Harvest

Pros 

Superior online, desktop and mobile time-tracking tools make Harvest ideal for those who bill by time. It includes start/stop timers for tracking time, desktop time-entry widgets for Windows and Mac, and timesheet-management features.

Cons 

Although each account type supports more than one user, Harvest does not offer free access for collaborators, clients and time-entry-only users. There is no automatic logout feature, which means you will have to remember to log out if you step away from your computer.

The Verdict:

Good-looking, reasonably priced accounting solution for solo operations, freelancers or contract workers, Harvest is especially adept at tracking time, converting estimates and tracking expenses on the road. The first-tier account includes unlimited clients, projects and invoices.

It does not matter where you run your small business from or where you work on your projects; Harvest can track every minute of billable time easily and help you invoice your clients accurately. All Harvest accounts support unlimited clients, projects and invoices and can track time and expenses on most mobile devices. This accounting solution is compatible with a long list of business productivity apps, creates invoices in seconds and tracks timesheets, for which it earns our TopTenREVIEWS Bronze Award.

Harvest boasts a 99.9-percent uptime and 24/7 monitoring, which was recently put to the test. The Harvest data center is located in an area of New York that was hit by storm Sandy. Data center staff worked around the clock, employing backup generators to keep Harvest customers in business. They also had plans in place to run Harvest from a different data center should it become necessary. It is not too often that data centers have to face a real-world disaster, but Harvest did this year. They kept their customers informed via their company blog, Twitter and Facebook. With the exception of a few minor outages, Harvest kept running and kept its customers in business.

Invoicing & Billing:

Without much training, you can create your first invoice using Harvest within minutes and future invoices within seconds using saved customer and item information. Harvest will calculate taxes and discounts as well as create invoices in any currency. You can send invoices to an email address from Harvest or save them as PDF files. Invoices can be set to recurring or duplicated. This is one of the few services we reviewed that has a tool for specifically managing retainer payments. One-click reports show invoice statuses, and you can export reports to Excel or save them as CSV files. Harvest does not provide a long list of invoice template options, but you can add your own logo, contract information, payment terms and notes to invoices.

To increase what you can do with Harvest, it is compatible with a wide range of add-ons. Harvest also provides API wrappers for developers. Add-ons that can assist you with invoicing and billing include Outright online accounting, Zendesk for tracking time spent on support tickets, QuickBooks, Cling for sharing Harvest time-tracking reports with customers and BillFLO for creating machine-readable invoices. Harvest APIs are available for Ruby, Python and PHP.

Project Tracking:

Harvest helps you track projects, including project budgets, tasks, team members and invoice methods. It can track billable and non-billable hours and budgets by total fees, project hours, hours per task and hours per person. It also manages related expenses such as mileage, meals and transportation. If you perform routine projects, you can save time by duplicating them. To help keep your projects on target, you can configure the services to notify you by email once the project reaches a certain percentage of the overall budget. For example, if you have a project that you have limited to 50 billable hours, you could set up the software to send you an alert when the billable hours reach 80 percent (or 40 hours). That way, you know as soon as possible when you may need to intervene to keep the project on target.

Though Harvest provides the tools you need for basic project tracking, time and expense tracking, and task management, it is compatible with a range of third-party services to help you utilize more complex project management tools. Other project management tools it works with include Basecamp, Trello, Do, Apollo, ScrumDo, Planscope, Redmine and activeCollab. Some compatible apps are even free, such as Google Apps and Co-op.

Mobility:

Harvest provides free apps for iPhone, Android and Windows 7 mobile phones. The mobile apps are designed to track time and expenses on the road. The mobile versions manage expense receipts easily. Using a mobile phone's camera, you can capture receipt images and attach them to an expense record. If you use an Android phone, you can utilize an app called CallTab to track time spent on billable phone calls related to specific Harvest projects. In addition, since Harvest is an online product, you can access your account from any internet-connected PC or Mac.

Summary:

Harvest is an ideal solution for those who need to track and invoice billable time spent on projects. It can track time on PCs, Macs and most mobile devices, and track expenses incurred while traveling. All paid accounting includes unlimited clients, projects and invoices, plus the option to add low-priced additional users. If you need to bill by time, Harvest is one of the best.