Harvest Reporting: Time, Budgets and Invoices

Harvest records time, projects, invoices and expenses. Five reports answer most of what a service business asks, and each fits one question.

A Harvest reporting set for a service business has five parts: hours by client and month, budget burn by project, unbilled work, open and overdue invoices, and utilization. Harvest's own reports cover pieces of each. The work is putting them side by side each month, which is what this post lays out, along with how to ask for each in plain English.

Report 1: hours by client and month

Start with where time went. Total hours by client for this month and last month, with the billable portion shown separately. A client whose hours doubled without a matching invoice is the first thing to look at. Harvest reports hours as rounded hours, the same figure its invoices use, so totals will tie to billing.

Report 2: budget burn

For each active project: budget, spent, remaining and percent used. Sort by percent used, descending. The projects near or over 100 percent are the conversation to have before the next invoice. One caution: budgets are either in hours or in money, depending on the project, and the two must never be added together. A good report carries the unit next to the number.

Report 3: unbilled work

Billable time that has not been invoiced is revenue sitting in the timesheet. Total the unbilled amount by client. If a client shows a large unbilled amount, either invoicing is behind or the time is waiting on approval. Fixed-fee projects add no billable amount, so they will not appear in the amount, even though hours exist. A full treatment of this is in Harvest unbilled time and overdue invoices.

Report 4: invoices

Two views: invoiced by month (excluding drafts), and open invoices with days overdue. The second is the chase list. Group by client to see concentration. Amounts are in the invoice currency; if you bill in more than one, report each currency separately.

Report 5: utilization

Utilization is billable hours divided by capacity hours. In the Harvest data, capacity is weekly capacity spread across the calendar month, ignoring holidays and time off, and applies to employees, not contractors. That means a month with a public holiday will look slightly lower than the true figure. The formula and its traps are in how to calculate utilization rate in Excel and utilization, realization and effective rate.

Asking for these in Quiriz

The Harvest connector (in beta) imports six datasets: [Harvest] Time by day, [Harvest] Utilization by month, [Harvest] Project costs by month, [Harvest] Invoices, [Harvest] Project budgets and [Harvest] Expenses. Metrics include Harvest hours, Harvest billable hours, Harvest billable share, Harvest billable amount, Harvest unbilled amount, Harvest utilization, Harvest invoiced, Harvest outstanding, Harvest overdue and Harvest expenses. You can ask:

• How many hours went to each client this month versus last month?
• Which projects are over or close to budget?
• How much billable work is not invoiced yet, by client?
• Which invoices are overdue, and how much is outstanding by client?
• What was our utilization by month, and by person?

Definitions are held once in Company Context, so utilization is the same ratio for everyone and the answer shows its work. Connectors are read-only, refresh daily and are included in paid plans. Firms like this are who Quiriz for professional services and Quiriz for agencies are written for.

What you see depends on who connects

This is the limit that matters most. Harvest lets different roles see different things. If you connect as a Harvest administrator, the whole team's time, invoices and budgets are included. If you connect as a manager or member, only what that user can see is imported, a notice appears on the datasets saying so, and billing or cost rates may be hidden, which makes those amounts show as 0. Connect as an administrator for a whole-firm view.

A monthly rhythm

Run the set at the same point each month, after time is submitted and invoices are issued. Read the reports in this order: unbilled first, because it triggers action; overdue second; budget burn third, since overruns need a conversation before the next invoice; hours by client fourth; utilization last, as it is a trend rather than a task.

Write one line per report. For example, unbilled stands at 19,000, of which 12,000 is older than 45 days (an illustrative example). One line forces a conclusion, and a column of one-liners is a better handoff than a stack of screenshots. If the same question keeps coming up, save it as a report so you are not rebuilding the set by hand every month.

Do not forget expenses

Expenses logged in Harvest, with category, amount, whether they are billable and whether they have been invoiced, are easy to overlook. A billable expense that was never invoiced is the same kind of leak as unbilled time. Total expenses by client and by category, and check the billable-but-not-invoiced group each month alongside the unbilled hours.

Other limits

• Thirteen months of time and expenses. Older history is not imported.
• Currency. Amounts are in the client currency; never add them across currencies.
• Large accounts. If Harvest has more time entries than one refresh reads, the datasets say some are missing.
• No notes. Time-entry notes and expense notes and receipts are never imported.

Frequently asked questions