5 ways to automate Harvest

When it comes to projects and getting your best work done, a lot of teams rely heavily on project management tools to track tasks. The only problem? They don’t tell you where and when you’re at your most productive. 

A time-tracking tool like Harvest can give you that added insight, allowing you to track your (and your team’s) time, keep projects running smoothly, and create invoices based on billable hours. The end result is you’re able to focus your efforts on the work that matters most in a way that best works for you. 

But like any app, Harvest works best if it connects to your entire tech stack, including the apps you use to complete projects. With just a few Zaps—what we call our automated workflows—you can measure meetings, receive notifications, and create invoices for clients automatically.

Table of contents

Measure your meetings

Meetings are usually a big part of your working day—and need to be tracked accordingly. If you don’t, you won’t have an accurate picture of where you spend your time And if you are wasting valuable working time on meetings, tracking them can act as proof to cut back on them. 

But remembering to click a button in Harvest the moment you join a meeting is nobody’s idea of fun. Instead, you can use these Zaps to automatically start your timer in Harvest whenever a new event begins in your Google Calendar. Or, if you have standing meetings every week, you can automatically create time entries for them in Harvest. 

Alternatively, if you want your calendar to reflect where you’re spending your time, you can set Harvest to add those time entries as events in your calendar. The result? Full synchronization with your calendar and time-tracking tools.

Track your time in a spreadsheet 

If you’re spending the time to track your time, you probably want to gain some insights from it. You might use it to track your long-term productivity over a series of months, for example. Or you might want to share that data with any stakeholders at your company to streamline project management. 

Whatever the case, you’ll want to format that data in a spreadsheet (or database) of your choice. That way, you can present that information to other team members without them having to log into Harvest. These Zaps will automatically add all your time entries straight to Google Sheets or Airtable the moment they’re created (or updated). 

Manage your projects effectively

Do you track and log all of your projects in tools like Trello or Asana? I know my team does. It’s one of the best ways to make sure we’re divvying up the tasks that need doing—and how we know if things are completed or running behind. 

To make sure you’re capturing the time spent doing (or redoing) those tasks, you can use these Zaps to create time entries in Harvest whenever those projects are created or updated elsewhere. That way, everything stays completely in sync and you won’t have to worry about updating those time entries manually.

Streamline your invoices 

Does your accounting team use different tools to process invoices and bill clients? With automation, you can effortlessly duplicate invoices across different tools to ensure your billing records are consistent and up to date. 

Say, for example, that your clients are billed by the hour. With Harvest, you can create an invoice that logs those hours and then use Zapier to automatically create a corresponding invoice in another tool like Wave. That way, your finance team can then send those invoices to clients and get them paid. 

Send notifications for Harvest activity

As we’ve mentioned, Harvest isn’t just for logging time entries. You can also use it to create invoices and wider projects. If you (or your team) are busy moving these projects along from start to finish without much oversight, you’ll want to receive and send notifications so everyone can stay on the same page. 

These Zaps will send automatic notifications in your favorite team chat apps (or via email) whenever new activity is logged in Harvest. That way, everyone can work in sync and keep your clients happy. 

Measure your time and projects more effectively

When you connect Harvest to your other business-critical tools, you can better measure where you spend your time and cut out the unnecessary tasks from your (and your team’s) day.

But this is just the start of what you can do with Harvest and Zapier. What will you automate first?