We recently re-launched the Harvest blog to align its design with Harvest site’s new look. Under the hood, we moved the entire blog over from Typo (a Ruby on Rails blog engine which has seen better days) to the brand new WordPress 2.5 engine. This means you can now comment on our posts to let us know what you think about the tidbits we bring you here on the Harvest blog.

You can expect more small business stories, productivity tips, behind-the-scenes scoop, and general Harvest announcements. Sign up for our feed via RSS or subscribe to these updates by e-mail on the right-side of the screen.

Thanks and stay tuned for exciting announcements in the coming weeks.

We’re proud to release an integration with the popular messaging service, Twitter. You can now log expenses and stop running timers on Harvest while on the go right from your mobile phone via Twitter.

Read about the Harvest and Twitter integration.

If you’re already a Twitter user, follow Harvest on Twitter for off the cuff updates from Harvest headquarters.

Upgrade your free or trial Harvest account during the month of April and save $5 off the first month of your Harvest subscription. Simply use the coupon code APRILUPGRADE when you are submitting your payment information and we’ll take $5 off your first bill.

Give the new Harvest (time/expense tracking with invoicing) a spin and save on an upgrade!

With the latest Spring Update comes a change to Harvest’s pricing structure.

What does this mean for current users?

There’s more to Harvest for the same price you’ve been paying. If you are a current subscriber of Harvest, you simply continue to pay what they have been paying with much of the new updates added to your account. The only new feature not included is the invoicing module, which can be activated for your account starting at an additional $3/month for Solo plans and $15-$20 for Basic and Business plans. A free trial of the invoicing feature is offered to all current subscribers so you can see if it’s right for you. Lastly, current subscribers now also have the ability to purchase additional users one at a time instead of 10-packs. More details on this below.

For new customers

New customers of Harvest already have invoicing capabilities built-in. The complete time tracking & invoicing package starts at $12/month for the solo user, and goes up to Business plans that can support as many users as you need. See the complete pricing chart.

Buy additional users one-at-a-time

All plans now allow you to purchase additional users $5-$10 per month depending on your plan. So no longer would you have to buy 10 users or upgrade from Solo just to add one or two extra people to your current plan! And as you’d expect, when you remove the additional users you added to your base plan, your plan price will be adjusted accordingly.

If you have any questions, just let us know via support. Thanks for using the Harvest!

This month’s Harvest New Founder named themselves after the once-believed mythical creature, Giant Squid. But unlike the deep-ocean squid of tremendous size, this St. Paul Minnesota design studio is small and nimble. As you’ll find out from the following interview with the Squid’s founder, Reid Peifer, his studio has giant-size ambition and plans. In less than a year of existence, Giant Squid Industries have completed several online projects, made a few amazing silk-screen prints, created a couple of brands, and amidst it all, found time and given back to the community. We’re proud to have GSI as part of Harvest New Founders Program, and hope you enjoy the interview.

Continue Reading »

This is a handy little feature to manage your tasks.  Go to Manage > Tasks.  Click on any task - you’ll see a little trash icon next to the task name.

The trash icon does 2 things: if you have not tracked any time under this task, it’ll let you remove the task entirely.  If anyone in your account has tracked time towards the task, then it’ll offer you the option to archive the task.

What does it mean to archive a task?

First, you won’t be able to track time to that task anymore.  Second, you won’t be able to add that task to any projects.  If you change your mind - simply go to Manage Tasks, click on “Manage archived tasks”, and you’ll be able re-activate them.

There’s a new section for managing your clients and contacts.

Go to Manage > Clients, and you’ll find all your clients listed out in alphabetical order. Next to each client name you’ll see two links – “Edit” and “Add contact”.

Edit – edit the client’s name and contact info.

Add contact – add a client contact (you can add however many as you’d like). When creating an invoice for the client, you’ll be able to choose from these contacts to send the invoice to.

The Manage Clients section also serves as a light, easy-to-use address book, and with that in mind, we display email and phone numbers for each client contact for quick access.

