Karen Schoellkopf

A bunch of the Harvest team will be out at SXSW this year (10 of us to be exact) and we’d love to know who else will be there.

Pipe up if you’ll be at SXSW, and feel free to share what you’re most looking forward to catching in Austin this year.

Sign up for our no-spam SXSW list through the link below and we’ll let you know about a couple special things we’ll be doing for our customers while we’re in Austin:
http://hrv.st/fgHuf3

@tdemoss and @psheppard – have you guys checked out our timestamp feature, which we rolled out last year? This allows you to see when timers were started and stopped – Read about it here: http://www.getharvest.com/blog/2010/01/new-feat...

@mckinleybrown Yes, you can submit bug reports to:
support [AT] harvestapp [DOT] com, and thanks!

Hello all of you Android app requesters! While we are currently working on an Android App, we wanted to share with you that Harvest superfan Kyle Stewart has released a free Android App for Harvest! You can check out the website here: http://bit.ly/bDKyv9 or download directly via QR code: http://bit.ly/cQh3Lc – enjoy!

@robertm We’re excited about supporting payment gateways too, thanks! Thanks for letting us know you’d like to see integration with eWay – we’ll make a note of it.

@kjr87 Thanks for writing in, I know we hit you back via support email, and know that we will be improving the project budget report in the future.

@sandy We’ve seen this problem with customers when their character encoding has been changed.

In Firefox mine is set to:
In Firefox → Tools →Options →Content→Fonts and Colors→Advanced:
Western (ISO-8859-1)

You could also try some Unicode settings. In Chrome there is a similar choice in the View > Encoding menu. This could be causing your problem.

We have had one customer with a corrupted font that was causing the problem. He reinstalled the font and all was good.

One last tip, from another customer, to change the “Allow pages to choose their own font” option (Firefox):
View→Character encoding→auto-detect→set it to off
Tools→Options→Content→is the default font set to Times New Roman?

Tools→Options→ Content→Fonts and Colors→Advanced→Is the checkbox
checked for “allow pages to choose their own font”? If it isn’t – check it.

If it is – uncheck it and see what happens. By doing this it cleared up the problems.

Hope that helps!

@Jordan @Jim I’ve made a note of your requests – thanks for the feedback!

@Jim Just FYI, we’ve definitely noted that you’d like to see a way to track both internal and external rates for contractors.

@cipher Thanks for the heads up on this – we’ll have our team look into this!

@vinz Glad we got everything sorted out for you!

@hrobins Huh- this is an interesting question. What would make this “job #”, or Project Code, work for you? Tags on time entries? Searchable Detailed Notes field? Selectable dropdown? Curious what would be a workable solution for your use case.

Thanks for letting us know @Brent, we’ll make a note of it, but in the meantime, you will just need to let your employees know they need to submit notes for all time entries.

@tigeda Thanks for the suggestion for fixed fee expenses, we’ll make a note of it!

@Yariv Our project status report is for active projects only, since inactive projects would have a defined status.

@jfw Thanks for the feedback and the example – we’ll make a note of it for future updates to Harvest.

@drodrigz Thanks for the feedback, and having a way to store historical rates is a feature on our list. For the time being, we would suggest actually opening a new project, with the new rate, so that you can maintain the changes and costs associated. For reports, you can export to Excel or CSV from both projects, and then merge them in a spreadsheet program (like Excel, Numbers, Neo Office, Google Docs, etc).

@chernesk Thanks for sharing this!

@hrobins Sorry to hear about this problem, and that we didn’t see this earlier – are you still having problems with the Mac widget? If so, please write us in at supportATharvestappDOTcom so that we can help troubleshoot.

@bien Thanks for the nudge, we’ve actually gone ahead and pushed out our retainer feature:
http://www.getharvest.com/blog/2010/07/new-feat…
While a feature for credits is on our radar, it’s not yet in active development.

@nathanwaters Our PayPal integration is manual, not automatic, but thanks for letting us know it’s something you’d like to see – we’ll make a note of it!

@mylesdavidson Just wanted to let you know we hear you, and we’ll make a note of it. Would love to hear how other people are handling similar situations.

@biklops Thanks for letting us know you’d like the ability to add internal notes to invoices – This is a feature on our list for the future, and we’ll make a note of your interest.

@lmarburger Thanks for letting us know! Support for invoice customization, including this kind of issue of two different billing addresses, is a feature on our list, and we hope to have that ready at some point in the future. Thanks for the feedback!

@Pigeon Thanks for the Android App interest – no production plans yet, but we’re definitely noting the interest/feedback – thanks for letting us know you’d like to see one!

@jayne Thanks for clarifying – we’ll make a note of it!

@thisisrobv Thanks for letting us know, we’ll make a note of it!

