Modern-day project managers have an array of tools at their disposal to help them make informed decisions about when and how to reap the fruits of their labor. Among these digital aids are Harvest and Toggl – two project management software solutions designed specifically for tracking time spent on tasks.

As a guiding hand leading your team toward success, you may be left wondering: Which tool will yield bountiful results without leaving anyone in the dust?

To answer this question, we'll dive into an in-depth comparison between Harvest vs. Toggl – so you can make an informed decision that leads your projects toward timely completion while keeping everyone engaged along the way.

Overview of Harvest and Toggl

Below, we’ll present a brief overview of the two project management software options - Harvest and Toggl - to give you an idea of what each platform brings to the table in terms of features, services, and user experience.

Harvest: Key Features and Benefits

Our very own time tracking tool – Harvest – helps various teams, ranging from small businesses to large enterprises, streamline their time tracking, task management, and payment processes — all in one place. Its primary capabilities include:

  • Time tracking
  • Expense management
  • Invoicing and billing
  • Reporting and analytics

Harvest provides seamless integration with popular third-party applications, including Asana, Trello, Slack, and many others, to ensure a smooth and efficient collaboration experience for users.

Toggl: Key Features and Benefits

Toggl provides tools for time tracking and project management. The platform equips businesses with solutions for:

  • Time tracking
  • Project management
  • Employee monitoring
  • Reporting and analytics

Much like Harvest, Toggl offers integrations with other popular applications, such as Google Calendar, Asana, and GitHub. This enables users to optimize their workflows and improve overall productivity.

Maximizing Team Productivity: A Comparison of Harvest and Toggl

In today's fast-paced work environment, optimizing team productivity is crucial. With many businesses implementing work-from-home policies, project managers are actively seeking tools to help maximize their teams' efficiency. 

Two popular time tracking and productivity tools, Harvest and Toggl, have effectively addressed this demand. In this section, we will provide an analysis of the productivity features offered by both Harvest and Toggl to help you make an informed decision.

Team Productivity Features in Harvest

To comprehend and optimize team performance, it is essential to have clear visibility into the hours each team member has contributed to various projects. Harvest offers this functionality, presenting a detailed analysis of time spent on different tasks or projects by individual team members. This, in turn, allows project leaders to monitor work distribution and identify any inefficiencies.

Harvest's detailed reporting provides actionable data, enabling project leaders to gain valuable insights into areas that require improvement. The analysis further empowers project managers to allocate resources more accurately and effectively. This continuous feedback loop optimizes productivity and helps project leaders make informed decisions on resource allocation, leading to enhanced efficiency and project success.

Team Productivity Features in Toggl

Toggl shares a similar functionality with Harvest when it comes to providing insights into team members' hours. The software offers an overview of the hours contributed by individual team members to various tasks and projects.

Both Harvest and Toggl offer robust features aimed at increasing team productivity by providing detailed insights into individual team members' work hours and actionable data for guiding optimal resource allocation. By assessing the specific needs and preferences of your organization, you can choose the right tool to efficiently streamline and enhance your team's productivity.

Harvest Reporting: A Closer Look

Harvest offers a wide range of graphical and visual reports that help users gain a better understanding of project progress, time allocation, and overall efficiency. These reports allow team members and project managers to quickly determine where imbalances or bottlenecks may lie, ultimately improving project management decisions.

To ensure timely project delivery, it's crucial to have detailed insights into project performance. Harvest provides users with extensive information about ongoing projects, enabling adjustments to estimates, deadlines, and resources based on data-driven information. This allows for course corrections and helps ensure that project requirements are met without unnecessary delays or setbacks.

Toggl's Reporting Capabilities

Similar to Harvest, Toggl's reporting features include more limited selections of graphical and visual reports that provide a quick overview of a project's status and help identify areas that may need attention or improvement. However, it's important to note that Toggl's reporting functionalities are not offered on the free plan, like they are with Harvest's platform. 

Toggl offers users access to information on project performance, budgets, estimates, and individual team member contributions. 

Comparing Invoicing and Payments between Harvest & Toggl

In this section, we will delve into the invoicing and payment features of the two popular time tracking and productivity tools - Harvest and Toggl. Both platforms offer an array of features to help users manage their invoicing and payment needs effectively. 

Comprehensive Invoicing and Payment Features of Harvest

Harvest provides users with extensive invoicing capabilities. Here are some of the key invoicing features offered by Harvest:

Versatile invoicing options

Harvest allows users to create invoices based on various pricing models, including hourly rates for time-based billing, fixed project fees for one-time projects or milestone-based contracts, and retainer-based pricing for ongoing or long-term client relationships.

Smooth integration with payment platforms

Harvest's invoicing system works well with widely-used payment platforms such as PayPal and Stripe, enabling clients to pay invoices online without hassle. This built-in flexibility makes the payment collection process more efficient and user-friendly.

Invoicing and Payment Features of Toggl

Some of the key invoicing features offered by Toggl are:

Separation of billable and non-billable hours

Toggl provides a way for users to separate billable hours from non-billable hours, ensuring accurate invoicing and preventing confusion about the services rendered.

Simplified invoicing process

Toggl's invoicing process allows users the ability to create and send invoices to clients. They take a streamlined approach to invoicing to try to ensure that users don’t feel overwhelmed with the tedious aspects of billing. 

