We're currently rolling out a built-in Time Off feature to all accounts. If you still don't see it in your navigation, it means your account hasn't received it yet.

With Time Off, you can track vacation time, paid time off (PTO), sick time, and any other leave category, all inside Harvest. Administrators set up your company's time-off types and allowances, team members request time off, and balances update automatically as requests are submitted, approved, or rejected.

Get started

If you're an administrator, the first time you open Time Off, Harvest walks you through a short, three-step setup:

• Holiday calendars. Choose the countries whose public holidays your team observes. Harvest creates an editable calendar for each one, or you can start with an empty calendar.
• Assign people. Assign each teammate to the holiday calendar they follow.
• Vacation policy. Create your first time-off type, including the annual allowance, carryover, and whether requests need approval.

After setup, you can add more types and customize individual allowances any time under Configure defaults.

Set up your time-off types

Create a separate type for each category of leave your team uses, like vacation time, sick days, or personal leave. Each type has its own color and icon, plus its own policy:

• Annual allowance in days per year
• Balance type: Annual upfront, Monthly/Bimonthly/Biweekly/Hourly accrued or Unlimited
• Max carryover of unused days into the next year
• Whether requests require administrator approval or are auto-approved
• Whether the type is visible to all team members

Team members can only request types that are marked visible. You can add, edit, deactivate, or restore types under Configure defaults.

Request time off

Any team member can request time off from My time off:

1. Click Request time off and choose a time-off type.
2. Choose full days or a partial day, and pick the dates.
3. Preview the impact on your balance before you submit.
4. Add an optional note, then submit the request.

Nonworking days and holidays are skipped automatically, so they won't use your balance. If the dates you pick overlap time off you already have booked, you can keep the existing request and book around it, or replace it with the new dates.

My time off also shows each type's allowance, used, pending, and remaining balance, along with a summary of your whole year.

Review and approve requests

If a time-off type requires approval, new requests appear under Approvals. Administrators can review each request, see the before-and-after balance impact, and approve it, request changes, or reject it. Approvals also flag coverage conflicts, so you can see when teammates who share projects are away on the same day.

Team calendar

Under Team overview, administrators can see everyone's time off, approved and pending, in a single calendar. You can filter it by department, role, project, client, or teammate. The Manage allowance tab reviews each person's annual allowance, work schedule, and any custom overrides to your company defaults.

Time Off on your timesheet

Once a request is approved, the time off appears directly on your timesheet as informational entries. They're accounted for, so you don't need to track time against them, and they don't add to your tracked hours. You can still track regular time on the same day if you work part of it.