Create and duplicate projects
Creating a project in Harvest is one of the first steps to getting started. After you set up a project, you’ll be able to track time to and invoice for the project.
If you already have a project set up, you can quickly copy those settings into a new project by duplicating it. Duplicating can also be used as a workaround for project templates.
Administrators can create projects for all clients, and Managers can create projects if they're given permission in their user profile.
Create a project
For full details on the project settings mentioned below, scroll down to the more information about project settings section of this article.
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Go to your Projects section.
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Click the New project button to the top left.
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Assign a Client from the drop-down menu, or create a new client.
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Name your project. You can also add a Project code if you’d like.
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Enter the project’s start and end dates.
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Enter project Notes if you need them.
- In the Permissions section, you can choose to Show project report to Administrators and people who manage this project, limiting visibility, or you can open it up to everyone on the team.
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Select a Project type: Time & Materials, Fixed Fee, or Non-Billable. You can learn more in our article about understanding the three project types.
- Set the project budget, billable rates, and/or project fees.
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Add tasks to the project. Don’t forget to mark them as billable (and enter rates) or non-billable.
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Add people to the project and set project managers.
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Save your project, and you’ll see it in your Projects section.
Duplicate a project
If you need to create a project that has settings similar to one of your other projects, you can duplicate it to save time. For full details about project settings, scroll down to the more information about project settings section of this article.
Note: When duplicating a project set to bill by Project billable rate or Person billable rate any project historical or future billable rates or custom person historical or future billable rates will not copy over. Default person historical and future billable rates will copy over because those are stored in a person's user profile and not tied to a specific project.
Duplicate an active project
- Go to Projects and make sure the filter is set to view active projects.
- Click the Actions menu that appears to the right of a project listing.
- Select Duplicate.
Duplicate an archived project
You can duplicate an archived project by taking the following steps:
- Go to Projects and filter to Archived projects using the dropdown to the top left.
- Click on a project’s name, and you’ll be dropped into the project analysis page.
- Click the Duplicate button to the top right.
More information about project settings
Choosing a client for your project
The client is the person or company for whom you’re completing this work. You can add and edit clients and their contact info under Manage > Clients.
You can also create a new client directly from the project form by clicking the +New client button and entering the client's name. When creating clients on the project form we will also add the client to your list of clients at Manage > Clients. For any clients created directly from the project form, you may wish to head over to Manage > Clients to set client information such as the default client currency, client address, and client contacts.
Only Administrators and Managers with permission to edit clients will be able to create new clients.
Setting start and end dates for your project
For Time & Materials projects start and end dates are for your reference only.
For Fixed Fee projects, we'll use start and end dates to calculate the profitability of your Fixed Fee projects.
Start and end dates have no effect on your ability to track time, and you can always change them later if necessary.
Adding project notes
Administrators can control who sees project notes from Settings > Edit preferences > Show project notes.
If you’re creating a Fixed Fee project, we recommend using Notes to record invoice information, like your payment schedule. That’s because we’ll reveal these notes to you when you create your invoice. So use this field to enter any info that’ll help you make those invoices.
Setting project permissions
In the Permissions section for a project, you can choose Show project report to Administrators and people who manage this project, limiting visibility, or you can open it up to everyone on the team.
If you open it up to everyone, Members on the project will be able to see the total hours for the project and how that compares to the budget. They won’t see any billable amounts or costs, though.
This project permissions chart outlines what people with different permissions will see when you share the project report with everyone.
Setting project budgets and budget alerts
Harvest supports hourly and fee-based project budgets. For any project with a budget, make sure you enter your budget amount. You'll find full details about budget types and how to set project budgets in our article on How to set project budgets.
You can also choose to send email alerts to your team if your budget reaches a certain percentage of completion. People who manage the project will always receive budget emails. Administrators on the project only receive budget emails if no one is designated as a manager of the project.
Setting project billable rates
Billable rates are external rates you charge your client. We use billable rates to calculate your invoice amounts for Time & Materials projects and to determine budget spend for Fixed Fee projects with a fee-based budget. For more information on project types in Harvest see understanding the three project types.
All people and tasks in Harvest can have default billable rates. You can also set custom billable rates per project. See our article on Setting billable rates 🎦 for full details.
Setting project fees
If you choose a Fixed Fee project type you'll need to set a fee amount for the project. Enter the total amount you plan to invoice for the Fixed Fee project in the Project fees section.
Adding tasks to your project
You'll need to add any tasks to the project that your team should be able to track to. Any task in the account can be added to a project.
You can create a general task list under Manage > Tasks, where you can also assign default settings to tasks.
You can also add a new task to the project directly from the project form. When creating tasks this way we will also add the task to Manage > Tasks. For any tasks created directly on the project form, you may wish to head over to Manage > Tasks to set defaults such as billable rate and whether or not the task should be added to all existing or new projects.
Only Administrators and Managers with permission to edit tasks will be able to create new tasks within a project.
For full details see our article on Creating, editing, archiving, and deleting tasks.
Adding people to projects and setting project managers
In order to track time a project a person must be assigned to work on the project. Any person with an active profile in the account can be assigned to a project.
Use the checkboxes in the Manages this project column to indicate whether the people you assign can manage the project or not. If you check the box next to a person with Member permissions, a notification will appear letting you know that this will raise their permissions level to Manager in the account. You’ll need to confirm or cancel that change to move forward. Learn more about team permissions.