In that spirit, we’ve introduced Answer Bot, a tool powered by ZenDesk that uses machine learning to select Help Articles you might find useful. 

Answer Bot is designed to help folks help themselves. Instead of leaving Harvest and going to the Help Center or the Contact page to email support, Answer Bot lives where you work, in Harvest itself. 

You may have already noticed it sitting in the bottom right corner of the screen in your Harvest account.

Ask a question, and Answer Bot will attempt to retrieve up to three relevant Help Center articles. If there is no satisfactory answer, you can click ‘Get In Touch’ and contact our support team directly. To find out more about how it works, read on below.

How it works:

When you ask Answer Bot a question, it will return up to three Help Center articles, which will then also appear in-app.

As I mentioned earlier, if the articles don’t solve your problem, they can click an option (the button in the previous screenshot that says Get In Touch) to open a ticket with the Support team.

Clicking on an article will bring it up within the bot, and you’ll be asked if it was helpful or not. If you say yes, you’ll stay on that page; if the answer is no, you’re asked why:

If you DON’T find an answer using Answer Bot, you can click Get in touch,  fill out some info about yourself, and contact us:

We hope Answer Bot makes it easier and more convenient for you to get the help you need while using Harvest!

The post Get Help Faster with Answer Bot appeared first on Harvest.

However, Harvest also strives to be a tool your team can get in and out of quickly. For some people, this can make it easy to forget about timesheets when they are busy doing meaningful work. And when someone is late entering their time for a week, you or their manager have to shoulder the responsibility of reminding them after-the-fact. This can make for an awkward conversation, especially if it needs to happen frequently and with the same team members.

We’ve heard of many interesting ways business owners and managers try to help their team remember to enter their time, so we’re excited to introduce a simple option right within Harvest: Timesheet Reminders.

With Timesheet Reminders, Harvest can take on the responsibility of reminding your team each week to fill in their timesheets, while you stay focused on more important work.

What are Timesheet Reminders?

You tell Harvest when you expect timesheets due every week (your Timesheet Deadline), and when Timesheet Reminders are enabled, Harvest will automatically send email reminders to everyone around that time. It’ll send an initial reminder about the deadline a few hours before, and if they miss it, send a second reminder a day later.

Timesheet Reminders in Harvest are also smart enough to only be sent to people that need it. If someone has already submitted or tracked their time for the week, they won’t get reminders that week. And if anyone on your team doesn’t ever need to track time, simply set their capacity to 0 and they won’t receive the reminders.

How to enable Timesheet Reminders in Harvest

You can enable them by heading to Settings > Edit Preferences and clicking the “Remind my team to enter time at the end of each week” checkbox next to Timesheet Reminders.

All of the functionality is customizable. You can choose any day and time of the week for your deadline, how many hours before and after the deadline you want the reminders to be sent, and if you want to remind your team to submit their timesheets for approval or just track time.

Harvest supports a few other methods of reminding your team to track or submit time. You can read about those in our Help Center.

Helping your team track time

Harvest is committed to being the best time tracking product for your business, and that means helping your team track time. We’re excited for this new feature to help us continue reaching for that goal and helping you feel confident in your reports and invoices.

We’ve learned that teams track time better when they use the tools we offer with Harvest. If you find your team is having trouble remembering to track, then in addition to trying Timesheet Reminders we’d also suggest looking into our desktop and mobile apps, browser extensions, calendar integrations, and other integrations that help your team track time in the software they use throughout the day.

The post Harvest Can Now Help Your Team Remember Their Timesheets appeared first on Harvest.

We’ll go into what’s happening technically, and then what you may need to do on your end below. 

Note that the customers who will be most impacted by this will be those using our API. We’ll be sending out reminders to those customers as August 3rd approaches.

What’s changing?

When your browser, app, or integration communicates with Harvest, all data is encrypted in transit, and all connections use TLS. There are multiple major versions of TLS, including v1.0, 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3. Versions 1.0 and 1.1 are deprecated and should no longer be used.

