Tracking project hours against a pre-determined project estimate has been one of the most requested features for Harvest. Being aware of how many hours are left on your projects helps you manage your resources and client relationships better. Today, we’re excited to announce that estimates is now a reality in Harvest.

If you’ve visited the Manage > Projects section over the last week and a half, you’d have noticed that some things have changed. These changes help you edit settings for a project easier than before. And if you choose to provide estimates for the project, simply select either Estimate by project hours or Estimate by task hours. The latter will allow you to be more specific about how many hours you want budgeted for each task of your project.

Once your estimates are set up, click over to Reports. You’ll notice a new “Estimates” link in the sub-navigation. This page not only shows you your estimates, but it provides a great view for cumulative hours across all your active projects. Clicking into a project with estimates will allow you to see more details about the project across its life-span, and if you’ve chosen to estimate by tasks, an Estimates button will show you the actual vs. estimated hours per task.

We think this is one of the most useful features we’ve added to Harvest, and we hope it will help make staying on top of your business that much easier!

Please feel free to email us at support (at) getharvest.com with your thoughts and feedback.