Timesheet reminders can help nudge teammates to track time more diligently and submit their timesheets for approval on schedule. You can learn more about the process and benefits of timesheet submission and approval in our article about Timesheet approval.

Harvest offers three types of timesheet reminders: 

• Administrators can set up recurring timesheet reminders to send automatically to everyone in your account each week. 
• Administrators can manually send one-time timesheet reminders to specific people.
• Individuals can set up daily reminders for themselves to remember to track time. 

Sending automatic weekly timesheet reminders to all teammates

Administrators can set up automatic timesheet reminders to help encourage teammates to fill out and/or submit their timesheets by the timesheet deadline. That way, you won’t have to worry about manually sending out reminders each week.

Timesheet submission reminders are only available to accounts with access to timesheet approval, but time tracking reminders are available for all accounts.

Two reminders will be sent: one before your account’s timesheet deadline, and one after.

Set a timesheet deadline

Before you can enable timesheet reminders, you'll need to set a timesheet deadline.

1. Click Settings in the top right.
2. Scroll down to Preferences and click Edit preferences.
3. Next to Timesheet deadline, select a day of the week and time when you’d like timesheets to be due for your team.
   
4. Click Save preferences to save your changes.

Set up timesheet reminders

1. Next to Timesheet reminders, check the box next to Remind my team to enter time at the end of each week.
   
2. From the two dropdowns that appear, choose a number of hours before timesheets are due and after timesheets are due to send reminders to your team.
3. Next, choose who should receive these reminders.
   • This can be either Anyone who tracked less than X% of their capacity, or Anyone who hasn’t submitted their timesheet for approval (the latter only if your plan supports timesheet approval). 
     • You can learn more about setting a person’s capacity in our article about Setting and editing capacity.
4. Click Save preferences to save your changes.

Note: A combination of your week start day and your timesheet deadline day will determine whether timesheet reminders are for the previous week or the current week.

Sending one-time timesheet reminders to individuals

If your plan supports timesheet approval, Administrators can manually select certain teammates to remind them to submit their timesheets on a one-off basis. This can be useful if a few people—or even your whole team—need an extra nudge in a particular week.

1. From Time > Unsubmitted, choose the week you'd like to send reminders for from the dropdown menu.  
2. Check the box next to each person’s name, or select all people by clicking the box at the top of the list next to Team members. 
3. Click Send email reminders.

Sending timesheet reminders to yourself

When you enable time tracking reminders in your own profile, we’ll send you a notification if you haven’t tracked anything by the time you choose on the day(s) you select. This can be useful if you’re the only person in your account, or if you need a little extra nudging to remember to track your time.

These reminders are flexible based on how you like to work:

• If you track time every day as you go, you may want to set up reminders for when you normally start working.
• If you track time every day before you leave, you might want to set up a reminder to be sent before you’re usually done for the day.
• If you track time once at the end of the week, you can set a reminder for either right before you leave on the last day of the week, or in the morning when you start work for the week.

Enabling timesheet reminders for yourself

1. Click your name in the upper right corner.
2. Select Notifications. 
3. In the Timesheet reminders section, select Help me track my time with daily reminders.
4. Choose the time and day(s) of the week you’d like to receive reminders.
5. Choose either Email me or Pop up notifications on my computer.
6. Click Update notifications.
   

If you choose pop-up notifications, you’ll receive banner reminders like this:

If you use our Harvest for Mac or Harvest for Windows applications, these pop-up notifications will also open the app on your desktop.

Pop-up notifications work based on your browser and are only available when using the latest version of Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or Microsoft Edge. You can find links to download the latest versions in our article about supported browsers. If you select Pop up notifications on my computer but you still aren’t receiving notifications, check your browser preferences to make sure they’re allowed for Harvest.

Note:  These reminders are based on the timezone you set in the Basic info tab of your profile. 

Disabling timesheet reminders for yourself

If you’d like to stop receiving recurring timesheet reminders, you can disable them from your profile. Note that it's not possible to disable one-time timesheet reminders sent by Administrators.

1. Click your name in the upper right corner.
2. Select Notifications. 
3. In the Timesheet reminders section, deselect:
   • Help me track my time with daily reminders. This will disable time tracking reminders you’ve set for yourself.
   • Include me in weekly team-wide reminders. This will exclude you from timesheet reminders sent to everyone in the account. If you don't see this option, then team-wide reminders are not currently enabled for the account.
4. Click Update notifications.