Importing from Harvest
How to bring a client's Harvest history into VERA, so their projects, people and past time are here from day one.
What comes across
- Active projects from Harvest. Archived projects are left behind.
- Clients, people and tasks those projects use.
- People's cost rates, from the rates Harvest recorded on their time.
- Time, every entry on the imported projects.
- Invoiced amounts, used for a retainer's history. A retainer's earlier time becomes a finished fixed-price project priced at what Harvest invoiced for it, and its recent time goes on a real retainer.
You do it yourself, as an owner or admin, from Settings → Import.
The five steps
- Connect. Create a personal access token in Harvest under Developers, then enter it with your Harvest account ID. VERA uses it once to read your data and does not keep it.
- Review. VERA suggests what each Harvest project should become (a retainer, hourly, fixed price, pro bono, internal, or skipped) and lists anything it could not decide. Fix the terms in the table, then save.
- Dry run. A table shows what would be created and the hours for each project, so you can check the totals against Harvest before anything is written.
- Run. The import runs in the background and shows its progress. Leaving the page does not stop it.
- Result. The page reports how many time entries were written, and whether every project's hours match Harvest.
Your draft is kept for two hours. If it runs out, connect again.
What the flags mean
| Flag | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Fixed-fee project with no fee | Harvest has no fee and nothing invoiced for it | Enter its contract value |
| Retainer terms missing | Monthly hours or fee could not be found | Enter the hours and the fee per month |
| Several monthly amounts | The notes name more than one monthly amount, so VERA added them | Check the total is the real monthly fee |
| Time before the retainer started | Time was recorded before the retainer's start month | Decide whether to move it; VERA does not guess |
| Possible duplicate person | Two names differ only by a trailing note in parentheses and were merged | Remove the merge if they are different people |
| Shared account | A name that looks like a shared login | Check the time was reassigned to the right people |
| Zero cost rate | Someone has time costed at $0 | Give them a rate |
While your team still uses Harvest
Your team may keep recording time in Harvest for a while after the first import. Until the day everyone switches, you can bring that new time in: go to Settings → Import, enter your Harvest token again, and press Check for new time. VERA shows what Harvest has that VERA doesn't, project by project, and you press the button to bring it in.
- It only adds time. It never creates projects or retainer periods, and it never closes, deactivates or approves anything.
- It uses the choices you made in the original import, so there is nothing to review again. (An import made before this feature existed has no stored choices; run a fresh import instead.)
- Time dated after a retainer's last period is listed and left alone. Add the next period to the retainer, then check again.
- If someone changes or deletes an entry in Harvest after it came across, VERA lists it for you but leaves its own copy as it is. Fix it by hand if it matters.
- Each time you bring in new time, it is its own numbered import, and the latest one can be undone on its own.
- When everyone has moved over, press Finish the switch and VERA stops offering it. You can reopen it later.
Undo
If something is wrong, Undo on the latest import removes everything it created. VERA refuses, and lists why, if anything has changed since the import, such as an edited project or new time recorded on it. Fix or accept what it lists, then try again.