Harvest vs. Square Invoices

Harvest is ideally suited for a variety of scenarios, particularly in the realms of freelance or consulting work, where accurate hour tracking for billing is crucial. It excels in small to medium businesses managing team projects, allowing for effective resource allocation and time management across multiple concurrent projects. For budgeting and forecasting, Harvest provides valuable data, aiding in accurately estimating the duration and cost of future projects based on past data. It's also highly beneficial for remote or distributed teams, thanks to its cloud-based platform that facilitates seamless coordination. Additionally, its detailed reporting features enhance client transparency, fostering trust through clear communication of time spent on projects. However, Harvest may be less suitable for larger enterprises with complex integration needs or specialized industries requiring more niche features. Small startups or individuals on tight budgets might find the cost challenging, especially if they don't fully utilize all its features. Lastly, for those needing only basic time tracking, simpler or free tools might be more appropriate, making Harvest an unnecessary expenditure for basic needs.

Incentivized

Square Invoices is the best service that I have found for what it does: it's easy to use, nice to look at, and never seems to go to spam or be lost by clients. Clients mention that the setup is easier than services my competitors use. You can even attach your contract to the invoice, which is wonderful in case there are questions later on. Unfortunately, not being able to have clients alter quantities or select add-ons means for half of my services, I have to use a different, inferior service.

Incentivized

• Consistently making updates to better serve their wide variety of users
• Allows for a decent amount of customization - you can put in different tasks for different departments, you can put in project costs on a one-time or recurring basis to compare time to money, etc.
• It's pretty easy to pull customizable reports to fit what data you want to look at.

Incentivized

• Very easy-to-use. Even non-technical users can very easily figure out how to send an invoice.
• Notifications of payment. You can see if the invoice has been viewed, and you can include attachments to the invoice (such as a contract)!
• Quick payouts straight to your bank account make life easy.
• Easy to use mobile app for on the go.

Incentivized

• We would love to see Harvest build a feature for more detailed proposals that could be signed by the client and then automatically be turned into a billable invoice. The estimate falls short of this for larger projects.
• Sending an invoice directly to the client from the Harvest dashboard can sometimes fail. Because it's coming from a spoofed email- some clients never get the invoice because it get's trapped in their spam folder.

Incentivized

• I wish there was a way to automatically calculate credit card processing fees based on an invoice's amount, and add that to the invoice

Incentivized

Again, just a minor compatibility issues using with other platforms such as Basecamp, but it does do everything promised. The only downfall we have found is having to create a job in both platforms and then connecting them later vs being able to create a project once and having them automatically connect.

Incentivized

I have not actually had any customer support issues as the product just works for me and I have not needed it. So using that as the basis of making my assessment on support I would reckon the team are pretty responsive and attentive to customer needs. I have only used the solution on Chrome and Android so have no idea what the experience is like on other browsers or phone operating systems.

Incentivized

The only time I had a problem was a false chargeback from a client. Square Invoices referenced our contract and ruled in my favor, and they did so in a timely manner. I sent them the contract and my email history with the client, and they quickly unfroze the amount of money.

Incentivized

Everhour is just very rudimentary and ugly. It did the okay for time tracking and basic reports — but it wasn’t very intuitive and could’ve been a lot more elegant. You couldn’t edit other users time or make corrections it was just a data pull and that was it.

Open air is even worse. it’s like something out of 1985. Extremely ugly and not at all easy to use. It fulfilled the basic requirement of tracking time and we did not use it for anything else. When they raised the price to eight grand a year, despite our limited use of it’s functionality. We quickly dropped them.

Incentivized

I feel that for what it does, Square Invoices outperforms its competition. Because we have used the program for several years, we have seen how they continue to improve their service - making it user-friendly and accessible for a variety of needs. Other platforms are not as easy to set up, add items, and access funds after payment is received.

Incentivized

• Better tracking of time for projects = better quotes for clients! In turn, they trust us more, because we're only billing for the time used and projects completed.
• We can also have clear conversations with employees about productivity and provide feedback with real numbers that the employee has control over.

Incentivized

• The fee for invoicing is extremely reasonable for how easy it is. At 2.75% per transaction, it's well worth it.
• I like that invoices can be printed and mailed or sent via email for easy online payment.
• I have a 100% collection rate on my invoices, and they are often paid within 24-48 hours of being sent, which saves me the time of chasing down checks, which can be especially cumbersome when I have multiple clients.

Incentivized