Farmers once relied on the changing seasons and intuition to know when their crops were ready for harvest. They toiled from dawn till dusk, working tirelessly to bring in the bounty before it spoiled or was devoured by pests. 

Today's project managers face different conditions, but similar challenges; they need to monitor progress and resources, ensuring that tasks are completed on time and within budget.

Modern-day project managers have an array of tools at their disposal to help them make informed decisions about when and how to reap the fruits of their labor. Among these digital aids are Harvest and Toggl – two robust project management software solutions designed specifically for tracking time spent on tasks.

As a guiding hand leading your team toward success, you may be left wondering: Which tool will yield bountiful results without leaving anyone in the dust?

To answer this question, we'll dive deep into an in-depth comparison between Harvest vs. Toggl – so you can make an informed decision that leads your projects toward timely completion while keeping everyone engaged along the way.

Overview of Harvest and Toggl

Below, we’ll present a brief overview of the two project management software options - Harvest and Toggl - to give you an idea of what each platform brings to the table in terms of features, services, and user experience.

Harvest: Key Features and Benefits

Our very own time tracking tool – Harvest – has helped various teams, ranging from small businesses to large enterprises, streamline their time tracking and task management processes. Its primary capabilities include:

  • Time tracking
  • Expense management
  • Invoicing and billing
  • Reporting and analytics

Harvest provides seamless integration with popular third-party applications, including Asana, Trello, Slack, and many others, to ensure a smooth and efficient collaboration experience for users.

Toggl: Key Features and Benefits

Founded in 2007, Toggl has quickly gained a reputation as a reliable time tracking and project management software provider. The platform equips clients with sophisticated tools for:

  • Time tracking
  • Project management
  • Employee monitoring
  • Reporting and analytics

Much like Harvest, Toggl offers extensive integration with other popular applications, such as Google Calendar, Asana, and GitHub. This enables users to optimize their workflows and improve overall productivity.

Maximizing Team Productivity: A Comparison of Harvest and Toggl

In today's fast-paced work environment, optimizing team productivity is crucial. With many businesses implementing work-from-home policies, project managers are actively seeking tools to help maximize their teams' efficiency. 

Two popular time-tracking and productivity tools, Harvest and Toggl, have effectively addressed this demand. In this section, we will provide an in-depth analysis of the productivity features offered by both Harvest and Toggl to help you make an informed decision.

Team Productivity Features in Harvest

To comprehend and optimize team performance, it is essential to have clear visibility into the hours each team member has contributed to various projects. Harvest offers this functionality, presenting a detailed analysis of time spent on different tasks or projects by individual team members. This, in turn, allows project leaders to monitor work distribution and identify any inefficiencies.

Harvest's detailed reporting provides actionable data, enabling project leaders to gain valuable insights into areas that require improvement. The analysis further empowers project managers to allocate resources more accurately and effectively. This continuous feedback loop optimizes productivity and helps project leaders make informed decisions on resource allocation, leading to enhanced efficiency and project success.

Team Productivity Features in Toggl

Toggl shares a similar functionality with Harvest when it comes to providing insights into team members' hours. As project leaders aim to ensure optimal resource allocation, Toggl offers a comprehensive overview of the hours contributed by individual team members to various tasks and projects.

Moreover, Toggl's reporting feature provides detailed data about the time spent on tasks, projects, and clients, which proves essential for project leaders striving to make better decisions. By capitalizing on these informed insights, leaders can identify areas of improvement and effectively allocate resources to drive team productivity and achieve successful project outcomes.

Both Harvest and Toggl offer robust features aimed at increasing team productivity by providing detailed insights into individual team members' work hours and actionable data for guiding optimal resource allocation. By assessing the specific needs and preferences of your organization, you can choose the right tool to efficiently streamline and enhance your team's productivity.

Harvest Reporting: A Closer Look

Harvest offers a wide range of graphical and visual reports that help users gain a better understanding of project progress, time allocation, and overall efficiency. These reports allow team members and project managers to quickly determine where imbalances or bottlenecks may lie, ultimately improving project management decisions.