On August 3, 2020, we’ll require all communications with Harvest to use TLS version 1.2 or greater.

Who does this impact?

If you access Harvest from the web

If you use an updated and supported browser you don’t need to do anything. Here’s the list of supported browsers: https://help.getharvest.com/harvest/faqs/overview/supported-browsers/

If you access Harvest from an app (such as our mobile apps, or desktop apps for Mac and Windows)

To ensure the usage of TLS1.2  you need to use a recent version of our apps. You can download the most recent version of our apps from their respective app stores:

• Harvest for iPhone: https://www.getharvest.com/apps-and-integrations/iphone
• Harvest for Android: https://www.getharvest.com/apps-and-integrations/android
• Harvest for macOS: https://www.getharvest.com/apps-and-integrations/mac
• Harvest for Windows: https://www.getharvest.com/apps-and-integrations/windows

If you use the Harvest API

For API usage, check to see if you’re already using TLS 1.2 or greater. Luckily, if you are using modern versions of your programming language, HTTP libraries, and frameworks, you probably don’t need to update anything. 

If you do need to make updates, the steps to take will be different depending on your situation. If you’d like help determining how to upgrade, please reach out to us and include your programming language, HTTP library, and/or frameworks, and we’ll point you in the right direction.

What if I need to make these updates but I don’t?

If you do nothing and your browser/app/library uses TLS version 1.0 or 1.1, Harvest will refuse your app’s HTTP requests beginning August 3, 2020. This means you won’t be able to access Harvest or data stored in Harvest until you upgrade to use TLS version 1.2 or greater. We encourage you to upgrade before this date to not experience any problems.

The post Harvest is Deprecating TLS v1.0 and v1.1 appeared first on Harvest.

• Not being able to access multiple calendars
• Always having to enter the Project and Task for recurring calendar events

If either of these have rained on your parade, here’s a sprinkle of sunshine!

Accessing Multiple Calendars

Some customers need to access events from multiple calendars from their Google or Outlook.com account in Harvest, so we’ve added the ability to do exactly that! If you have multiple calendars we’ll show you a dropdown, allowing you to change where events are pulled from. Being able to access all of your calendars in Harvest means you’ll have all the necessary information to make time tracking faster.

Remembering Projects and Tasks for Recurring Calendar Events

I’m not going to lie – it’s kind of a drag having to enter the Project and Task for recurring calendar events, since they’re unlikely to change. We’ll now remember the Project/Task combination after the first Harvest timer you create for a recurring calendar event. Hey, it’s not a huge update – but it’s a nice quality-of-life improvement.

As always, we aim to help you track time quickly and with as little pain as possible. We hope these two updates make it a little easier for you to take advantage of our Timesheet Calendar integration!

The post Two New Features for the Harvest Calendar Integration appeared first on Harvest.

For Our Customers

First, your operation is important to us and during this difficult time, we would like to assure you that our services will be fully functional during this time. For current customers who are experiencing financial hardship and are trying to make ends meet, you have the option of pausing your account (here’s how for Harvest, and write us for Forecast). You won’t lose any historical data and you can reactivate any time within six months thereafter. If continued access to Harvest helps you hold on to your operations during this time and you’re experiencing extreme financial hardship, complete this form. (4/30 Update: applications are now closed) We’ll review the applications to help those most in need with potential sponsorship through April 30th. As a small business with our own constraints, we can’t commit to being able to help everyone, but we’ll do what we can.

For Our Team

Harvest is run by a team of 58 people spread around the world. While we’re already set up to operate in a distributed fashion and our products will not be negatively affected, all of our teammates are affected by this situation in a very real way. We are committed to supporting the team through this time by offering paid personal days for folks to tend to families and health as needed.

That said, our support team will continue to get back to inquiries within our normal response time and we will let you know on our contact form if our response times may be slower than usual.

