Although Harvest doesn’t explicitly support tracking time by day instead of by hour, you can track day rates using the workaround below. Note that we only recommend this method if day rates can be shared with everyone in your organization. The rates will be viewable by all users in your Harvest account, regardless of their permissions.

With this workaround, you'll track your day rate as an expense. Find steps below for how to create a new expense category, track a day rate as an expense, and how to track actual time spent for your records. 

Skip ahead to 3:48 in the below video for more information on this workaround:

Tracking day rates workaround

To track day rates in Harvest you'll create an expense category for the day rate, track your day rate as an expense to a project, and optionally, you can also track time to a non-billable project or task to keep an eye on how much time you're actually spending on the project. 

Create a new expense category

First, create a new expense category for your day rate. Administrators can create new expenses categories by taking the following steps:

1. Head to Manage > Expense categories.
2. Click New category and enter Day rate as the name.
3. Check the box for This expense has a unit price. This will expand additional options.
4. Enter your day rate fee amount in the first box and day in the second one, then click Save category.

Track your day rate as an expense

Once you've created a day rate expense category, you can track your day rate:

1. Go to Expenses and add a new expense entry for each day you work. Choose the project you worked on, then choose Day rate as the category.
2. Enter 1 for the Amount to track an expense for 1 day, add any necessary notes, and click Save expense.
3. When you create an invoice based on tracked time and expenses, choose to include expenses so your day rate entries are added to your invoice.

Keep a record of actual time spent when using day rates

You can still track down-to-the-minute time for your own records when you’re billing by day. Administrators and Managers with permission to create projects can set up a project so you can track time that won’t be billed:

1. Go to Projects, then click the Actions menu to the right of the project you’d like to edit.
2. Select Edit to go to the Edit Project form.
3. Ensure that the Project type is Time & materials and Billable rate is set to No billable rate before saving your changes.

This way, you’ll be able to track your time to the project without rate information being applied. Note that this method won’t work if you need to track both day rates and hourly rates on the same project.