To ensure timely project delivery, it's crucial to have detailed insights into project performance. Harvest provides users with extensive information about ongoing projects, enabling adjustments to estimates, deadlines, and resources based on data-driven information. This allows for course corrections and helps ensure that project requirements are met without unnecessary delays or setbacks.

In-Depth Look at Toggl Reporting

Similar to Harvest, Toggl's reporting features also include a wide array of graphical and visual reports, making it easy for users to understand and analyze project performance. The visual reports provide a quick overview of a project's status and help identify areas that may need attention or improvement.

Toggl offers users access to in-depth information on project performance, budgets, estimates, and individual team member contributions. This enhanced transparency helps project managers make more informed decisions, ensuring the best use of resources and increased project efficiency.

Toggl stands out with a distinctive feature that alerts users when their project estimates might not be accurate, giving them the opportunity to address any discrepancies and adjust their plans accordingly. With a project estimate alert system, Toggl helps ensure that projects stay on track, meet their deadlines, and remain within their designated budgets.

Comparing Invoicing and Payments between Harvest & Toggl

In this section, we will delve into the invoicing and payment features of the two popular time-tracking and productivity tools - Harvest and Toggl. Both platforms offer an array of features to help users manage their invoicing and payment needs effectively. 

Comprehensive Invoicing and Payment Features of Harvest

Harvest provides users with extensive invoicing capabilities. Here are some of the key invoicing features offered by Harvest:

Versatile invoicing options

Harvest allows users to create invoices based on various pricing models, including hourly rates for time-based billing, fixed project fees for one-time projects or milestone-based contracts, and retainer-based pricing for ongoing or long-term client relationships.

Smooth integration with payment platforms

Harvest's invoicing system works well with widely-used payment platforms such as PayPal and Stripe, enabling clients to pay invoices online without hassle. This built-in flexibility makes the payment collection process more efficient and user-friendly.

Noteworthy Invoicing and Payment Features of Toggl

Toggl quite effectively simplifies the invoicing and payment process for users. Some of the key invoicing features offered by Toggl are:

Easy separation of billable and non-billable hours

Toggl provides an easy and intuitive way for users to separate billable hours from non-billable hours, ensuring accurate invoicing and preventing confusion about the services rendered.

Simplified invoicing process

Toggl's invoicing process is designed to be straightforward and easy to navigate, allowing users to create and send invoices to clients without complications. This streamlined approach to invoicing ensures that users don’t feel overwhelmed with the tedious aspects of billing and supports a smooth billing experience.

Both Harvest and Toggl provide valuable invoicing and payment features to help freelancers, contractors, and businesses manage their financial transactions efficiently. 

While Harvest offers more extensive invoicing options and seamless integration with popular payment gateways, Toggl excels at simplifying the invoicing process and separating billable from non-billable hours. 

Harvest's Pricing Plans

Harvest offers two main pricing plans to cater to a range of users:

Harvest Free Plan

  • Cost: This plan is completely free.
  • Included features: The free plan includes access for 1 user (seat), allows for 2 active projects, and includes basic time tracking capabilities.
  • Best for: Freelancers, solo professionals, or those just getting started with time tracking for their businesses.

Harvest Paid Plan

  • Cost: The paid plan starts at $10.80 per seat per month (billed annually). Alternatively, it's available for $12.00 per seat per month when billed monthly.
  • Included features: With the paid plan, users receive unlimited projects, team schedules, and other advanced features like invoicing and advanced reporting.
  • Best for: Growing teams that require more extensive features and flexibility for managing their time tracking and projects.

Toggl's Pricing Plans

Toggl offers a more tiered pricing structure, with three main plans to choose from:

Toggl Free Plan

  • Cost: Like with Harvest, this plan is also free to use.
  • Included features: The free plan can accommodate up to 5 users, offers basic time tracking tools, and allows for adding tags to better categorize time entries.
  • Best for: Small teams that want to test out the platform for basic time tracking without committing to a subscription.

