Time once gone is difficult to recover. Do we need another reason to invest in a time-tracking tool?
To prevent your business objectives from being lost, it is vital to keep track of how employees spend their time and direct them where necessary.
Getting started with a time tracking tool is a smart decision to make.
With that as the center of discussion today, we would be narrowing down on two tools Harvest and Toggl.
Let us look at what these tools have in store and what results they can attract.
Harvest vs Toggl at a Glance
With most time tracking tools focussing their attention solely on time tracking, Harvest proudly declares itself as “more than a time tracker.” Your team will have a good time working around Harvest’s intuitive user interface.
It is finally time to optimize time usage while getting real-time insights.
Moving on to Toggl, three words aptly describe this tool – easy, powerful, and frictionless. With this tool, businesses can free themselves from the worry of remaining unpaid for billable hours.
Toggl comes across as a breath of fresh air by making every billable minute count.
Harvest Overview
Your search for a simple and intuitive time tracking application ends with Harvest.
No doubt, every team member will have a seamless experience with this app.
Launched in 2006, Harvest makes a perfect pick for organizations irrespective of their size of operation, nature of work, and industry categorization.
Over 70,000 companies have used Harvest. Most of them have come forward to laud this app to help introduce work-life balance. This is because Harvest immediately lists out overburdened employees, which makes task segregation relevant and realistic.
Let us now look at some of Harvest’s outstanding features.
Time Tracking:
Harvest makes a go-to app for organizations looking for sophisticated and accurate time tracking. This intuitive and lightweight solution is easy to adopt and operate.
Working around Harvest means ease of tracking hours and time spent on individual projects. Harvest wins hands-on in terms of compatibility as the same become usable from the browser, desktop, and mobile. The cherry on the cake is the customized and automated reminders, which prevent your team from experiencing slippage of time tracking.
Reporting and Analysis:
Looking at Harvest’s features, we cannot but skip the mention of reporting and related analysis. Harvest stands out for its visual representation of reports, which make information breakdown easier and keep teams motivated.
For instance, capacity reporting makes it possible for organizations to find overworked employees and ones that are underutilized. This helps in meaningful shuffling and capacity optimization.
You can gain additional insights by exporting data from Harvest to other in-use reporting tools.
Invoicing and Payments:
Time tracking with Harvest is as much about saving and optimizing time as it is about keeping a check on expenses. Harvest aids with invoice preparation by simply utilizing tracked hours and incurred expenses.
It is equally easy to collect payments as this app is linked to payment gateways. Invoice creation, quick receipts, and accounting book maintenance are the involved advantages.
Pros of Harvest:
- Time Analysis & Decision Making
As an organization, it is obvious for you to work around multiple projects. However, not every project attracts desired returns or becomes scalable with limited costs. This is where Harvest comes to the rescue of the organization.
Harvest offers clarity about projects on which maximum time is being spent and corresponding costs incurred, which assists with informed decision-making.
- Instils Work-Life Balance
Organizations are skeptical about using time trackers because they are afraid of the team displaying resistance. In the case of Harvest, this works in the reverse.
This is because Harvest offers a clear picture of the team’s capacity while clearly defining every team member’s role. This in turn helps to create a strong work culture and instill work-life balance.
- Multi-device Compatibility
By getting started with Harvest, you do not have to worry about your employees coming up with the lack of compatibility excuse.
This is because Harvest becomes usable from every device sitting in any corner of the world. Users can work around Harvest from a browser, desktop, and mobile.
Cons of Harvest:
- Lack of Standardization
If you are looking to work around Harvest, just know you may face some difficulties in laying out sub-projects.
Users experience a lack of standardization in the tasks as well.
- Poor Integration
Even though Harvest claims to offer exceptional integration, users have had trouble when integrating with certain apps like Quickbooks Online.
- Few Minimum Billing Increments options
At present, Harvest offers Minimum Billing Increments for 1 hour, 30 minutes, 15 minutes, and 6 minutes. Users expect something like 10 minutes as well.
