them up to best suit your business.

When you create a new invoice in Harvest, Harvest will suggest a new invoice ID based on the other IDs that have come before it. The suggested invoice ID can be edited during invoice creation or left as suggested. Once a draft invoice has been saved, the invoice ID is assigned to that invoice and removed as a possibility for all other invoices.

If you just leave them alone

By default, Harvest invoice IDs start at 1 and then auto-increment upward on each subsequent invoice, filling in any blanks on the way.

For example, if you’ve created ten invoices in Harvest, the default invoice IDs will be #1 through #10. If you delete #6, then the next invoice you create will be assigned ID #6 (to fill in the space created by the deletion), and the following ID would be #11.

If you want invoice IDs sorted by year

Some of our customers like to include the current year into the invoice ID. Earlier this year, we added something to help with that.

Previously Harvest would only increment the last digit in the ID, but starting in 2012, if you prepend “2012-” to your invoice ID, then on January 1st, 2013, Harvest knows to change that to “2013-”.

For example, if you have an invoice ID series that goes:

• 2012-10765;
• 2012-10766;
• 2012-10767;

…then on January 1st, 2013, the next available invoice ID will be 2013-10768.

If you want to add a client ID within an invoice ID

A few of our customers like to incorporate a client ID into the invoice ID in order to make the series of IDs unique to a customer. You can do that by prepending the client ID to the invoice ID.

For example, for two clients (ABC Company and DEF Design), you can create two invoice ID series that start with “ABC-1001″ and “DEF-1001″ respectively. Harvest will recognize that those are client-specific ID patterns and increment them separately when a new invoice is created for either company.

If you want to include both the year and a client ID

This can also be done, but in order for Harvest to correctly increment the invoices, the identifiers need to be in the following order: YEAR-CLIENT-INVOICE.

For example, “2012-ABC-1001″ and “2012-DEF-1001″ will create two distinct series of invoice IDs that increment separately by both calendar year and invoice ID. On January 1st, 2013, the next available invoice IDs would be “2013-ABC-1002″ and “2013-DEF-1002″ respectively.

Going forward

Harvest has incredibly flexible invoice IDs that give you a wide range of possibilities. Hopefully this has helped explain how they work and how best you can configure them to suit your business.

For more help with Harvest, be sure to check out our Getting Started info and help documentation at http://getharvest.com/help/.