Team permissions in Harvest let you choose what different teammates are allowed to do and access in your account. There are three different levels of permissions: Member, Manager, and Administrator.

Viewing permissions

Viewing your own permissions

1. Click your name at the top right corner of your Harvest account.
2. Select My profile.
3. Choose the Permissions tab on the left. Your permissions level will show as selected with a white dot in the middle of the circle. 

Viewing or changing a teammate’s permissions

1. Head to Team.
   • Only Administrators and Managers with assigned people have access to Team.
2. Click the Actions dropdown to the right of the relevant teammate, then select Edit.
3. Go to the Permissions tab on the left.
   • Only Administrators can change a person's permissions.
4. If you make any changes, click Update permissions.

Permissions overview

This table compares what a person with each permission can do in your account. You can find more details on each permission level below the table. 

Member permissions

This base-level permission is perfect for any teammates who only need to track and report on their own time and expenses. Members can track only to projects they’re assigned to. They can never see any fees, rates, or other monetary amounts.

Members can only see certain projects in their Projects section: those they’re assigned to that are set to show the project report to everyone on the project. Other projects won’t be listed there even if the Member can track time and expenses to them. 

Note: If you set a Member as the manager of a project, their permissions will change to Manager. You can see more about Manager permissions below.

Manager permissions

This mid-level permission is perfect for teammates who are in charge of keeping your projects on track or who manage others. Managers can track time and expenses to projects they’re assigned to, and they can also manage projects and report on and approve time and expenses for projects they manage and their assigned people. Managers can also be given additional, optional permissions.

Managers can only see certain projects in their Projects section: those they manage, and those they’re assigned to that are set to show the project report to everyone on the project. Other projects won’t be listed there, even if the Manager or one of their assigned people can track time and expenses to them.

Managing projects

You can choose who manages a project when creating or editing a project or in a person's user profile. All Managers of a project can:

• View the full report for the project. They can see all time and expenses tracked by other teammates to the project, as well as how that compares to an hourly budget.
• Approve hours and expenses tracked to that project by any teammate (if approval functionality is enabled in the account).

Assigned people

You can also make people assignments for Managers. Administrators can assign people to a Manager by heading Team and clicking Actions > Edit next to the appropriate Manager.  Then start assigning people in the Assigned people tab on the left. 

All Managers with assigned people can:

• Report on and approve time and expenses for their assigned people.
• View their assigned people's progress from Team.
• Edit some basic information in the user profiles of their assigned people (first name, last name, timezone). 
• Resend the invitation to join the Harvest account to their assigned people. 

Optional Manager permissions

Managers can be opted-in to create and edit projects, clients, and tasks, to create and edit time for others, to see and edit billable rates, to create and manage invoices, and to view and create estimates. Each of these optional permissions can be enabled per Manager in their user profile. 

Optional: Create projects, and edit projects that they manage

Managers with this permission can create projects for all clients in the account and they can edit projects they're assigned to manage. When setting up a new project, they can’t see or edit a fee-based budget, the billable rate type, project fees, or the billable rates unless given the See and edit billable rates and amounts permission (see below).  They also won't be able to create new clients or tasks via the create project form unless they've been given special permission to Create and edit clients and tasks (see below). 

Optional: Create and edit all clients and tasks on the account 

Managers with permission to create and edit clients and tasks can access Manage > Tasks and Manage > Clients. Only Managers with the See and edit billable rates and amounts permission (see below) will be able to view and edit billable rates for tasks. 

Optional: Create and edit time and expenses for people and projects they manage

Managers with permission to edit time will be able to view and edit time tracked by people on projects they manage and/or time tracked by their assigned people.  If your account has the Expenses module on, these Managers will also be able to view and edit expenses tracked by people on projects they manage, or by their assigned people.

Optional: See and edit billable rates and amounts for projects and people they manage

Managers with this permission can see fee-based budgets, billable rate types, project fees, and billable rates on all projects they manage. If they have permission to Create projects, and edit projects that they manage they'll be able to set and edit billable rates for their assigned projects.

They can also see and edit the billable rate for their assigned people.  If they have permission to Create and edit clients and tasks, they can create/edit task rates via the Manage > Tasks section. 

Optional: Create and edit draft invoices for projects they manage 

Managers with permission to create invoices can create and edit draft invoices for projects they manage. Note that by enabling this invoicing permission for Managers, they'll be automatically opted in to see and edit billable rates and amounts for projects and people they manage.

They’ll have access to Invoices > Overview and Invoices > Recurring, but not to Invoices > Report, Retainers, or Configure. With this permission, they can:

• View invoices, only for projects they manage. This may include invoices created by other teammates.
• Create invoices, only for projects they manage.
• Edit draft invoices, only for projects they manage. If the invoice is no longer a draft (it's been sent, paid, written off, etc), the Manager can view it, but cannot edit it.
• Save PDFs of invoices for projects they manage.
• Print invoices for projects they manage.
• Duplicate invoices for projects they manage, including non-draft invoices.
• Create recurring invoice templates. Note that they cannot set up a recurring invoice to be sent automatically, which is restricted to Administrators.

Optional: Send and fully manage all invoices for projects they manage (record payments, edit non-drafts, send reminders and thank-yous, delete, etc)

Managers opted-in to fully manage invoices for projects they manage will automatically be opted in to these other permissions:

• Create and edit draft invoices for projects they manage
• See and edit billable rates and amounts for projects and people they manage

Managers with this invoice permission enabled will be able to do everything in the previous section. Additionally, they will be able to do the following things for invoices linked to projects they manage (not for all invoices): 

• Edit invoices, including after they've been sent
• Send invoices to clients, and mark invoices as sent
• Delete invoices
• Record payments to and remove payments from invoices
• Mark sent invoices as drafts
• Write off sent invoices
• Set up individual invoice reminders for sent invoices
• Send thank-you messages to an invoice’s client

Optional: Create and edit all estimates on the account

Managers with permission to create and edit estimates can access Estimates > Overview to create, send, and edit estimates.  Note that by enabling the estimates permission for Managers that they'll be automatically opted in to view and edit billable rates. 

What Managers can never do

Since Managers have many optional permissions, it could be helpful to know what a Manager can never do:

• See other people’s time and expenses outside of projects they manage and/or their assigned people
• See cost rates and amounts
• Manage account settings
• Close the account
• Invite people to join the account
• Withdraw approval of timesheets for others
• Edit locked time and expenses

Administrator permissions

Administrators have the highest level of permissions and can see and edit almost everything in the account (only the Account Owner can close the account or put it on hold). This includes managing all projects and clients, adding and managing teammates, approving and editing all time and expenses, invoicing clients, seeing and editing both billable and cost rates, updating account preferences and billing, and everything else.

While an Administrator can see all project reports, they can still only track time to projects they’re assigned to. Also, if you’re an Administrator who isn’t seeing every section of Harvest, make sure you’ve enabled all modules.

The Account Owner

Each account has one Administrator who’s designated as the Account Owner. This is often the person who first opened the account, but the current Account Owner can transfer ownership to another Administrator in your account settings. In addition to the standard Administrator permissions, the Account Owner is the only person who can close the account or put it on hold, and other Administrators can’t edit the Account Owner’s email address.