Harvest Review

Pros

• Good customer support
• Well-designed UI
• Easy to use
• Numerous integrations

Cons

• Unsuited for product-based businesses
• Limited reports
• Unscalable

What Is Harvest?

While Harvest technically offers time-tracking software, it’s grown into something much more than that. Harvest allows freelancers and small businesses to not only track time but easily send invoices to clients, create and send estimates, and manage projects.

Harvest is easy to use and has a variety of customer support resources to help you learn and navigate the software like a pro. However, when compared to other invoicing solutions, it falls a little flat. There are limited invoicing features and automations, only one template with minimal customization options, and no inventory feature.

However, while it may not be the best match for product-based businesses, it’s a good solution for service-based businesses that want solid time tracking and project management that’s easy to use — no prior software experience necessary.

Harvest Pricing

Harvest offers two plans: a forever-free option and a paid plan.

There are no contracts, and you can pay monthly, although a discount is available if you purchase an annual plan upfront. A 30-day free trial is available to test out the software, and a credit card isn’t required to sign up.

You may also qualify for additional discounts on your paid subscription if you have a:

• School or university
• Nonprofit organization
• Team of 50+

Teachers who use Harvest in the classroom and students who use the service for unpaid work qualify for the Harvest Pro plan at no monthly cost.

Overall, pricing is extremely competitive for what you receive, earning Harvest a score of 4.8/5 for pricing.

Harvest

The Harvest plan costs $0/month and includes:

• One user
• Up to two projects
• Unlimited invoices
• Unlimited estimates
• Unlimited clients
• Time tracking
• Reports
• 60+ integrations
• One user

Harvest Pro

The Harvest Pro plan costs $12/month per seat and includes everything from the Harvest plan, plus:

• Unlimited projects
• Unlimited users

Additional Services

In addition to Harvest’s time tracking app, you can also sign up for Harvest Forecast. This team scheduling and management solution allows small businesses to easily manage teams and projects and includes job costing and project analytics.

This service is priced at $6.25/month ($5/month for annual subscriptions) per user. A 30-day free trial is available.

Is Harvest Easy To Use?

Harvest is an easy-to-use, beautifully designed software program. The UI is well-organized, and with good customer support resources, anyone can learn and use Harvest in very little time.

Harvest has around 65 integrations with popular software and apps like Asana, Slack, QuickBooks Online, and Xero. It is a bit disappointing that it only integrates with two payment processors — Stripe and PayPal — so it would be nice to see more options in the future. API is available for developers.

One last thing worth noting is that some reviews do mention occasional glitches, although these seem to be more of an issue with Harvest’s mobile apps. Despite the few drawbacks mentioned, Harvest is easy to use and earns a rating of 4.4/5.

Harvest Features

Unlike most invoicing programs we’ve reviewed, Harvest excels at advanced features, such as project management and time-tracking, and drops the ball on the basics, such as invoicing and contact management (usually, it’s the other way around).

Harvest also lacks an inventory feature and lacks invoice automations like auto-scheduling and late payment reminders. These missing features brought Harvest’s rating down to 2.4/5 for this category.

Here are the main features Harvest offers:

Harvest Customer Service

Harvest offers multiple ways to get in touch, as well as self-service support options to get the most out of your software.

While Harvest does lack phone support, you can get in touch by email or by filling out an online form. The real standout is the help center, which can easily be accessed from within the software. The help center points you to everything from video tutorials to walk-throughs and a free 30-minute webinar.

The software is pretty intuitive, so it’s rare that users have to reach out for assistance. However, those who do generally have positive experiences. Overall, Harvest does a good job with customer support, earning it a rating of 4.8/5. Here’s a breakdown of Harvest’s customer support:

• Email
• Support forms
• Help center with articles, training videos, and FAQs
• In-software chatbot
• Webinars
• Business guides
• Company blog
• YouTube channel
• Social media profiles on X/Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn

User Reviews

The majority of user reviews for Harvest are positive. The software earns ratings of 4.3/5 (based on 800+ reviews) on G2, 8.7/10 (based on 80+ reviews) on TrustRadius, and 4.6/5 (based on 590+ reviews) on GetApp.

After poring over user reviews, we calculated our own score of 4.7/5.

Negative Reviews & Complaints

While most users seem satisfied with the software, there are a few recurring issues mentioned in reviews:

• Limited reports
• Lack of advanced features and automations
• Limited integrations
• Lack of payment gateways
• Too simple

Positive Reviews & Testimonials

Here are a few of the positives people note about Harvest:

• Easy to use
• Well-organized and easy to learn
• Good time tracking feature
• Strong mobile apps
• Good invoicing and time-tracking tool for freelancers
• Easy to integrate with other apps

Is Harvest Secure?

Harvest uses SSL encryption, firewalls, and redundancy to protect customer data. Data is stored in multiple facilities and gets backed up several times a day. The data center security is tested biweekly, and backups are stored for 180 days (so be sure to create your own personal backups before that time is up).

Harvest also boasts an impressive 99.9% uptime on average. Any outages or software issues are posted and updated in real-time. Check out Harvest’s privacy policy and security page for more details.

Final Verdict: Is Harvest Worth It?

As a time tracking solution, Harvest is great. As a project management software, brilliant. As an invoicing solution, it needs some work. Harvest’s features are a bit limited compared to those of other invoicing platforms.

For example, there are very limited invoice customizations and only a single invoice template. The contact management and expense-tracking features are also very basic, and there are no live bank feeds (which nearly all invoicing software programs offer). If you’re a product-based business, there’s no way to save inventory or sales tax.

Despite these drawbacks, the company has continuously worked to improve the software and has added several features over the years since we first reviewed Harvest. It also has a solid number of integrations, good support resources, and mobile apps that are easy to use (although occasional glitches may occur). We took all of this into consideration when giving our overall rating of 4 out of 5 stars.

If you have a larger team, the monthly pricing can add up quickly, although there are plenty of opportunities for discounts. For freelancers, the forever free plan is a great option for project-based businesses.

Before making a decision, we always recommend trying out the software yourself. You can easily do this by signing up for the free plan or giving Harvest’s 30-day free trial a go.

Invoicing Software Review Methodology

We spend hours researching and evaluating invoicing software that we review at Merchant Maverick, placing special emphasis on key characteristics to generate our service provider ratings.

When rating invoicing software, we use a 35-point rubric that looks at pricing, ease of use, features, customer service, and user reviews. We weigh each section differently to calculate the total star rating. 

• Pricing: 30% of the total star rating
• Ease Of Use: 20% of the total star rating
• Features: 30% of the total star rating
• Customer Service: 15% of the total star rating
• User Reviews: 5% of the total star rating

Each section is further broken down into granular, weighted subsections, in which we look at specific attributes, like whether additional accounting features are available, the cost and quality of each pricing plan, the number of extra fees, and the availability of a free trial. 

Learn more about how we rate invoicing software.