While both Harvest and Toggl provide valuable invoicing and payment features to help freelancers, contractors, and businesses manage their financial transactions efficiently, Harvest offers more extensive invoicing options and seamless integration with popular payment gateways. 

Harvest's Pricing Plans

Harvest offers two main pricing plans to cater to a range of users:

Harvest Free Plan

  • Cost: This plan is completely free.
  • Included features: The free plan includes access for 1 user (seat), allows for 2 active projects, white glove support, and includes basic time tracking capabilities.
  • Best for: Freelancers, consultants, small-to-medium sized businesses, enterprise businesses, or those just getting started with time tracking for their business.

Harvest Paid Plan

  • Cost: The paid plan starts at $10.80 per seat per month (billed annually). Alternatively, it's available for $12.00 per seat per month when billed monthly. Harvest also offers discounts for NPO and educational institutions, along with 10% off annual subscriptions for teams under 50 users and 15% off the annual subscription for teams of more than 50 users.
  • Included features: With the paid plan, users receive unlimited projects, team schedules, and other advanced features like invoicing and advanced reporting.
  • Best for: Large or growing teams that require more extensive features and flexibility for managing their time tracking and projects.

Toggl's Pricing Plans

Toggl offers a more tiered pricing structure, with three main plans to choose from:

Toggl Free Plan

  • Cost: Similar to Harvest, this plan is also free to use.
  • Included features: The free plan can accommodate up to 5 users and offers very basic time tracking features. 
  • Best for: Small teams that want to test out the platform for basic time tracking without committing to a subscription.

Toggl Starter Plan

  • Cost: The Starter plan is priced at $10 per user per month (billed monthly).
  • Included features: In addition to what is offered in the free plan, the Starter plan provides advanced reporting, project estimates, additional integrations, and billable rates.
  • Best for: Small-to-medium-sized teams that require more advanced reporting and project management tools, as well as additional customization options.

Toggl Premium Plan

  • Cost: Toggl's Premium plan comes in at $18 per user per month if billed annually, or $20 per user per month if billed monthly, which is quite pricy. 
  • Included features: The Premium plan offers team management tools, priority support, advanced customization options, time audits, and more, on top of the features provided in the Starter plan.
  • Best for: Larger or rapidly growing organizations that need the most comprehensive features to manage their teams and projects efficiently.

Both Harvest and Toggl offer solutions tailored to a range of users and business sizes. The best choice for you ultimately depends on your specific needs, budget, and required features. 

Integrations and Compatibility

In today's connected world, it is essential for time tracking software to seamlessly integrate with other tools and platforms, thereby streamlining the workflow and increasing overall efficiency. In this section, we will discuss the integrations and compatibility of two popular time tracking tools, Harvest and Toggl.

Harvest Integrations

Harvest integrates with various productivity tools and project management applications, enabling teams to track time efficiently and manage invoicing with ease. Some of the most popular Harvest integrations include:

  • Asana: Facilitating easy time-tracking on tasks within Asana, providing insights into how much time is being spent on projects, and promoting effective time management.
  • Basecamp: Integrating with Basecamp, Harvest allows users to track time for to-dos and estimate the completion of a project based on time usage.
  • QuickBooks: Streamlining the invoicing process by providing seamless synchronization between Harvest and QuickBooks, making financial management more efficient.
  • Slack: Enabling users to quickly log their hours, start and stop timers, and receive notifications in Slack, ensuring timely project updates and streamlined communication.
  • Trello: Offering the ability to log and estimate time for Trello cards, enhancing productivity and control over project management.
  • Zapier: Providing robust integration between Harvest and various tools through Zapier, a platform that connects different apps for improved workflows and productivity.

Toggl Integrations

Similar to Harvest, Toggl offers a broad range of integrations with popular tools and platforms, easing the process of measuring time usage and improving overall efficiency. Some of the most common Toggl integrations include:

  • Basecamp: Integrating with Basecamp, Toggl enables users to track time spent on to-dos, ensuring accurate project estimations.
  • Google Calendar: Offering seamless time-tracking and scheduling through integration with Google Calendar, which simplifies time management and enhances productivity.
  • JIRA: Providing efficient tracking of time on JIRA issues and delivering insights into time used for various tasks, enabling users to make informed decisions.
  • Trello: Enabling the addition of Toggl timers directly to Trello cards, which allows for easy time-tracking and improved project management.
  • Zapier: Facilitating connections between Toggl and numerous other apps through the Zapier platform, enhancing the efficiency of workflows and overall productivity.

Both Harvest and Toggl offer notable integrations that streamline the tracking of time usage and improve workflow efficiency. By integrating with popular tools and platforms, these time tracking tools help users make informed decisions and optimize their productivity.

The Verdict

Harvest shines with its seamless integrations, versatile invoicing options, and extensive reporting capabilities that empower project leaders to make well-informed decisions. Not to mention, Harvest's pricing is highly competitive and fits teams of all sizes. 

While each tool boasts unique strengths, it's ultimately up to you to decide which solution will best suit your needs. However, if we had to pick one tool for timely completion while keeping everyone engaged along the way, we'd tip our hat towards Harvest as the more comprehensive and seamless option.

Ready for quick results that help you and your team achieve your business goals? Give Harvest a try – it’s completely free for 30 days.