Harvest Vs Fresh Books
While Fresh Books might have a few more features and seem a bit more intuitive, Harvest ended up being the way to go for my freelance design business because it allows for unlimited clients at the base price (~12/month). Fresh Books cuts you off after 25 clients and then charges you ~$40/month for unlimited clients. I would love for a few more features but Harvest is the way to go for small businesses getting started.
Don’t Get Stuck!
Choosing the right app for invoicing and time tracking can be tricky because you need to input your data to figure out if the app is right for you, but by the time you figure out that it isn’t, it becomes a tedious process to move your data anywhere else. It seemed like Fresh Books billing plan played into that, which turned me off a little from them and seemed shady.
Test each app with a small data set before jumping all the way in and think about the long term growth of your business when looking at pricing plans.
I was lucky that my company is still in it’s infancy and I only had a week’s worth of time tracking and invoices to haul from Fresh Books to Harvest once I did the math and realized I needed a cheaper option and didn’t want to get capped at 25 clients.
My Wish List for Harvest
I tried Fresh Books before Harvest because of the reviews I read online. I was very close to buying a year subscription before I read about the 25 client cap at the base price. I chose Harvest because the price was in the realm I could afford, and because it still did mostly everything I needed. Here are a few things I wish Harvest could do:
- A separate expenses tab – Having to click time sheets to get to my expenses seems unintuitive and hidden. I would like it to be easier to log office supplies expenses for my company without having to fake that I am my own client.
- Dashboard as first screen – When I first log in to Harvest I would like to be brought to graphs, charts, and details about my account. (That might be counter to what Rory Sutherland had to say about Online Banking.)
- Big Timer Button – It’s small, and unintuitive for me. Then, once I click it, I forget I clicked it and it runs my time until they send me an email asking me if I am really still working at 4am (I did actually like getting that email from them).
- Better Usability with Projects – I would love when I click done on a timer for a project it prompts me to input what tasks I worked on during that time. This would allow for detailed invoices. Currently, there is one big overview description for the project and when I go to create an invoice I edit each description to fit in with the tasks. Maybe I missed a tutorial somewhere?
- Client Log-In – Maybe this is the trade off in price. Fresh Books allowed clients to log in and see / pay there invoices online.
- Custom Colors – There is a small range of colors to choose from when customizing your app, it would be great to allow for a custom hex value to be applied so that my company’s color could be used.
- Descending Activity Feeds and Time sheets - This would allow me to easily see my history. Without having to scroll form week to week.
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