27 November 2007 - 23:05Harvest: Great tool for tracking time

As my freelance workload has increased over the past several months, and I found myself more frequently quoting estimates on new projects, it became clear that I was in need a better way to track my time than waiting until the end and guessing how much time it took me. And since I’ve started tracking my time, I’ve realized I was way under quoting myself.

I spent a few hours reviewing some of the best time tracking tools for what I needed to do, and settled on Harvest.

It’s easy to set up Jobs, set your rate for various tasks, and create predefined tasks lists for easy addition to a new project. I also like that you can plug in your estimate for a project and see how you’re measuring up in actual time spent.

If you know me well at all, you know that customer service is HUGE to me - just as important as the product itself in most cases. Harvest sent me an e-mail a few days into my trial to ask me what I thought. I responded favorably, and they responded to that to say thanks and encouraged me to contact them with any questions or comments. I like to know that someone is available if I need them, and genuinely interested in improving their product. I am happy to support them.

You can get a free fully functional trial for 30 days.