Optivation
For Harvest users · solo and small studios

Time tracking and invoicing from $19 a month, with your Harvest hours moved in one CSV

The bill moves on seats, not on how many clients or invoices you have. Export the Detailed Time Report from Harvest and upload it, and your clients, rates and unbilled hours show in a preview before anything is added to your workspace.

Start the 30-day trial See how the move works

Studio features for 30 days, then the Free plan unless you choose Solo or Studio. Monthly, cancel any time.

Free $0 · Solo $19 a month · Studio $49 a month for three seats, then $19 a seat

Moving across from Harvest

  1. 1
    In Harvest, open Reports, then Detailed Time Report, and export it as CSV.
  2. 2
    Upload that one file on the import screen. The preview lists the clients, projects and unbilled hours it found, and nothing is added to your workspace until you confirm.
  3. 3
    Add each client's email, check the rate on each job, and draw the first invoice from the unbilled hours.

Hours already invoiced in Harvest come across marked as invoiced, so they never land on a new invoice twice. Old invoice documents stay in Harvest, so download the PDFs you want to keep before the account lapses.

The eight things you actually did in Harvest

A small studio uses a fraction of what a time-and-billing tool ships. Here is that fraction, and where each step lives once you move.

Start a timer on a client project
The timer starts on the project record itself and keeps running as you move around the workspace.
Add the time you forgot to track
Manual entry with date, duration and description, against the same job.
Charge a different rate per client
An hourly rate per job, or a lump-sum job for fixed-price work. Both invoice from the same screen.
Round to the nearest 15 minutes
Rounding increment and minimum billable duration are set per job, so short calls bill the way you quote them.
See where the week went
Time summaries per client and per job, and a CSV export when you want it in a spreadsheet.
Separate billable from admin
Tags on time entries, filtered out before the invoice is drawn.
Turn the month into an invoice
Unbilled hours pull into a branded invoice, numbered automatically, with 7 to 60 day terms.
Get paid
A Stripe payment link on the invoice, and a draft, sent, paid or void status against each one.

The part that is not a like-for-like swap is where it all sits. The project record, the intake form that created it, the page holding the brief and the booking link the client used are in the same workspace as the timer, so the hours attach themselves to the work instead of to a second tab.

How the timer works How invoices are drawn from the hours

What it costs, next to what Harvest publishes

On published seat price Harvest is cheaper at every size on this table. The figures below are the seat price only. Harvest also bills usage on invoices, projects, clients and tasks, and publishes no per-unit rate for it, which is where the renewal quotes people are posting come from.

Monthly list price by team size
SeatsHarvest Teams, before usageHarvest Enterprise, before usageOptivation
1$9$14$19 Solo
2$18$28$49 Studio, flat
3$27$42$49 Studio, flat
5$45$70$87 Studio plus 2 seats

Harvest prices read from getharvest.com/pricing on 7 October 2026, annual billing, before usage. Optivation prices are list, monthly, no annual commitment. Both exclude tax. What changed in Harvest's 2026 pricing, with sources

What the $49 covers besides the timer and the invoice

Project databases with kanban, calendar and table views. Pages for briefs and scopes. Intake forms that land as records. A booking page. Document templates. Client sharing at no per-guest charge. A unified inbox. The comparison that decides this is your whole monthly tool bill, not the tracker line on its own.

Add up your current stack

The billing details a small shop hits in week one

  • Rounding per job to 5, 15, 30 or 60 minutes, so 7 minutes bills as 15 if that is how you quote.
  • Minimum billable duration per job, for the calls that would otherwise bill as 3 minutes.
  • The rate is snapshotted onto the entry when it is logged, so raising your rate does not rewrite last quarter.
  • Fixed-fee line items sit on the same invoice as tracked hours, priced by quantity.
  • Tax rate and tax name per job, and a currency per job for overseas clients.

What Harvest does that Optivation does not

If one of these is load-bearing in how you run the business, Optivation is the wrong move. Better to find that here than three weeks into a migration.

Timesheet approval workflow
Time entries are logged and edited. There is no submit-and-approve step for a manager to sign off.
Project budget alerts
Jobs carry an optional retainer budget in hours per period. Nothing warns you at 80% of it.
Profitability reporting
Optivation holds a billable rate per job and no cost rate per person, so it cannot report margin.
Automated recurring and retainer invoices
Each invoice is generated from the period you choose. Nothing is drawn up on a schedule.
Expense tracking with receipts
There is no expense record with a receipt attached.
Native Xero and QuickBooks sync
Invoices download as PDF for upload. A live connection is on the roadmap, not built.
Capacity planning
Harvest Forecast is a separate scheduling product. Focus Board covers sprint-level scheduling, not long-range capacity.

Most of that list is what Harvest Enterprise sells to teams of ten and up. For a team of one to five billing hourly against named clients, none of it usually bites.

Questions people ask before moving

Is Optivation a good Harvest alternative for a freelancer or a small studio?

That is the size it is built for. One person is $19 a month and a team of three is $49 a month flat. It covers the Harvest loop end to end: a timer on the job, a rate per client, rounding rules, an invoice generated from the unbilled hours, and a payment link on it. Above roughly five people the gaps start to matter, particularly the absence of timesheet approval and profitability reporting.

What does Optivation cost compared to Harvest?

Harvest publishes Teams at $9 per seat per month and Enterprise at $14 on annual billing, read from getharvest.com/pricing on 7 October 2026, plus usage charges on invoices, projects, clients and tasks that have no published per-unit rate. Optivation is $19 a month for one person and $49 a month for a team of three, then $19 per extra seat. On published seat price Harvest is cheaper at every size. The Optivation bill moves on seats, not on how many invoices, projects, clients or tasks you have.

Does Optivation have timesheet approvals?

No. Time entries are logged and edited, and there is no submit-and-approve step for a manager to sign off before invoicing. If your process depends on approvals, Optivation is the wrong move and it is better to know that now.

Can I bill fixed-price work as well as hourly?

Yes. A job can be set to a lump-sum rate rather than hourly, and fixed-fee line items can sit on the same invoice as tracked hours, priced by quantity. Mixed retainer-plus-overage invoices are assembled by hand rather than generated on a schedule.

How do I move my Harvest data across?

Export the Detailed Time Report from Harvest as CSV and upload it on the import screen. Clients, projects, rates and time entries come across from that one file, and hours already invoiced in Harvest stay marked as invoiced. Harvest exports carry no client email, so add those before the first invoice goes out.

What happens to my old invoices?

Download the PDFs from Harvest before the account lapses. Optivation generates new invoices from the hours you import forward, and it does not reconstruct historic invoice documents from a CSV.

Bring one month of Harvest hours across and invoice from them

Upload the Detailed Time Report, check the preview, and see whether the loop fits how you bill. When the 30 days end, Solo is $19 a month and Studio is $49 for three seats.

Start the 30-day trial

Harvest is a trademark of its owner and we have no affiliation with it. Harvest prices and plan names read from getharvest.com on 7 October 2026. Prices exclude tax.