As a project manager, answering questions such as “Are things progressing as planned?” or “Will this project go over budget?” can be tedious and time-consuming. By using Harvest and Forecast together, it can be as easy as viewing built-in reports. With the Harvest + Forecast integration correctly set up, you’ll enjoy the following benefits:

• View real-time project health to to see how many hours your project will hit, and when you’re projected to reach your budget.
• Compare estimates vs. actuals to see how plans stack up against reality.
• Schedule teams and projects in Forecast based on the remaining budget in Harvest.

Step 1: Connect your Harvest + Forecast accounts

To take full advantage of the above features, make sure you have both a Harvest and a Forecast account. Both are available as a free 30-day trial: try Harvest free or try Forecast free.

1. Connect your Harvest account to Forecast from the Settings section in Forecast. (More information on how to do that can be found in our article on how to integrate with Harvest.

   • Only someone with Administrator permissions in Harvest and View and Edit permissions in Forecast can connect accounts.
   • If your Harvest account is currently connected to a different Forecast account, you can either disconnect it or use the other Forecast account for your testing. Please refer to our article on how to connect to a different Harvest account.

2. After connecting Harvest and Forecast, import any existing projects from Harvest into Forecast that need to be scheduled. We recommend you only import projects that actively need staffing, to prevent clutter in the Projects view in Forecast. You can always import additional projects later!

If you currently have sample data enabled in your Harvest trial account, you’ll have the option to import sample people and projects into your Forecast account. Note that if you do import them, removing the sample data in Harvest won’t automatically remove it in Forecast—you’ll need to manually delete those items there, as well.

Step 2: Set up Forecast-powered projects

There are three ways to link projects between your Harvest and Forecast accounts. We recommend only adding projects to Forecast that you currently need to schedule—you can always import more as needed later.

• Import from Harvest to Forecast: You can import projects from Harvest to Forecast when you first set up the integration, as described above, or at any time afterwards by going to Manage > Projects in Forecast and clicking the Import from Harvest button.
• Push created projects from Harvest to Forecast: Once the integration is set up, you can create a project in Harvest and check the Plan this project in Forecast button. If you don’t check the box when you first create the project, you can always edit the project and check it at a later date.
• Push created projects from Forecast to Harvest: Once the integration is set up, you can create a project in Forecast and, from its Actions menu, select Create Project in Harvest. If people are already scheduled for the Forecast project, they’ll automatically be added to the new Harvest project as long as they’re already in Harvest and their profiles are linked between the accounts.

If both accounts already have versions of the same project but they aren’t linked, you can use any of the above methods to link the Harvest and Forecast projects without creating a duplicate as long as the project has the same name and client in both accounts. The project codes do not have to match, but note that the Harvest project code will overwrite the Forecast one in this case.

Note: In order to see your budget predictions, Harvest projects need to be set to bill by Person billable rate or Project billable rate.

Once your projects are linked, you can get to work. Plan your time in Forecast and track your time in Harvest, and you’ll get immediate results.

• In Harvest, you’ll see projections on the project progress graph and you’ll see Estimates vs Actuals on the hours per week graph and team table.
• In Forecast, you’ll see the remaining budgets of your projects from Harvest so you can schedule your projects with precision. For more information, visit the Forecast Help Center.