Harvest vs. UniFocus Labor Management System (LMS)

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

For our uses, tracking payroll is all we do. The other features are not as user-friendly.

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

• Log for payroll.
• Moving to previous dates in the payroll.
• Employee details.

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

• It is difficult to find specific reports, you have to know the system and where to look.
• It might be nice to have a friendly tutorial for available operations.
• I like to add notes to my payroll, it would be nice if it was easier to print up those notes and see the entire note. Sometimes the note is cut off. It would also be nice if I had room to write more detailed notes.

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

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

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

I have not used or evaluated any other system.

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

• It has not affected our ROI, I've never used another system so I have nothing to which I can compare.

Incentivized