How do I track non-billable time?
Not all time you track to your Harvest timesheet may be billable to your client. By tracking hours to a non-billable project or task, you can accurately invoice your clients while getting the full picture of where your team’s spending their time.
Non-billable hours cannot be invoiced. They also do not contribute to a project’s billable amount or uninvoiced amount. Non-billable hours are included in internal cost calculations.
You’ll also see non-billable hours delineated on reports, such as the Time report 🎦.
Non-Billable projects
Non-Billable projects are useful for work your team does internally, such as administrative tasks, time off, or other projects not included in the scope of your client work.
All tasks added to a Non-Billable project are automatically marked as non-billable, so all hours tracked to these projects are also non-billable. It is not possible to have billable tasks or billable hours on a Non-Billable project.
While creating or editing a project, next to Project type, choose Non-Billable (as opposed to Time & Materials or Fixed Fee).
Note that Non-Billable projects can still have hourly budgets set. That way, you can track your team’s progress and ensure you’re spending the amount of time you’d like on non-billable work.
Non-billable tasks on billable projects
Specific work you do on Time & Materials or Fixed Fee projects may not be billable to your client. For this type of work, you can add individual non-billable tasks on billable projects.
While creating or editing a project, in the Tasks section, uncheck the box under Billable next to a task name to make it non-billable.
All time tracked to a non-billable task will be marked as non-billable.
For transparency, Billable and Non-billable tasks are listed separately in the task dropdown when creating a new time entry.
Tasks can even be marked as non-billable for all projects by default under Manage > Tasks. You can learn more in our article about Managing tasks.
Non-billable expenses
While creating a new expense under Expenses, uncheck the box beside This expense is billable to mark an individual expense as non-billable.
Like hours, non-billable expenses can’t be invoiced, and are not included in uninvoiced amounts.
New expenses tracked to billable projects will automatically have This expense is billable checked, while new expenses tracked to Non-Billable projects will default to having This expense is billable unchecked. However, note that it is possible to add billable expenses to Non-Billable projects.