Price Plans of Harvest
Currently, Harvest offers two pricing plans
Here is what the pricing plans look like
- Free – 1 seat, 2 projects
- Pro – $10.80 per seat per month billed yearly
Toggl Overview
Are you looking to boost your team’s productivity and performance?
If you answered in the positive, Toggl is for you.
Toggl has become popular as an intuitive tool that makes time tracking easy for the entire team. With this time tracker, you will not miss a single billable minute.
You must experience frictionless time tracking only with Toggl.
Let us now look at some of Toggl’s promising features.
Time Tracking:
If you are looking to experience on-point project and team tracking, Toggl is definite to address your concerns.
When using this app, you enjoy the liberty of tracking time either in the timer mode or manually. Apart from receiving real-time updates, you can even opt for offline tracking with Toggl.
With a Calendar View, Toggl seamlessly integrates with Google and Outlook Calendars.
Reporting and Analysis:
Data is important for business success. Here again, Toggl helps in drawing meaningful and actionable insights from the available data.
Working around Toggl means you get to explore summary, detailed, and weekly reports. You can sort and filter data as per your requirement. Similarly, client-ready visuals can be drawn straight out of Toggl.
Invoicing and Payments:
Yet another interesting feature associated with Toggl is indirect Invoicing and Payments. Even though Toggl does not directly allow invoice generation, it is possible to keep a track of every billable minute and export data into invoicing software.
From here accurate invoices become creatable and ultimately apt payment can be sought.
Pros of Toggl:
- Smooth Integrations
Working with Toggl means you get to enjoy 100+ integrations with Chrome and Firefox Browser Extensions.
Precisely, you enjoy effortless integrations with Asana, GitHub, Evernote, Jira, Google Calendar, Notion, Salesforce, Slack, Zapier, and a lot more.
- Extensive Compatibility
Another major benefit of working with Toggl is its superior compatibility. With Toggl, you can start and stop time tracking from any part of the world.
If you are using the mobile app, you can use iOS and Android. Similarly, if you are signing in from your desktop, you can come in with Windows and macOS.
- Team Management
Your team will be happy to work around Toggl as it swiftly transitions from overwork to better work. Moreover, its easy-to-use interface helps teams navigate better, which allows managers to effectively oversee.
Toggl makes it possible to step out of limiting Excel-based tracking to a dashboard that is visually attractive and well-defined.
Cons of Toggl:
- Poor Invoice-related Exporting
For the creation of invoices, data needs to be exported from Toggle to invoicing software. You may experience glitches at this stage and may have to manually make changes to the final invoice.
- Non-Optimized Mobile App
If you are keen on using Toggl’s Mobile App, you may have to re-think.
This is because most users have complained about facing glitches on the mobile app repeatedly.
- Steep Pricing
Toggl’s pricing gets slightly steep especially when you have a large team to take care of. Also, the free plan does not include important features like timesheets and billable hours.
Price Plans of Toggl
To get started with Toggl, you can explore the free plan.
Alternatively, you can opt for one of the following three paid plans
- Starter $9 per user per month
- Premium $18 per user per month
- Enterprise – Custom Pricing suitable for unlimited users
Harvest vs Toggl – Time Tracking
Harvest
If you are looking for a sophisticated time tracker, Harvest should do the trick. With this tracker, you can use the timer to track work hours. Similarly, manual entries of work hours can be made in the timesheets. Lastly, Harvest makes it possible to enter time data for the entire week in bulk.
Toggl
Looking at Time tracking alone, Toggl races ahead in comparison to Harvest. A major point of differentiation here is Toggl’s ability to help you track time both manually and automatically.
Harvest vs Toggl – Reporting and Analysis
Harvest
Harvest displays high-standard reporting abilities. With Harvest, organizations can lay down visual reports for both projects and teams.
