workmonitor.
Best for teams that bill for their time and want captured hours, live project margin and a payroll run that balances before it is exported.
- No timers to forget
- One engine for invoice and payroll
- Margin, live
VSTime tracking · For managers and finance
Harvest alternatives
Invoices built from the work itself, with margin you can watch.
- Free for two seats
- No card
- Harvest history imports by CSV
Updated October 3, 2026. Harvest details reviewed September 7, 2026 from public materials — check them against its own site before you decide.
workmonitor.
versusHarvestWhere WorkMonitor wins
- No timers to forgetHours are captured as the work happens, so the forgotten ones get billed too.
- One engine for invoice and payrollApproved hours bill and pay from the same rates, balanced to the cent.
- Margin, liveBudget burn updates as hours land — not when the invoice is drafted.
Where Harvest winsInvoicing with expense receipts built in
The difference that matters
Timers record what people remember. WorkMonitor bills what they worked.
Hours captured and attributed to the client, priced on your rate cards and turned into an invoice the client can verify — with each project’s margin updating as the hours land.
The real product — not a screenshot. Click a tab.
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Projects
Run client work.
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Northlight Studio · sample
Invoices
Backed by recorded work
INVOICED · AUGUST
$186,400
across 11 invoices
AWAITING PAYMENT
$74,900
4 sent, none overdue
HOURS BILLED
1,704
all from recorded work
INVOICEPERIODHOURSAMOUNTSTATE
- INV-2081Harbour & Co.1–31 Aug214$23,540Paid
- INV-2082Meridian Health1–31 Aug186$22,320Paid
- INV-2083Vector LabsHours verified · certificate c73a…1f081–31 Aug342$37,620Sent
- INV-2084Bellrose Retail1–31 Aug128$14,080Sent
- INV-2085Ardenway Logistics11–31 Aug96$10,560Draft
- INV-2086Kite Foundation18–31 Aug64$6,720Draft
Every invoiced hour is backed by recorded work.6 of 11 shown
What it returns
What WorkMonitor returns on your own team
Your headcount and loaded cost, the subscription already subtracted.
$
Salary plus everything on top of it.
ESTIMATED ANNUAL RETURN
- Time recovered from idle and drift6% of paid time, back in the week$228,000
- WorkMonitor, 40 people at $10 a month−$4,800
Net, over a year
$223,200
Estimated net return $223,200 a year.
47.5×
the subscription, returned
1 mo
to pay it back
96
hours a week, across the team
Arithmetic on your figures at the calculator’s low-end assumption of 6% of paid time recovered — not a measurement of your team. Itemise it by region and add-on
A timer records what people remember. The invoice should carry what they worked.
workmonitor.vsTimer-based time tracking
6differences, worked through below
Hours that never get entered
With WorkMonitor
Captured as the work happens and attributed to the project, with idle split out rather than rounded in, so the sheet is drafted before anyone opens it.
Timer-based time tracking
Somebody forgets the timer or rebuilds the week on Friday from memory — and an hour nobody entered is an hour nobody bills.
From hours to invoice and payroll
With WorkMonitor
Approved hours seed the invoice and the payroll run directly, priced by one shared rate engine, so the two cannot disagree.
Timer-based time tracking
Export, reformat, paste into payroll or invoicing, then reconcile to find what got mangled on the way.
Project margin
With WorkMonitor
Budget burn and margin update as hours land, in hours and in money, so an over-running project shows while there is still time to act.
Timer-based time tracking
Discovered when the invoice is drafted, after the over-run has already been paid for.
Payroll errors
With WorkMonitor
A cent-exact pre-flight that has to balance before a run can be exported, with idle already split out of the hours it prices.
Timer-based time tracking
Spreadsheet arithmetic, found at audit as a recurring few pence — or a paid idle hour nobody caught.
Who signs off the money
With WorkMonitor
Multi-stage approval that refuses a self-approval rather than warning about it.
Timer-based time tracking
Whoever has the file, which is usually more people than anyone intended.
When a client disputes the bill
With WorkMonitor
A finalized invoice seeds a certificate the client checks themselves, without an account.
Timer-based time tracking
A line item and a total. The client accepts it or opens a thread about it.
