Everything comes out of Harvest. Much less goes back in
Harvest exports time reports as CSV, Excel or PDF, lets you choose exactly which columns land in the file, and offers an Export all time option that downloads every time entry in the account. No plan gate is documented on any of it. The narrower side is the return journey: Harvest's own import reads eight columns, cannot accept start and end times at all, and creates duplicates rather than updating if you import a corrected file. Checked against Harvest's help centre on 14 August 2026.
What can you export from Harvest?
Harvest is one of the better tools in this category for getting data out, and it is worth saying so plainly rather than hunting for a grievance. There is no free-versus-paid wall on exports, the formats cover both the spreadsheet and the client-facing cases, and you can decide what goes in the file rather than accepting a fixed layout.
| Report | Formats | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Time report | Excel, CSV | Hours grouped the way the report is grouped |
| Detailed time report | Excel, CSV, PDF | Entry-level detail, and the PDF for anything client-facing |
| Detailed expense report | Excel, CSV, PDF | Expenses alongside the hours they belong to |
| Export all time | CSV | Every time entry in the account, in one file |
Two details make the CSV and Excel routes more useful than they look. First, they carry more than the interface does: Harvest notes that by default the CSV and Excel exports contain more detailed information than what you see on screen, so a column you cannot find in the report may already be in the file. Second, Export > Custom lets you pick exactly which data to include, which is the difference between handing a client a clean breakdown and handing them a spreadsheet you have to prune first.
What does a Harvest export not carry?
The limits here are structural rather than commercial. A Harvest export is a report about time, so what comes out is time with labels attached. Your clients and projects appear on each row as names. They do not come out as client and project records with their own billable rates, budgets, archived state and team assignments. If you are exporting to invoice or analyse, that is exactly what you want. If you are exporting in order to set the same thing up elsewhere, the hours are the easy part and everything around them is the work.
Expenses are a separate report rather than a column on the time report, so a complete picture of a project means exporting both and joining them yourself.
How do you import time into Harvest?
Go to the import data section and drop a CSV in, or choose the file from disk. Only people with Administrator permissions can import. Harvest publishes a sample CSV, which is genuinely the fastest way to get the shape right.
The format is eight columns and it is stricter than it first appears. Date accepts YYYY-MM-DD or M/D/YYYY. Hours must be decimal and clean, so 7.5, 3 and 9.9 are fine and anything with a stray character is not. First name has to match a person already in your account. Notes carries the description.
Three constraints decide whether an import is worth attempting at all, and all three are documented by Harvest:
- No start and end times: It is not possible to import time with start and end times, even if your account is set to track by start and end times. Every entry arrives as a duration. If your history has clock times in it, they do not survive the trip.
- No updating, only adding: It is not possible to update time entries via import, and importing updated entries results in duplicate entries. There is no correct-and-retry loop, so a mistake means deleting before you try again.
- People are not created: Harvest creates any client, project or task it cannot find, but it will not create people. Add them first and make sure their names match the CSV exactly.
The start-and-end-times limit is the one that catches people out, because nothing fails. The import succeeds, the totals are right, and the loss only surfaces weeks later when someone asks what time a job was done and the answer is no longer in the system.
Where can Harvest data go next?
Harvest's export is clean enough that the destination is usually the constraint rather than the file.
| Destination | Takes a CSV import? | What to expect |
|---|---|---|
| Timely | Directly, no file needed | Timely imports projects and clients from Harvest without an export step. Time entries are not part of that, so your history still needs a separate route |
| Clockify | Yes, the most capable in this group | Projects, clients, tasks, tags, time entries, timesheets and users, up to 10 MB and 200,000 rows. Every header must be in English and match Clockify's own naming exactly, so plan on renaming columns |
| Toggl Track | Yes, with a small ceiling | 1 MB maximum, workspace admins only, and active users only. An Export all time file from a busy account will need splitting |
| Jibble | Not from Harvest | Jibble publishes import tools for several competitors, but Harvest is not one of them |
| Hubstaff | Not documented | Hubstaff documents importing team members and time off balances, but no route for time entries |
Worth noticing: Harvest keeps your start and end times on the way out but refuses them on the way in. If you are moving between two Harvest accounts, that asymmetry is the whole problem, and it is the same shape as the round trip in Toggl's export routes, where the richest file is the one that cannot be re-uploaded.
On the destination side, Timely pulls Harvest projects and clients across directly, which is the shortest route of the five.
How do you move Harvest data into Timen?
Timen connects to Harvest through OAuth rather than a file, so there is no CSV to prepare and no column mapping to get right. Open Settings in Timen, go to the Import tab, choose Harvest, and authorise the connection. You then pick the account and choose what to bring across.
Because it reads the API rather than a report, start and end times come across as start and end times. That is the one thing Harvest's own import cannot do.
| In Harvest | In Timen | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Clients | Clients | Created as client records with their projects attached |
| Projects | Projects | Created under their client where one exists |
| Tasks | Tags | Harvest has no tags of its own, so its tasks arrive as Timen tags |
| Team members | Team members | Matched to your Timen team so entries keep their owner |
| Time entries | Time entries | Imported with their start and end times rather than flattened to durations |
| Invoices | Invoices | Imported |
The mapping worth understanding before you start is tasks becoming tags. Harvest organises work as client, project and task, with the task being the kind of work. Timen organises it as client, project and tag, so the shape survives but the word changes. Expenses are outside the importer.
If you are still comparing rather than moving, the alternatives worth a look covers the shortlist, and a direct comparison covers where the two differ.
Common questions about exporting Harvest data
- Does Harvest limit exports by plan?
- No plan gate is documented on exports. Harvest exports reports as CSV, Excel or PDF, offers a custom column picker, and provides an Export all time option that downloads every time entry in the account as CSV.
- Can you import start and end times into Harvest?
- No. Harvest documents that it is not possible to import time with start and end times, even if your account is set to track that way. Every imported entry arrives as a duration only.
- Can you fix a bad Harvest import by re-importing?
- No. Harvest states that it is not possible to update time entries via import, and that importing updated entries results in duplicate entries. Corrections have to be made in the app or by deleting first.
- Does a Harvest import create missing projects and people?
- It creates clients, projects and tasks automatically if it cannot find them, but it will not create people. Team members must exist in the account first, and their names must match the CSV exactly.
Getting data out of Harvest, and the part to plan for
Exporting from Harvest is the straightforward half. Pick the detailed time report, use the custom column picker to include what you actually need, and take CSV unless someone is going to read the file rather than open it in a spreadsheet.
The part to plan for is the direction of travel. Harvest gives you a rich file and accepts a thin one, so anything involving a return trip, a correction, or a move between two Harvest accounts is more work than the export suggests. If the destination can read your account directly, that avoids the eight-column format entirely and keeps the clock times Harvest's own import would drop.