Harvest
Time Tracking
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Comprehensive Billable Hours Calculator

Harvest is a comprehensive tool for tracking and calculating billable hours, ensuring no revenue is lost due to inaccurate timekeeping.

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What should you charge per hour?

Most freelancers and consultants dramatically undercharge. This calculator accounts for what most people miss: non-billable time, taxes, and overhead.

$
Accounting for vacation, holidays, sick days
60%
Most freelancers can bill 50-70% of their time. The rest goes to admin, marketing, proposals, and learning.
$
Software, insurance, equipment, accounting, taxes beyond income tax, etc.
Your break-even rate $0
Recommended rate (+20% buffer) $0
Billable hours per week 0h
Equivalent daily rate $0

Start tracking your billable hours

Walk through the entire flow below. Start a timer, check your reports, and create a real invoice — all in three clicks.

Go ahead — start tracking!

One click and you're timing. Try it right here: start a timer, add an entry, edit the details. This is exactly how it feels in Harvest.

  • One-click timer from browser, desktop & mobile
  • Works inside Jira, Asana, Trello, GitHub & 50+ tools
  • Duration or start/end — your call
  • Day, week & calendar views to stay on top of it all
  • Friendly reminders so no hour gets left behind
Acme Corp
Website Redesign
Homepage layout revisions
1:24:09
Content Strategy
Blog calendar planning
1:30:00
SEO Audit
Technical audit report
0:45:00
Brand Guidelines
Color system documentation
2:15:00
Logo Concepts
Initial sketches round 1
1:00:00
Today's total 6:54:09

Understanding Billable and Non-Billable Hours

Billable hours are crucial for any service-based business, representing the time you can invoice clients for work directly related to their projects. These hours are distinct from non-billable hours, which include essential internal tasks like administrative duties, training, and business development. A clear understanding of this distinction is vital, as failing to track billable hours accurately can result in significant revenue losses, up to $50,000 annually for some companies.

Billable hours are typically tracked in increments, such as the six-minute standard used in the legal industry. This practice ensures precise billing and client transparency. Harvest simplifies this process by allowing users to differentiate between billable and non-billable hours and track them in real time, ensuring accurate invoicing and streamlined operations.

Accurate Time Tracking: Why It Matters

Accurate time tracking is essential for maximizing revenue and maintaining client trust. Studies indicate that delaying time entry can significantly impact revenue, with potential losses of 10% if recorded at day's end and up to 50% if tracked weekly. Therefore, timely and precise logging of billable hours is crucial.

Harvest addresses this challenge with its one-click timers, allowing users to start and stop tracking time effortlessly. This automation reduces manual errors and captures all billable hours, ensuring no potential revenue is lost. By integrating with popular project management tools like Asana and Trello, Harvest further streamlines the time tracking process, making it an indispensable tool for professionals seeking to optimize their billing efficiency.

Maximizing Utilization and Profitability

Utilization rates are a key metric for assessing the efficiency of your team’s billable work. A typical target for professional services is a utilization rate of 70-75%, with agencies and consultancies often aiming higher, around 75-85%. Increasing utilization by just 10% can significantly impact a firm’s bottom line, potentially adding $20,800 in annual revenue per person for a consultant billing $100/hour.

Harvest offers detailed reports that help businesses analyze team utilization and profitability. These reports allow managers to identify areas for improvement and set realistic goals to increase billable hours. By providing insights into both billable and non-billable time, Harvest empowers businesses to optimize their operations and enhance profitability.

Integration and Automation for Seamless Operations

In today's fast-paced business environment, integrating time tracking with other tools is essential for efficient operations. Harvest integrates seamlessly with project management tools such as Jira, Slack, and GitHub, among others, allowing for streamlined time tracking and invoicing processes. This integration helps reduce the administrative burden and enhances accuracy in invoicing.

Furthermore, Harvest's automated time tracking features, like its one-click start/stop timers and real-time tracking capabilities, significantly reduce manual entry errors. This automation ensures that every billable hour is captured accurately, contributing to fair compensation and transparent client relationships. By leveraging these capabilities, businesses can focus more on delivering value and less on administrative tasks.

Calculate Billable Hours with Harvest

See how Harvest simplifies billable hours tracking with integrations and real-time insights. Automate your invoicing processes.

Harvest billable hours tracking interface

Comprehensive Billable Hours Calculator FAQs

  • Billable hours are those spent on tasks directly related to a client's project, eligible for invoicing. Non-billable hours include internal activities like administrative work and training, which aren't directly chargeable to a client. Understanding this distinction is crucial for accurate billing and optimizing revenue.

  • Accurate calculation involves tracking all client-related work in precise increments, typically six minutes. Tools like Harvest automate this process with one-click timers, ensuring all billable hours are captured and reducing the risk of revenue loss.

  • Tracking billable hours is essential for maximizing revenue, ensuring client transparency, and improving business efficiency. Accurate tracking can prevent revenue loss, which can be as high as $50,000 annually for some companies. Harvest provides real-time tracking to optimize this process.

  • Harvest seamlessly integrates with popular project management tools such as Asana, Trello, and Jira. This integration streamlines time tracking and invoicing, reducing administrative work and increasing accuracy.

  • Yes, Harvest allows users to differentiate and track both billable and non-billable hours. This capability helps businesses understand their workload distribution and optimize operations for better profitability.

  • Utilization rates for professional services firms typically range from 70-75%. Agencies and consultancies often target 75-85%. Increasing utilization can significantly boost revenue, making it an important metric to track.

  • Automated time tracking, like the one-click timers in Harvest, reduces manual entry errors and ensures all billable hours are captured accurately. This automation helps prevent potential revenue loss and enhances billing accuracy.