Profitability reporting is currently in beta and the beta is at maximum capacity. We plan to release the profitability report publicly after we’ve had time to gather insights from our beta testers and make necessary updates and enhancements.

Harvest uses tracked time multiplied by billable rates to calculate revenue—without billable rates, there’s no way to accurately calculate profitability. If your account is missing billable rates, you’ll see a notice about adding missing rates each time you head to Reports > Profitability. It’s possible to skip this notice, but we’ll continue to remind you each time you attempt to access the report. 

Missing rate types 

There are 3 different missing rate types Harvest will ask you to add: team rates, project rates, and task rates. 

Team rates 

These rates include both cost rates and billable rates. 

• Cost rates: The internal rate an employee costs you as a business. 
• Billable rates: The external rate you charge your client—includes both default billable rates and custom, project-specific billable rates 
  • Default billable rate: the rate configured in a teammate’s profile that applies to all projects set to bill by Person billable rate. 
  • Custom billable rate: Project-specific rates configured on a project that only apply to time tracked on that project for all projects set to bill by Person billable rate.    

Project rates 

These rates apply to all projects set to bill by Project billable rate. 

Task rates 

These rates include default billable task rates configured in the account from Manage > Tasks as well as custom task rates set up on specific projects. These rates apply to all projects set to bill by Task billable rate. 

Updating missing rates 

You’ll be prompted to go through the following steps to add rates for people, projects, and tasks, depending on which are missing in the account. 

Updating missing team rates 

• Cost rates: You’ll be able to set a single cost rate for any teammates missing a cost rate in the account. 
• Default billable rates: You’ll have the option to set a single default rate for teammates. If the teammate has no default rate set in their profile and they aren’t using a custom project-specific rate, we’ll apply this update as their default rate in their profile and apply it to all projects set to bill by Person hourly rate using a default rate. 
• Custom billable rates: You’ll see a list of projects with missing custom billable rates sorted by teammate. From there, you can either: 
  • Enter a single custom rate that will be used on all projects where a teammate is missing a custom rate.
  • Enter a custom rate for each project listed individually.

Updating missing task rates 

• Missing default task rates: If a task has no default task rate configured in the account, you’ll be prompted to add a default task rate in the table. From there, Harvest will apply it to all projects set to bill by Task hourly rate that aren’t using a custom task rate.
• Missing custom task rates: If the task has a default task rate configured from Manage > Tasks but the task is missing the rate on the actual project itself, you’ll be prompted to add the rate on the missing rates page. From there, Harvest will apply it to all of the projects where a custom task rate is missing. 

Updating missing project rates 

You’ll see a list of all projects set to bill by Project hourly rate with missing project rates. You can add a rate to each project on the table. 

A note on budget email alerts  

It’s possible that back-filling billable rates for projects with fee-based budgets will cause the project to exceed its budget since Harvest is now calculating a billable amount for all time tracked to the project. If your team also has budget email alerts enabled on these projects, this update could result in an influx of budget email alerts if the update causes the budget to exceed the percentage threshold set for the alert on the project. 

Budget alert notifications will continue to be sent every week until the project is archived, someone turns off the budget alert, or the budget is updated so that you’re no longer going over.

In this case, we’d recommend letting your team know they can ignore any budget alerts they may receive as you’re making these rate updates for profitability. It’s also possible to disable these alerts at any time. 

You can find more info on who receives these notifications and when they’re sent in: Budget email alerts.