Toggl Starter Plan

  • Cost: The Starter plan is priced at $9 per user per month (billed annually) or $10 per user per month (billed monthly).
  • Included features: In addition to what is offered in the free plan, the Starter plan provides advanced reporting, project estimates, additional integrations, and billable rates.
  • Best for: Small to medium-sized teams that require more advanced reporting and project management tools, as well as additional customization options.

Toggl Premium Plan

  • Cost: Toggl's Premium plan comes in at $18 per user per month if billed annually, or $20 per user per month if billed monthly.
  • Included features: The Premium plan offers team management tools, priority support, advanced customization options, time audits, and more, on top of the features provided in the Starter plan.
  • Best for: Larger or rapidly growing organizations that need the most comprehensive features to manage their teams and projects efficiently.

Both Harvest and Toggl offer solutions tailored to a range of users and business sizes. The best choice for you ultimately depends on your specific needs, budget, and required features.

Integrations and Compatibility

In today's connected world, it is essential for time-tracking software to seamlessly integrate with other tools and platforms, thereby streamlining the workflow and increasing overall efficiency. In this section, we will discuss the integrations and compatibility of two popular time tracking tools, Harvest and Toggl.

Harvest Integrations

Harvest integrates with various productivity tools and project management applications, enabling teams to track time efficiently and manage invoicing with ease. Some of the most popular Harvest integrations include:

  • Asana: Facilitating easy time-tracking on tasks within Asana, providing insights into how much time is being spent on projects, and promoting effective time management.
  • Basecamp: Integrating with Basecamp, Harvest allows users to track time for to-dos and estimate the completion of a project based on time usage.
  • QuickBooks: Streamlining the invoicing process by providing seamless synchronization between Harvest and QuickBooks, making financial management more efficient.
  • Slack: Enabling users to quickly log their hours, start and stop timers, and receive notifications in Slack, ensuring timely project updates and streamlined communication.
  • Trello: Offering the ability to log and estimate time for Trello cards, enhancing productivity and control over project management.
  • Zapier: Providing robust integration between Harvest and various tools through Zapier, a platform that connects different apps for improved workflows and productivity.

Toggl Integrations

Similar to Harvest, Toggl offers a broad range of integrations with popular tools and platforms, easing the process of measuring time usage and improving overall efficiency. Some of the most common Toggl integrations include:

  • Asana: Allowing users to track and visualize time spent on Asana tasks, improving time management within project-oriented workflows.
  • Basecamp: Integrating with Basecamp, Toggl enables users to track time spent on to-dos, ensuring accurate project estimations.
  • Google Calendar: Offering seamless time-tracking and scheduling through integration with Google Calendar, which simplifies time management and enhances productivity.
  • JIRA: Providing efficient tracking of time on JIRA issues and delivering insights into time used for various tasks, enabling users to make informed decisions.
  • Trello: Enabling the addition of Toggl timers directly to Trello cards, which allows for easy time-tracking and improved project management.
  • Zapier: Facilitating connections between Toggl and numerous other apps through the Zapier platform, enhancing the efficiency of workflows and overall productivity.

Both Harvest and Toggl offer notable integrations that streamline the tracking of time usage and improve workflow efficiency. By integrating with popular tools and platforms, these time-tracking tools help users make informed decisions and optimize their productivity.

The Verdict

In the ever-competitive world of project management, both Harvest and Toggl have risen to the challenge by offering a plethora of features tailored to meet specific needs. Harvest shines with its seamless integrations, versatile invoicing options, and extensive reporting capabilities that empower project leaders to make well-informed decisions. Toggl, on the other hand, excels in simplifying the invoicing process while providing valuable insights into team productivity and time allocation.

While each tool boasts unique strengths, it's ultimately up to you as a modern-day farmer tending your digital crops to decide which solution will best suit your needs. However, if we had to pick one tool for timely completion while keeping everyone engaged along the way, we'd tip our hat towards Harvest as the more comprehensive and seamless option.

Ready for bountiful results without leaving anyone in the dust? Give Harvest a try – it’s completely free for 30 days.