The Cantilever Handbook
The Cantilever Handbook
📍

Getting Started with Harvest

Step 1: Set up your account

  1. You should have received an invite to join the company’s Harvest account during onboarding. (If you didn’t, check with your Manager or Primary Contact)
  2. Accept the invite and set up your profile.

Step 2: Create a new Time Entry

  1. Open the Harvest web app.
  2. Click the ➕ sign to create a new time entry:
    • Select "Company and Culture" for the "Project"
    • Select "Uncategorized Time" for the Task
    • Write "harvest setup" for the Note.
    • Click Start!

Step 3: Learn key Harvest terms

Visibility of Key Terms in Harvest Web Interface for "New Time Entry"
Visibility of Key Terms in Harvest Web Interface for "New Time Entry"
  • Projects belong to a Client
  • Tasks are defined globally in the workspace are and visible within one or more Projects. They represent the type of work you're tracking time against with a Time Entry.
  • Time Entries are individual timers that you create to track how you work.
    • 💡
    Typically, a dev ticket, a planning meeting, slack messaging to a colleague, or another activity would each have their own Time Entry, but you can also start a timer for a time entry that you previously tracked time to at any time.
  • Notes are specific to the Time Entry that you create. They should be specific enough so that someone else reading your timesheet (i.e. your manager) can understand what the time entry is for without needing to ask you.

Step 4: Install Harvest Apps

  1. Download the Harvest Apps that suit your setup: https://www.getharvest.com/apps
    2. 💡
    We recommend installing both the desktop app and the mobile app so that you can easily track time when you might not be sitting down in front of your computer
  2. Log in to the app so that it's set up for you to track time by creating new time entries.

Step 5: Activate Slack Integration

Consider adding the Harvest + Slack integration if it’s not already added.

👉 This enables you to type /harvest start anywhere in Slack to see the instructions to connect your Harvest account.

Step 6: Activate Asana Integration

There's a very easy-to-use integration for Harvest that shows up in the Desktop web app version of Asana. Once you activate Harvest in your Profile Settings, you will see a stopwatch icon on every task beside the "more actions" menu. Clicking this will open the Harvest time tracking screen. Video Walkthrough:

  1. Log into Asana and click your profile picture to access your profile settings
  2. Click the "Apps" tab
  3. Turn the Harvest Time Tracking app "On"
  4. Open up a task and see that there's a ⏱️ icon
  5. Click the ⏱️ icon to open the Harvest Time Entry screen (you might need to log in the first time)

Step 7: Learn more about how we use Harvest

  1. Check out the rest of the resources in
    ⏱️
    How Cantilever uses Harvest for Time Tracking
  2. Don't forget to stop the timer you started in Step 2 when you're finished 😉