@jross @niccottrell this is definitely something that’s on our radar – thanks for sharing your thoughts!

@shane-c Thanks for letting us know, this idea of “nested projects” or “sub-projects” is a feature on our list.

Hi @jayne, there’s not currently a way to have taxes on expenses, but this is definitely a feature on our list. Thanks for letting us know it’s something you’d like to see!

@jross yes, @jimkring is correct, I would suggest having a project per month. You can quickly duplicate projects under Manage > Projects, and adjust your budgets as needed for the month.

@jross Yes, set your hour budget under Manage > Projects > (click into your project) > Budget. Select the option for Total project hours, or Hours per task, if you’d like a more detailed breakdown of hours. You can even have Harvest automatically email you once you’ve reached a certain percent of your budget, by clicking the corresponding checkbox in that same section.

@JimKring I posted the answer here, hope it’s helpful:
http://forum.getharvest.com/forums/feature-requ…

“@JimKring The only difference is that a contractor cannot be a project manager or an administrator; an employee can. There are no other functional differences.”

@JimKring The only difference is that a contractor cannot be a project manager or an administrator; an employee can. There are no other functional differences.

@CarstenD Sorry, but there’s currently no way of “archiving” estimates, and it’s not a feature we’re pursuing at this time. The estimates are just there – and we only show the most recent few (so if you have more accepted estimates, it’ll push down the old ones and you don’t have to see them).

Hi @kewcreative thanks for letting us know, and yes, having a client log-in is a feature on our list.

hey all, including @maryam and @onetwentysix, thanks for the suggestions, we’re working towards making our invoices more customizable, and we appreciate the feedback!

Hey all, thanks for the suggestion – having a day rate is a feature on our list, and we’ve noted your interest!

Hi @dragulescu you can change your own address under Invoices > Configure > Company Information. Hope that helps you out!

Thanks for letting us know @imp, and for the time being, you can just export the report to Excel, and delete the tax column(s) for reports without tax.

@jim thanks for clarifying this, and we’ll make a note of it!

@supersusie Thanks for all of the details, and this too is a feature on our list for the future!

Thanks for letting us know @susie, and thanks all for the feedback. This is a feature on our list for the future – we’ve noted the interest!

@Yariv You can also click on the expenses in this same view, and it will bring you to a Project Lifespan (“all time”) expenses report for that project.

@Yariv If you go to Reports > Project Status > Active Projects, and select your project, it will give you a Project Lifespan report (“all time”). From there, click on the total hours (or the task hours, or the people hours), and your Detailed Report will be generated.

@Jordan Thanks for your thoughts, I just wanted to be clear about our general policy, and the likelihood of instituting the feature. Like I said: noted!

Sure, just write us in at support here: http://www.getharvest.com/help/contact

Let us know via that contact form what your URL currently is, and what you’d like it to be, and we’ll make the change for you.

Also, to be honest, we will most likely not pursue this type of a feature, as it enables people to double-charge for their time, which is a feature we are not inclined to support.

@rob thanks – this is a feature on our list!

@chris thanks for the feedback, and no, we do not currently include project management capabilities, but we hope to support resource management and forecasting in the future.

@Anthony Thanks for letting us know your thoughts!

@william thanks for letting us know – we’ll make a note of it, and we sure appreciate the kind words.

@mmoore @ajennings @Jordan Thanks for the feedback, and if you have left a timer running, the running timer will tell you when the timer was initially started. It will not currently give you this information if the timer has already been stopped. But stay tuned for a timestamp feature on the horizon!

@Jordan @William Thanks for letting us know – we’ll make a note of it!

@robertcole Your urgency is noted, and we’re sorry for any inconvenience. Unfortunately, we do not release timelines for feature releases.

@david Thanks for letting us know – approval by different timeframes (the month, or biweekly) is a feature on our list for the future. Also, stay tuned, timestamps are definitely on the horizon!

@Jim Yes, thanks, I was actually going to email you directly about this – thanks, and I’ll be in touch shortly!

@Yariv @Jim Unfortunately, we cannot support the flexibility of something like Excel at this time. That said, we’d love to know your specific use cases – “with any parameters and any hierarchal order” is quite a tall order, and I’d like to get a better sense of exactly what you’re requesting.

Are you looking for additional sorting options? Which ones would you utilize most? Variable columns? How so?

Hey all, thanks for the input, and @kulvik, your fellow Harvester @Jim Kring gave some great advice: go to Invoices > Report > Create New Report, to find specific invoices, as either an Invoice Reports or Payments Received Reports. You can export any of these reports to Excel, if you need to further manipulate the data.

Thanks for the feedback on the changes you’d like to see in the Invoices Dashboard with more sophisticated search functionality, we’ll make a note of it!

@robert @tcoombs @josh @Thought Nozzle This is definitely on our radar, thanks for the feedback.