We’re happy to announce that with the Harvest Spring Update, the long-awaited invoicing feature is now available for all Harvest plans!

Here’s a quick look at what invoicing is like in Harvest:

• Create invoices directly from time and expenses entered into Harvest. With a few clicks in the invoice creation wizard, you’ll have a pre-populated invoice with just the amount of detail you want to show your clients on a invoice (from general summaries to detailed line items). You are also able to adjust your line-times as necessary before sending off. Simple yet flexible for your different needs.
• Create free-form invoices for anything. Your line-items don’t need to be time-based. Our free-form invoices allow you to enter sales of products, fixed-fee services, or any other categories you may want to define for your business.
• Send PDF invoices via e-mail. Sending invoices directly from Harvest is easy. Invoices sent are automatically tracked on your Invoicing Dashboard and your clients get a clean PDF version of your invoice with your customized logo (if you provided one) on it. If you’d rather email the PDF yourself, you can simply download the PDF version of your invoice from Harvest.
• Log payments, full or partial. Our invoicing module helps you stay on top of what’s been paid and what is still due, even when you are dealing with partial payments toward an invoice.
• Activity log for accurate records. The activity log tracks when your invoice was sent, any notes or comments you may want to associate with the invoice, partial payments, and closing dates, so you are sure to have accurate records of all transactions for your invoices.
• Invoicing Dashboard, your financial view at a glance. Our invoicing dashboard helps you see what’s outstanding, what’s past due, and what’s coming up—all at a glance. Click into the invoices archive to see full reports of your activity for the month, quarter, year, or any timeframe of your choosing.

We’re very excited to unveil this new capability and we hope you too will find Harvest Invoicing to be a simple and effective tool for your billing needs.

Don’t have a Harvest account yet? Try it out and upgrade within the next 30 days of this announcement with the coupon code HARVESTINVOICING and you’ll receive $10 off your first month’s bill!

This is just Part 2 of the new features we’re highlighting in the Harvest Spring Update. Stay tuned for more bits about all the great new things that’s now in the latest release of Harvest!

While we love our Harvest orange and that blue-green color (which reminds of the ocean), we thought our customers (you) would appreciate the ability to customize their own Harvest account to a color scheme that speaks more to their company’s look.  So we’ve added a new feature to pick from a set of six, delicious color combos: the Harvest classic blue, Harvest orange theme, and four solid colors - red, green, blue, and black/grayscale.

We hope you’ll have fun with this new feature!

This is just Part 1 of the new features we’re highlighting in the Harvest Spring Update. Stay tuned for more bits about all the great new things that’s now in the latest release of Harvest!

With Spring fast approaching here in New York City, we’re happy to unveil all the improvements we’ve been making to Harvest during the winter. We see Harvest as a small business companion, a one-stop app to get your business up and running. With the Spring Update, we’re one giant step closer to that reality.

Here’s a brief overview of what we’ve done. We’ll be highlighting the details of the Spring Update in the coming week with individual posts about each area!

Harvest Spring Update Highlights

• Harvest Invoicing arrives. Now invoice for your time with ease and just a few clicks. General invoice module also allows you to create invoices for products or services that you don’t track time for. Generate PDFs, track your invoices in a dashboard, and conveniently send invoices all right from within Harvest.
• Customize your Harvest look-and-feel. If that blue/yellow color scheme never worked for you, you can now choose form a variety of color schemes that match your company’s branding.
• Better client management. Keeping a list of your clients and contact information in Harvest is now a whole lot easier. And with the handy invoicing module, you’ll now be able to send invoices to your clients directly from Harvest with ease.
• Updated pricing. With all the great upgrades in Harvest’s Spring Update, we also updated the prices on our plans to reflect the new integrate package. Current customers continue to pay for Harvest at their current plan prices, but now have the added ability to add as many or as few people onto their plans on a price per person basis. Just hired a new person but you’ve max’d out your plan? Adding an extra user to your Business plan is easy to do and costs only $5 per person per month.

We’ll highlight these changes further next week. For now, try out the new bits in the Spring Update and let us know if you have any questions!