For the Global Community

For those who are now faced with a path they need to forge ahead on their own — as a freelancer or entrepreneur — Harvest can help. Our free plan for individuals supports tracking time for up to two concurrent projects and invoicing at absolutely no cost.

If you are a part of a crisis response, medical research, or a non-profit team working to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, and you find Harvest helpful for your operation, complete this form. We’ll prioritize your request, and our Harvest Experts will be there to help you hit the ground running and offer support along the way.

For businesses of 50+ employees who are transitioning to working remotely and need a distributed way to manage your team’s time, Harvest Experts are on standby to help you on-board and transition quickly. Write to us.

In addition to helping the global community with our products and services, we are participating in the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund to support the World Health Organization. This donation helps WHO’s work to track and understand the spread of the virus; to ensure patients get the care they need and frontline workers get essential supplies and information; and to accelerate efforts to develop vaccines, tests, and treatments.

These are unprecedented and trying times for all of us. Let’s be extra patient, kind, and supportive of one another. Let’s turn this into a time of resilience. Let’s get through this together.

The post Our COVID-19 Response appeared first on Harvest.

Maybe you’re rushing to pick up coffee before the next meeting. Maybe you’re out with clients and you don’t want to waste that face-to-face time looking at your phone. Or maybe you prefer to do your housekeeping at the end of the day.

Whatever the reason, you don’t always have a spare minute to hunt down the Harvest app on your iPhone, head to Expenses, take a picture, and enter the details. It’s simpler to snap a picture and take care of it later. 

For those occasions, our latest Harvest for iOS feature should be right up your alley. 

Harvest for iOS is one of the easiest ways to add expense receipts and document your purchases. We’re streamlining that process even more by introducing a new share extension for photos.

When you’re viewing an image on your phone, you can now create an expense in Harvest for that image via the share option. Here’s what it looks like:

This is useful for those times you want to snap a picture of your receipt and create the expense later. It’s also handy if you’ve been emailed a copy of your receipt, or if you saved a copy of your receipt to iCloud Drive to file those expenses during your commute.

We hope this helps you fit Harvest expensing into even more of your existing workflows!

The post A faster way to add expenses on iOS appeared first on Harvest.

Historically, this has been a bit of a headache to correct. Fiddling with report filters to hone in on specific entries can be time-consuming—Sometimes flat-out impossible! Your only other option is to manually correct your teammates’ timesheet, chewing up a lot of time.

We’re excited to offer you a much faster and easier option! From the Detailed Time and Expense reports, you can now select individual time and expenses entries to bulk edit.

How to Select Specific Entries for Editing

If you’re a Harvest Administrator, run a Detailed Time or Expense Report. Next, check the boxes next to the entries you’d like to bulk edit. Once you’ve finished selecting entries, click the Actions button, choose your desired action—for example, Move to another task or Mark as uninvoiced, and voilà! Harvest will only include the entries you selected in your bulk action.

If all the entries in the report need to be updated, you can continue to bulk edit the same way you’ve always been able to without having to individually check time or expense entries.

Part of our mission at Harvest is to respect your time and help you maximize it. We hope this new feature is another small step towards that goal!

The post Easier Bulk Editing for Time and Expenses appeared first on Harvest.

When the dust finally settles, and we go to track our time the following day (or week), we have to cobble together a recollection of that time, asking ourselves “What on earth did I work on, and when did I work on it?!” It’s ok, we’ve all been there. It’s hard enough for me to remember what I had for lunch yesterday. Recreating a day’s worth of work, especially if it was incredibly busy, can be really tough!

Introducing Calendar Events in Harvest

We’ve heard from a lot of our customers who regularly reference their calendar when entering time into Harvest. That got us thinking: “Is there a way we can pull our calendars into Harvest?” As you’ve probably guessed by this point, the answer is “Most definitely!”

We’re happy to announce that over the next few days we’ll be rolling out the ability to connect Harvest with either Google or Outlook.com to pull your calendar events into your timesheet. You’ll no longer have to flip back and forth between Harvest and your calendar: you’ll now be able to reference what you worked on while tracking time. We’ve even made it faster to track time, since you can now click on a calendar event in Harvest, populating the new timer with all the relevant information.

