Harvest
Time Tracking
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Billable Hours Tracker for Product Managers

Harvest is the ideal billable hours tracker for product managers, offering seamless integration with project management tools to streamline your workflow and enhance productivity.

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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

The Strategic Imperative of Billable Hours Tracking for Product Managers

For product managers, effective billable hours tracking is crucial for maximizing project profitability and ensuring efficient resource allocation. Understanding the distinction between billable activities, such as client meetings and deliverables, and non-billable tasks, like internal meetings and training, is essential. With 46% of UK desk workers not using timesheet software, many product managers miss out on capturing valuable hours that could justify time spent and enhance client transparency.

Accurate time tracking fosters transparency and builds trust with clients and stakeholders, justifying invoices and providing realistic insights into business operations. Moreover, it helps identify the under-prioritized "Discovery" and "Dreaming" phases of product management, which are crucial for long-term success. By highlighting these areas, product managers can ensure that significant non-billable contributions are recognized and prioritized.

Essential Features and Integrations for Time Trackers

When selecting a billable hours tracker, product managers should prioritize tools with features like automatic time tracking, manual entry, and the ability to categorize time by project phase. Harvest excels in these areas by integrating seamlessly with project management tools such as Asana, Trello, and Jira, allowing time tracking to align with product development cycles. This integration ensures real-time progress monitoring and task assignment without switching platforms.

Mobile accessibility is another critical feature, enabling product managers to track time on-the-go. Additionally, advanced features such as setting different billing rates per project or user, expense tracking, and budget alerts are invaluable. Harvest's customizable reporting capabilities allow for tracking time spent on various product features and enhancements, aiding in detailed analysis and informed decision-making.

Implementing Best Practices and Navigating Challenges

Implementing effective time tracking begins with establishing clear policies that define billable versus non-billable activities. Product managers should select tracking methods that balance accuracy with ease of use, like Harvest's one-click timers, which facilitate real-time logging and minimize reliance on memory.

To optimize the billable utilization rate, which typically ranges from 75% to 85% in agencies, product managers can categorize hours by development phases (e.g., research, design, testing). This approach uncovers inefficiencies and enhances resource allocation. Addressing challenges such as employee resistance and micromanagement concerns is crucial, and Harvest supports this by integrating time tracking within existing workflows, reducing the need for constant oversight.

Regularly reviewing billable data not only identifies profitability and cost overruns but also refines future estimates and pricing models. Harvest's resource allocation insights further optimize team productivity and project timelines by comparing budgeted, scheduled, and actual tracked hours.

Billable Hours Tracking with Harvest

Harvest provides seamless integration with project management tools, ideal for tracking billable hours in product management workflows.

Harvest dashboard showing billable hours tracking for product managers.

Billable Hours Tracker for Product Managers FAQs

  • Product managers track billable hours using tools like Harvest that offer one-click timers and manual entry options. These tools integrate with project management software to align time tracking with development cycles, providing detailed insights into project progress and resource allocation.

  • Time tracking is vital for product managers to ensure project profitability, efficient resource allocation, and transparency with clients. It helps in distinguishing between billable and non-billable hours, providing insights into the time spent on various phases of product development.

  • Key features include automatic time tracking, manual entry, project phase categorization, and integration with project management tools. Harvest offers these features along with customizable reporting and mobile access, making it ideal for product managers.

  • Harvest integrates with popular tools like Asana, Trello, and Jira, enabling product managers to track time within their existing project management workflows. This integration helps align time tracking with task assignments and development cycles.

  • Yes, Harvest allows categorization of hours by product development phases, such as discovery, design, and testing. This feature provides granular insights into time allocation across different stages of product management.

  • A good billable utilization rate for product managers often falls between 75% and 85%. This metric indicates the proportion of available work hours spent on billable activities, helping to identify inefficiencies and optimize resource allocation.

  • Harvest enhances productivity by providing resource allocation insights and comparing budgeted, scheduled, and actual tracked hours. These features optimize team performance and ensure project timelines are met effectively.