Harvest vs. PaySimple vs. WorkflowMax

Harvest is ideally suited for a variety of scenarios, particularly in the realms of freelance or consulting work, where accurate hour tracking for billing is crucial. It excels in small to medium businesses managing team projects, allowing for effective resource allocation and time management across multiple concurrent projects. For budgeting and forecasting, Harvest provides valuable data, aiding in accurately estimating the duration and cost of future projects based on past data. It's also highly beneficial for remote or distributed teams, thanks to its cloud-based platform that facilitates seamless coordination. Additionally, its detailed reporting features enhance client transparency, fostering trust through clear communication of time spent on projects. However, Harvest may be less suitable for larger enterprises with complex integration needs or specialized industries requiring more niche features. Small startups or individuals on tight budgets might find the cost challenging, especially if they don't fully utilize all its features. Lastly, for those needing only basic time tracking, simpler or free tools might be more appropriate, making Harvest an unnecessary expenditure for basic needs.

Incentivized

PaySimple has made it next to impossible to become PCI compliant unless we purchased a separate computer for the sole purpose of invoicing. We switched to Chase Bank who does not store sensitive info on our computers allowing us to accept credit cards and still remain PCI compliant. Our money is available much faster by not using the 3rd party. Additionally, a simple company name change required more paperwork than closing the account and setting up a new one even when the same bank account was going to be used. This was the primary reason to shop around. We happily contacted Chase Bank and now save $125 a month and receive access to our funds faster. I cannot believe I stayed with PaySimple as long as I did. It's amazing anyone would jump through the hoops of PCI compliance when the technology exists to keep sensitive information off your small business computers. If this review stops anyone from paying those monthly fees, the time was well worth it! PaySimple, requires business owners to fill out forms that make no sense in laymens terms. Chase Bank fills them all in for you and highlights the areas that need to be signed and initialed. PaySimple, charges excessive fees and in my opinion has very emotional customer service reps. Chase Bank, was eager to help and get things rolling so you can focus on your business. I would never recommend PaySimple.

WorkflowMax is very well suited for a business that wants to track time billed by project, to have an easy way to generate invoices for those projects, and to keep track of overall productivity and invoice status. I imagine it can also be adapted to different types of businesses that deal in goods rather than services and time. I am not sure for which scenarios or businesses the program is not appropriate.

Incentivized

• Offers several options on using the tool, for example, you can use the app on your phone, the app for desktop, or simply have the website open.
• The timer integrates with other platforms. For example, our team uses Asana as our project management tool. Now, in real-time, I can know which projects my team is working on and whether we're implementing good time management strategies to meet our goals.
• The summary break downs are wonderful! You can view an individual's hours as well as project hours. There are even notifications you could receive when your team is getting close to reaching the allotted time for a client's project.

Incentivized

• PaySimple is awesome for recurring payments. It's easy to set one up and make changes as needed. Without this feature, our business would be dead. Being able to easily set up recurring payments for our retainer is a must and PaySimple does it beautifully.
• The payment portal feature is also really good fro collecting payments of differing amounts. We setup a single portal where customers enter the payment amount accessed from a link in the invoice email. This feature has transformed out collections and cut down our time to get paid significantly.
• If you do have product type offerings, it's easy to setup individual products or an entire store.

Incentivized

• You can customize the notifications and this has helped us enormously to schedule dates that we overlooked. Also the templates are customizable which gives the company its own branding on its reports.
• It is integrated with the Xero platform which makes it very useful to streamline the processes of billing, accounts payable, accounts receivable, petty cash flow and all the accounting and administrative area.
• It also has a very complete mobile version, where we can be present and monitor the progress of projects in real time, no matter where we are.

Incentivized

• I’m still trying to figure out how tasks best associate to a specific project. There’s a couple different places to edit that and I’m a little confused as to best practice.
• Does not integrate into basecamp which is our project management system

Incentivized

• More proactive and empowering role in merchant fee's and alternative processors. Transparency is challenging in understanding Paysimple's role and relationship to the processors.
• Identifying areas for further value to clients.
• More targeted small to mid-size business perspective to anticipate growth challenges and prevent blocks on funds for legitimate sales and growth.

Incentivized

• Currently the timesheet function allows staff to input time for overlapping periods which can cause some headaches when it comes to payroll and invoicing. We understand this is being addressed.
• The amount of flexibility in the product can create some challenges when setting up the jobs database at the onset. It is a daunting challenge but worthwhile when completed correctly and rolled out across the firm. Adding new jobs is much easier.
• No search function to find a specific job, you have to scroll through all jobs allocated to you.

Incentivized

Because we can't imagine being without it!

Incentivized

Again, just a minor compatibility issues using with other platforms such as Basecamp, but it does do everything promised. The only downfall we have found is having to create a job in both platforms and then connecting them later vs being able to create a project once and having them automatically connect.

Incentivized

It's easy to use and provides me with instant online access to the management of my business whether I am at my desk or overseas

Incentivized

They're very responsive and do their best to answer whatever questions we've had. Sometimes, the question or request we've made is for a feature that doesn't yet exist, however in most cases those features have been built later and did eventually address our need.

Incentivized

The support team are excellent. The only downside is that you can't phone them!

Incentivized

Decide how to breakdown your ongoing jobs - are they monthly recurring or annual broken into chunks? What are you going to give clients i.e. how will your proposals and invoices look?

Incentivized

Harvest is significantly better than Jira. I think Jira's is not originally intended to be used as a time logging/management system, but we had been previously using it as that. It was much clunkier, and many employees had a difficult time using it as a user interface goes. Harvest is much more user friendly and has simplified the daily time-logging process for everyone in our office

Incentivized

Authorize.net and a handful of other merchant processors and gateways. Most payment gateways (online portals to process payments) are rudimentary and not extremely intuitive. PaySimple is not and they are constantly coming up with new ways to improve upon an already very impressive platform.

Incentivized

WorkflowMax is much much easier than Streamtime, much more affordable and easier to try out and see if it meets your needs. Streamtime is a great comprehensive product but we lost a year's subscription in investment because we couldn't get answers to the support questions we needed and they had a no refund policy!

Incentivized

• Harvest has improved our payment schedules. Since we switched, we get paid for projects much sooner.
• Harvest has saved us a ton of time with payroll. We are able to track our users time and pay them appropriately based on their billable hours.
• Harvest is becoming a lifesaver around tax time. The reporting features have allowed us to pull reports for our tax accountant.

Incentivized

• Because we've got a really awesome rate with them it's definitely a positive ROI. I can't say what that figure is but it's pretty good. Also, our customers have a huge ROI over their prior way of getting payment from their customers.

Incentivized

• Max enables Loan Assistant to invoice very quickly and easily and integration with Xero for card payments brings our cashflow forward.
• Max enables the Loan Assistant team to manage their workflow in an efficient and productive way. The team all work from home. It is the centre of our Loan Assistant universe.

Incentivized