How to Get Calendar Events to Appear in Your Timesheet

We’ve tried to make it as easy as possible to get calendar events into your timesheet. The next time you create a new entry in your Timesheet Day View, we’ll give you the opportunity to connect with either your Google or Outlook.com account.

Once you’ve connected to your calendar, we’ll immediately start pulling events from those calendars for the day you’re entering time on!

To populate a Harvest timer, click on a calendar event. We’ll fill the new timer’s notes with the event summary, as well as the timer’s duration or start/stop end times (depending on your account settings).

Now all you need to do is select the timer’s project and task, and you’re done! If you’re interested in the finer details, be sure to check out our Help Center.

Here’s to Faster Time Tracking

We recognize that time tracking can be a burden—we want to simplify and speed up that process. Whether you track in real time, at the end of the day, or the end of the week, we feel confident that this new integration will help make time tracking easier for you.

The post A Faster Way to Track Time with Harvest appeared first on Harvest.

If you’ve found it difficult to focus on what you need, when you need it, I’ve got some good news. We’ve just made it a little bit easier to find the projects or teammates that’re most important!

Pin Projects and Teammates to Prioritize Your View

Most of the time, most people want to report on only a handful of projects or people. And those may not necessarily be the same projects or people your teammates focus on. Plus, the rest of Harvest’s data might be important every few weeks or months, but not every day.

On the Projects and Team Overviews, we’ve added the ability to pin projects and teammates to the top of the page! The great thing about pinning is that it’s personalized to you. Check out how easy it is:

• On the Projects Overview, click Actions > Pin on the project you’d like to pin. Now this project will always appear at the top of the Projects Overview until you unpin it.
• The process is similar for teammates. On the Team Overview, click Actions > Pin on the teammate, and then they’ll be listed at the top of the Team Overview until you unpin them.

Filter Pending Timesheets to View Just Your Team

It’s Friday afternoon, and you’re itching to get out of work for the weekend. The last thing you want to do is sift through 50 pending timesheets to find the few that actually matter to you!

To make your life a little easier, we’ve added a filter to the Pending Approval page to let you sort and approve timesheets by team roles, contractors, your pinned projects, or your pinned teammates.

Save Time in Harvest

We know you’re busy—the last thing you want to do is spend time trying to find the projects and teammates you need to see on a day-to-day basis. With these time-saving additions we’ll show you the right information at the right time.

The post Two New Features to Help You Prioritize Info appeared first on Harvest.

Previously, there wasn’t a clear place in Harvest for you to manage your contractors’ hours, whether you were trying to confirm the accuracy of a contractor’s invoice or just trying to figure out how much to pay them. First you’d have to run a report, filtered to just the contractors you were interested in, then export it to see their costs, and then sum that export to understand totals. Doing that every two weeks is tedious!

Today we’re introducing a new dedicated contractor report located in Harvest Reports. From here you can review your contractor’s time, view their total costs, and run or export a detailed time report. From here, you can see your contractor’s total tracked time and costs for any timeframe, or go to a more detailed report that shows the breakdown of their tracked time.

How do I review time and costs for my contractors in Harvest?

A person will show up in this new report as long as they’re designated as a contractor on their profile. This can be done when adding a new person to the team, or to edit an existing user profile go to Team, click on the person’s name, then click Edit Profile in the top right of their Person Page. They should also have a cost rate set up that’s equal to their hourly rate (what they charge you).

Once that’s done, go to the Contractor Report, filter by the timeframe you need, view the total hours and costs and you’ll be ready to review and pay your contractors for their time!

Our goal is to eventually have everything you need to manage contractors all in one place, and with this report we’re offering a first step towards making it easier to review time and pay your contractors.

The post It’s Now Easier to Review Your Contractors’ Time in Harvest appeared first on Harvest.