Harvest Unbilled Time and Overdue Invoices

Two pools of money you have earned and not collected: work that is not yet invoiced, and invoices that are not yet paid. Find both, and chase them in the right order.

To find unbilled time and overdue invoices in Harvest, total billable time not yet invoiced by client, then list open invoices past their due date, and rank both by amount. They are two pools of money that has been earned and not collected, and a small firm usually has more of both than it expects. This post shows the method by hand and how to ask for it.

Pool one: unbilled time

Unbilled time is billable time entered in Harvest that is not yet on an invoice. Valued at the billable rate, it is revenue waiting for a decision. The first useful split is by reason:

• Waiting on approval or review. Time that a manager has not signed off.
• Billing cycle. Work from this month that will go on the month-end invoice. Normal, and small.
• Missed. Time from earlier months that nobody invoiced. This is the one that costs money.

The way to separate the last two is by date: unbilled amount by client and month. Anything older than your normal invoice cycle deserves a name next to it. Time logged against fixed-fee projects will add hours but not an amount, so the unbilled figure understates the work done on those.

Pool two: overdue invoices

An invoice is overdue when it is open and past its due date. The useful numbers are outstanding by client and overdue by client, because a client can be owed to you in total and be on time. List open invoices with the days overdue, total by client, and sort.

Example (illustrative)
Client       Unbilled   Outstanding   Overdue   Oldest overdue
Client A      8,400       12,000       4,500      41 days
Client B          0        6,200       6,200      72 days
Client C     11,000        3,000           0       0 days

The table shows three different jobs. Client A needs a reminder and an invoice. Client B needs a conversation. Client C needs an invoice raised, and is not a collections case at all. Looking at one pool alone would have misled you on at least one of them.

Which to do first

Invoice the unbilled first when it is time you control: it is the cheapest cash you can create, and it starts the payment clock. Chase the overdue next, largest first, because each day older makes recovery harder. Where a client is both overdue and carrying unbilled time, resolve the overdue balance before sending more invoices, and raise the pairing with whoever owns the relationship.

If the invoicing system differs from the accounting system, the same invoice can appear in both; reconcile open balances with combining Harvest and QuickBooks exports so you do not chase an invoice already paid.

Asking in Quiriz

The Harvest connector (in beta) gives you [Harvest] Time by day, with the Harvest unbilled amount metric, and [Harvest] Invoices, with Harvest invoiced, Harvest outstanding and Harvest overdue. The invoices dataset has state, issue and due dates, amount, due amount and days_overdue. You can ask:

• How much billable work is not invoiced yet, by client?
• Which invoices are overdue, and how much is outstanding by client?
• What are we spending on billable and non-billable expenses by client? (from [Harvest] Expenses, which flags billable and invoiced)

Defined once in Company Context, overdue means the same thing every time, and each answer shows which rows it used. The connector is read-only, refreshes daily and is included in paid plans. For firms that bill by time, Quiriz for professional services and Quiriz for agencies describe the wider fit. The full reporting set is in Harvest reporting.

A habit that keeps both pools small

Pick one day a week for a ten minute review. Look at unbilled amount by client, and ask whether each figure is expected. Look at open invoices past due, and ask who will follow up. Then log the two totals in a running list. After a quarter you will see whether the pools are shrinking, and which clients drive the swings.

Most firms discover the same thing: the cost of chasing is far lower when it happens weekly. A small overdue balance a week old is a reminder; the same balance three months later is a negotiation. The data in Harvest is already there. The only missing piece is the routine of reading it.

Billable expenses are a third pool

Expenses marked billable but not yet invoiced are a smaller version of the same problem. Harvest records, for each expense, whether it is billable and whether it has been billed, so you can total the billable and not-yet-invoiced group by client. Add it to the weekly review. Small amounts add up, and clients are usually happy to pay what was agreed once it appears on an invoice.

Limits

• Role. If you connect as a non-administrator, only the time that user can see is included and rates may be hidden, so amounts show 0. A notice appears on the dataset. Connect as an administrator for the whole firm.
• Overdue is as of the last refresh. The days overdue figure updates daily, not live.
• Overdue metric dates by issue date. Harvest overdue groups by the invoice issue date, so a monthly view is by month issued, not month it fell due.
• Currency. Time amounts are in the client currency and invoices in the invoice currency. Do not add across currencies.
• Thirteen months of time. Unbilled work older than that is not in the data.

Frequently asked questions