These are all great suggestions, thanks everyone – we’re al ears, so feel free to keep letting us know what you’re looking for!

in via Thought Nozzle Jan 12, 2010, 05:10AM:

original post here:
http://forum.getharvest.com/forums/feature-requ…

I’d like to be able to easily — and with some granularity — comp a certain amount of time on a per-task or per-project basis
When I’m working on a project and performing an unfamiliar task, I may underestimate the amount of time it takes to accomplish — as I did recently, designing PDF forms with calculations for a client. In order to come in at budget — or at least a renegotiated amount over — I need to be able to comp the client a certain amount of time for the task — often across several time sheet entries.
In my own home-grown Filemaker solution, I can see how much time I’ve actually spent on a task, along with the amount of time and money I’ve comped the client for on a particular task or project, which is valuable for project post-mortem, and great reinforcement for making the estimate more accurate next time. :)
As it is, I can currently create a “comped time” item to add to a timesheet or an invoice, but it would be cumbersome to add and track on a per-task basis — especially since my tasks tend to be more fine-grained than just “graphic design” or “web design”. I have many clients for whom I do “sub-projects”, for which I bill them on a per-piece basis. So even though I’ve just started with Harvest, I can tell my Tasks dropdown menu is going to get very long… But that’s really for another thread. :)
So… I guess this is kind of a second to the write-up/write-down feature request in the linked post…
Thanks!

@Though Nozzle Thanks for this, I’m actually just going to copy/paste your request into that thread, so that it actually does link.

@jlrdouglas @Steve @josh The ability to have dual rates for employees & contractors is a feature on our list. Thanks for letting us know it’s important for your workflow!

@Bob Thanks for letting us know, we’ll make a note of it!

@sbaker Sure. Go to Reports > Time, and select the correct timeframe. From there, you can click on “View hours by people and tasks”, and this will give the the cumulative amount due per person. Hope that is helpful to get you started with the Reports tab, and have fun exploring the possibilities!

@Yariv Check the URL that you visit when you go to Harvest. If you have bookmarked the login page, it will force the login every time. So make sure you bookmark the page that looks like this:
http://YOURURL.harvestapp.com/

Hi @Yariv, thanks for letting us know, and we have something similar going on in this thread:
http://forum.getharvest.com/forums/feature-requ…
This is a feature on out list, & thanks for the feedback!

Thanks for the feedback @Yariv, we’ll make a note of it. In the meantime, you can export your reports to Excel (under More Actions > Export to Excel) to manipulate the information in whatever order you would like, and delete columns you would not like to see.

@Justin Thanks for the suggestion – noted. In the meantime, it seems the best way to do this is to set up two recurring invoices. Set one up as you would like it, and then go to “More Actions” pulldown menu and select “Duplicate”. Simply change the date, and you will have identical recurring invoices for both the 1st and 15th of the month.

@Steve for a half year billing cycle, you can set the frequency to Custom at 182 days. Hope that’s helpful!

We would suggest doing as @Jason suggested, to archive temp users when they are no longer working with you. This will free up that user to be used by someone else, or another temp user.

You can archive or reactivate a user by going to Manage > People. Click on a person’s name, and on the person’s profile page, you’ll find the link to archive or re-activate a user.

Once a user is archived, they will no longer be able to sign into your account. Their data will be preserved, however, and you will still have access to their data.

Hey @Jim, thanks for letting us know – we’ll look into it and sort it out.

Thanks for all of the detailed notes @Jim and @Chris, this is really helpful as we keep expanding with more updates and improved features – we appreciate you sharing your workflow, and the workarounds you’ve needed to employ. We’re listening, and will keep this in mind as we grow Harvest’s functionality.

@frontstudio Sorry to hear it, please get in touch through our support system when it happens, here’s a quick link:
http://www.getharvest.com/help/contact

And we’d be happy to discuss further and investigate your specific issue.

@robert We are looking to support credits in the future. For now, we would suggest keeping a note of the credit in Manage > Project > (click into project) > Notes, and applying the credit when you run your invoice, as a negative number on it’s own line item.

Thanks for all of the feedback about exporting invoices (and sorting), and yes, we would be happy to work with Xero to integrate Harvest data with their program. We offer a full featured API, which can be found here:
http://www.getharvest.com/api

Until we are able to offer a seamless integration, the API is the way to go.

@Adam, thanks for letting us know, and that’s something for us to think about.

In the meantime, a possible solution to your dilemma in our current functionality: you have account #1 associated with the iPhone app, and account #2 could be associated with our Twitter integration via SMS text. Read more about it here:
http://www.getharvest.com/labs/twitter

Hope that’s helpful!

We are looking to support vacation days/sick days in a more seamless way in the future, and we appreciate you letting us know that it’s important to you!