These reports help with tracking progress, overseeing team capacity, and looking deeper into team members’ work patterns.
Toggl
When using Toggl, you get to access summary, detailed, and weekly reports. Time audits, time rounding, and report saving are additional features that Toggl makes available to its users.
With Toggl, simple CSV and PDF reports can be created with ease.
Harvest vs Toggl – Invoicing and Payments
Harvest
In terms of invoice creation, Harvest races ahead of Toggl as the latter does not allow in-built invoicing. When using Harvest, all you need to do is track time and expenses, which eventually aid the process of invoice creation. Follow this by tapping on payment gateway integrations that assure quick receipts.
Toggl
Toggl will not be able to assist you in case you are interested in in-app invoice creation. All this app can do is integrate data and help with exporting the same to invoicing software already in use from where invoices can be generated and payments fast-tracked.
Harvest vs Toggl – What should you choose?
*Source: capterra.com
Harvest vs Toggl – Summary
Now that you have understood the various features, pros, and cons that Harvest and Toggl have in store, it should become easier for you to take the final call.
Both apps have free plans on offer, which means it is difficult to review these apps basis pricing alone. In absence of credit card details, you can take a 30-day trial of both apps.
If you are a client servicing business, Harvest is for you. Contrary to this, if you are looking to move from timesheets and manual input to spreadsheets, Toggl should make a better bet.
In the end, it all comes down to which app accurately suits your requirements and you are comfortable working around.
Do you wish to look beyond Harvest and Toggl?
You may have already used and worked around Harvest and Toggl.
Alternatively, a quick read through this blog has helped you understand everything these two apps have in store.
You may see some gaps in your requirements and features of this app. In that case, you have no option but to look beyond.
Look beyond Harvest and Toggl and give Time Analytics a shot.
Time Tracking
Time Analytics allows you to oversee the incurred expenses and track the working hours of your team members. In fact, your team will have a good time working around Time Analytics’ user-friendly UI interface.
As a part of this app’s time tracking abilities, teams can track hours, analyze projects, measure client performance, and focus only on things that matter.
Reporting and Analysis
Time Analytics’ Reporting Ingenuity will help organizations to measure project profitability.
This tool’s reporting feature can help you
- Track billable hours and improve billing efficiency
- Identify missing profits
- Derive profitability of every project and client
- Avoid micromanagement
- Continue to update client fees and terms of the contract
Invoicing and Payments
With this app, you do not have to worry about missing billable minutes, which makes the process of invoicing full proof. Not to mention, Time Analytics offers assistance with creating transparent invoices and appendices.
Most importantly, users can export invoices and invoicing data straight out of this app. Cost automation is another option offered by Time Analytics.
Price Plans of Time Analytics
Time Analytics is available under two paid plans – Starter and Optimum
- The Starter Plan costs $4.99 per user per month, and the Optimum Plan costs $6.99 per user per month
- Starter Plan is ideal for teams, and individuals looking to reduce admin work but enjoy unlimited user, client, and project access
- Optimum Plan is suitable for clients looking to increase profitability, introduce transparency and accuracy
Summing Up
Harvest vs Toggl vs Time Analytics
Let us say it is verdict time.
If you are looking to use any of the above-listed time-tracking apps, you need to check for compatibility. For instance, Harvest is compatible with Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android. However, lacks compatibility with Linux.
Toggl on the other hand is compatible with all the platforms listed above.
Coming to Time Analytics, which is again a newly introduced app that offers compatibility with Desktop Mac and Windows, Cloud, SaaS, and Web.
Looking at the pricing element, even though Harvest and Toggl have free plans, basic yet prominent features are only available on the paid plans. Time Analytics does not complicate the process by providing two straightforward and competitively priced plans.
Now that you know all the apps in and out, stop wasting any further time and go ahead to settle for Time Analytics.
Get started with the free trial, get to know the working of the app, and finally choose a premium plan that fits the bill.
