An interdisciplinary approach to design

AREA 17 is an interactive agency that takes an interdisciplinary approach to building web and mobile products. After years of working together, founders George Eid and Arnaud Mercier teamed up to build a new breed of interactive agency focused on products not campaigns. Now a ten year old company, AREA 17 is based in both New York City and Paris, with a team of about 40 people. With high profile clients like Spin, Facebook, The Atlantic, Google and Canal+, their broad range of interactive solutions continues to push the boundaries of what’s possible in the practices of design, technology and branding.

Keeping time tracking simple

Before Harvest, AREA 17 was using a different time taking solution, explains Operations Manager Ken Beasley. “The program we used offered a lot more features and settings. Though, in the end, it wound up being overly complicated to navigate all of those features, many of which were unnecessary.”

“We tried out a few different tools before ultimately finding Harvest. A lot of the staff here had dabbled with it in previous jobs. We decided to just jump in and really use it for a bit. It ended up working out great, and it became our main tool."

Once Area 17 adopted Harvest, they fell in love with its intuititive design. "Logging time was very easy, and we had fully transitioned from our previous tool, so we were committed to it. We love the simplicity of Harvest, we love the interface, and it has served us well for our time tracking needs.”

We love the simplicity of Harvest, we love the interface, and it has served us well for our time tracking needs.

Learn more about tracking time with Harvest

Straightforward invoicing

Ken also explains how they use Harvest for invoicing. “We use Harvest for straightforward invoicing. We bill according to our payment schedule, which is something that’s decided upon in our client agreements. At the beginning of the project when we’re building out the project in Harvest, we’re also setting up all of our invoices to bill fixed fees at determined intervals. It’s really worked out well for us, having this internal system that goes along with the payment schedule, which is now a well oiled machine, just like clockwork. We can easily check if the payment hasn’t come in yet, and it’s just become part of our day to day.

It’s really worked out well for us, having this internal system that goes along with the payment schedule, which is now a well oiled machine, just like clockwork.

Learn more about invoicing with Harvest 

Reporting made easy

Crystal Ginn, Director of Production, also weighed in on how AREA 17 utilizes Harvest reports. “We handle general reporting on a weekly and monthly basis. We have weekly gut checks on our project burns and forecasting profitability going forward. We love the filters available under reporting, i.e. custom reporting options. Most of our reporting reviews are internal, but we’ve recently started sharing the PDF views of reports with clients, which we’ve received positive feedback on in terms of clarity and legibility.”

According to founder George Eid, “Using Harvest has helped us become more proactive as a team. When timesheets are easy to enter, we have good data to work with. Everyone has a clear picture of how a project is progressing and can see problems before they happen – allowing us to respond and be more profitable without sacrificing creativity.” With their profit AREA 17 created an incubator and started to build their own products such as Krrb.com and Slash.fr.