Hey everyone, thanks so much for all of the detailed feedback for this request. This sort of a features is on our list for future enhancements. We’ll certainly refer to your detailed notes when we do look to develop this feature. Thanks!

@sarah You can track vacation or sick time as tasks to a project called “Internal” – Harvest actually sets up the “Internal” project for you when you first sign up for a new account, but if you have deleted it, you can create a new one under Manage > Projects.

@sol there is no way to re-order the line items at this time, but it’s a feature on our list – thanks for the feedback!

@Koen We have no ETA for you, but we’re actively exploring what we could do to develop this feature, and your feedback certainly helps us uncover what’s most important in a retainer feature, and how you would use it, as well as this API situation you have created to help meet your needs!

You may want to start a new thread in feature requests for contracts, here are a few questions to think about to kick it off:
1. How is the separate “contract” feature different from what is offered with our estimates (which allow for “accept/decline”)?
2. How would you deal with contracts if there weren’t a electronic signature option, or, what is necessary to deal with contracts digitally?

@Jim thanks for letting us know, and we’ll certainly be thinking about how to make things more clear. You can reach the help and contact pages from within your Harvest account (via the help button in the upper right corner of each page), but we’ll certainly take this into consideration for future updates to http://www.getharvest.com – thanks for the feedback!

And now RSS feed is also possible for recent posts, categories, and topics:

To watch the most recent posts:
feed://forum.getharvest.com/posts.atom

To watch a particular search, append “?q=searchterm” (in this case, “api”):
feed://forum.getharvest.com/posts.atom?q=api

To watch a particular topic:
feed://forum.getharvest.com/forums/feature-requests/topics/calculated-hours/posts.atom

To watch a particular category:
feed://forum.getharvest.com/forums/town-square/posts.atom

This is a great suggestion, we’ll look to add a link to the Forum from the Help section – thanks!

Hey all, thanks for the feedback, we really appreciate it.

We actually will have a blog post coming out shortly, so that we can explain all of the changes, and the reasons for them. Thanks for your patience – we will get that out asap.

in the meantime, we have indeed brought the stopwatch timer animation back (we’re still tweaking it, we know it looks a bit fast right now), so thanks for letting us know that it’s important to you.

We will continue to tweak the new Timesheet design, so thanks for the feedback, and please feel free to keep it coming.

@erik We’re still tweaking the new Timesheet, but yes, the spinning stopwatch is back, and here to stay.

@bill yes, the Project Notes is the best place for now to add this information, and it’s a feature on our list to associate clients with projects

If a timesheet is locked because the hours have been invoiced, the administrator will have to go to Reports > Detailed Time and run a report for those hours, and then on the resulting report, click on the button Mark hours as uninvoiced.

http://www.getharvest.com/help/section/1#faq95

Hope this is helpful!

@Jim You can rename “Estimate” to whatever you prefer, as Josh suggested, under Estimates > Configure > Translations!

This is definitely a feature on our list, and thanks for letting us know!

@Jim Thanks for the tips, we’ll be improving the forum as we go along, and we’ll add the RSS feed icon/link soon!

@Darren Yes, you can manually insert line breaks in the Description field, by just hitting return after the first line.

@Andreas @Jim These are both great suggestions, thanks, and we hope people keep em coming!

@Mario Yes, Jim is indeed correct, you can upload your company logo under Invoices > Configure > Company Information

We understand there are many different invoice formats, especially between the US and Europe. Let us know what you would like to be able to customize on your invoices, and please post an example of an invoice template you are currently using.

We would really like to implement a Project Retainer feature, but we need to know more. How would you like to see this feature realized? As a monthly, weekly, or yearly retainer? Do you track it as a flat rate or by hours (and do you break it down by task hours or people hours)? Do you roll over the retainer, or is it set up as a recurring fee? What other requirements should we know about?

A frequent request we have is for a Client Account Statement, which shows outstanding and late invoices. In what form would you need this to appear? How would you like the information to be communicated to your client (via a Client Log In, an email from Harvest, or a PDF)?

This is a great place to let us know what new features you would like to see in Harvest, and the specific ways we could implement them to enhance your Harvest experience. Our ears are open, and we’re eager to hear what you think!

Karen
HARVEST, Community Manager

Hi there, I’m Karen, and I’m the Community Manager here at Harvest. Is it 3AM and you just need to know how to do one little thing? The Help forum is the perfect place to post your question, and your fellow Harvest users might be able to pipe up right away about he best way to do it. Share your knowledge, and find out new ways around any question you might have.

This is a great space to ask questions about anything you might need help figuring out in Harvest, and I, and the rest of the Harvest community, will do our best to help you out. Share your Harvest expertise with others by answering questions you know the answers to, your fellow Harvest users will love you forever!

Karen
HARVEST, Community Manager