Harvest

Harvest is a cloud based time tracking and expense app which has hundreds of integrations available which can make it an essential part of the core of your business. Tracking billable hours accurately and easily is another of the major benefits of using Harvest if you've because if you've got time to use your phone for business it's built right into this process. It couldn't be simpler to use your account it's very well setup and intuitive to learn. I like the ability to have analytics reporting of my activity available in my account. It's nice to do a recap of your work at the end of the week and this feature in Harvest breaks it down. I also like the mobile accessibility. There's native mobile apps for iPhone and Android so you're set up either way. I'm considering Android so it's particularly relevant while I'm doing my research to include this option. This company makes it easy if you're not in the United States to use their software which is awesome they are very internationally friendly and make a point of this on their website. This was one of the things which drew me to them wanting to learn more. I like there's widgets and apps for your desktop too but currently it's only native to Mac. But there is an third party add-on for Windows desktops called Trackrr. You get full budget management capabilities as well which are useful for keeping an eye on things. I've been caught up in the creative aspects of a project before and cut it close to the deadline with the final few items I had to take care of but always pulled through. This way though I'm greatly minimizing the risk because the time remaining in my budget is alloted and present in clear way which I can access anytime. You can import and export data too which is great, there has been times when this would of been very useful in the past when summarizing manual time during a rare but timely internet outage. Once again the extensibility is the best part of this software because it extends the core functionality in so many different ways that it serves the critical function of time tracking but also makes your workflow much more productive by acting as a singular portal for many of your other third party software as a service accounts. The Google Apps integration is always a favorite of mine to see with any software because I'm an avid user. This adds a lot of value for me personally, as it would for other in my opinion.

There's a set of features I have yet to find in a time tracking software and that's desktop time tracking software with screenshot capture and keyboard stroke capture such as Upwork.com has but for freelance contractors who want to work off of the freelance social network sites. I believe it exists somewhere if not that there is a potentially huge market awaiting the smart person who sets this up in the cloud first. But the possibility of offering this to someone I work for having obtained the job from Craigslist or Kijiji for example, as opposed to Freelancer.com or Upwork.com would be an nice option to have in Harvest because it assures local clients who need a bit more trust with mobile based positions a way to be accountable and build trust. With that much extensibility otherwise it would almost be a no brainer subscription for someone like myself who is a full time freelancer at the moment.

There's a free forever plan with one user, four clients and two projects which is enough to get you stared. I appreciate this value which empowers entrepreneurs who often don't have the means otherwise. But this business model sets their future prospects up to be the most successful they can be with the free value they are offering. Good on them. Otherwise, the software is very versatile and useful especially in it's core functionality being so simple but also it's capability as a single sign on of sorts with as much third party extensibility as there is you can pretty much login into anything you need with so many integrations that they offer being commonplace or popular among various business channels. I do with there was a native Windows desktop app but at least it's available in their store by a third party.