The question we get asked
Our invoicing works. Why would we disturb the one process that never causes trouble?
Not to change how the invoice is produced — to change what happens when one is questioned. A finalized invoice here seeds a signed certificate the client checks on a public page, disclosing only the fields you choose. It is the same invoice with something behind it, which is worth exactly as much as your clients query line items.
Projects — budget burn and margin, live
What a manager gets, in one platform
- Projects, clients, tasks & budgets (rate cards, burn)
The shortlist
The 5 Harvest alternatives managers shortlist
WorkMonitor first, because this is our page. The other Harvest competitors in their own words, each with its own head-to-head.
QuickBooks Time
Time tracking and scheduling inside the QuickBooks ecosystem, with clock-in, GPS and direct payroll handoff.
WorkMonitor vs QuickBooks TimeDeputy
Shift scheduling, rostering and time clock for hourly teams, with award interpretation and labour-cost forecasting.
WorkMonitor vs DeputyConnecteam
An all-in-one operations app for deskless teams: time clock, checklists, training and internal communication on mobile.
WorkMonitor vs ConnecteamHomebase
Scheduling, time clock, hiring and payroll for small hourly businesses — retail, hospitality and local services.
WorkMonitor vs Homebase
Switching
Bringing your Harvest history across
Nobody switches tools if it means abandoning a year of history. Export yours as CSV and the importer maps it onto our columns. There is no dedicated Harvest preset yet, so expect to line the columns up once rather than not at all.
The columns your export needs to line up with
- date
- minutes
- project
- task
- note
Six columns, mapped once on the first import. Rows that cannot be normalised still pass through, so the importer reports exactly which ones need attention rather than rejecting the file.
After the import
Where your Harvest history lands
Imported hours sit on the same ledger as everything captured after them, so last quarter’s cost and margin read the same way as next quarter’s. Corrections append with an author and a reason rather than overwriting, which is what lets you answer why a number changed long after anyone remembers.
Certificates — verifiable without an account
When Harvest is the better answer
You want invoicing and expenses in one familiar tool and have no interest in activity capture.
If that is the deciding requirement, buy that instead.
Questions
Harvest alternatives: what managers ask
Answered about what WorkMonitor does, including where the answer is no.
- How do I move my Harvest data into WorkMonitor?
- Export it as CSV and the importer maps it onto our columns — email, date, minutes, project, task, note. There is no dedicated preset for this vendor yet, so the columns get lined up once on the first import. Invoices are not imported, but the hours behind them are — so historical work can seed a certificate even though the original invoice stays in the old system.
- Does WorkMonitor do invoicing?
- Yes. Approved hours seed the invoice through the same rate engine that feeds payroll, so the invoice and the payslip cannot disagree, and a finalized invoice seeds a client-verifiable certificate.
- Does WorkMonitor handle expenses?
- Money budgets and burn are modelled at the project level, but expense capture with receipts is not the same thing and is not the strength here. A studio whose workflow is expense-heavy should weigh that carefully.
- What is the best Harvest alternative for studios that want live project margin?
- One where margin is a live number rather than a month-end calculation. WorkMonitor prices hours on bill and cost rate cards as they land, shows burn against budget in hours and in money, and surfaces an over-running project while it can still be rescued.
- Can WorkMonitor track project profitability?
- Yes — budget burn and margin update as hours land, in hours and in money, so an over-running project surfaces while it is running rather than when the invoice is drafted.
- Does WorkMonitor charge extra for invoicing?
- Invoicing is part of the Business plan rather than a separate billing add-on, alongside rate cards, payroll export and the margin dashboard — one per-seat price with no minimums.
Ask AI
Ask anything about your team
Plain-language answers about your own workforce data, with the figures behind them. Pick a question to see how it reads.
Who's most at risk of burnout?
Pick a question above and WorkMonitor AI will answer from your team's real numbers.
Take these with you
The software is the easy part of a rollout
Here is what we would send a manager doing one for the first time: how to read a productivity number, what to say to a remote team before anything is installed, and a policy you can adopt as written.
Point it at one team for a week.
Create the account, put the agent on a handful of desks, and leave it alone. On Friday you read the week instead of reconstructing it: hours against their projects, focus and idle per person, and the timesheets already filled in.
Free for two seats. No card, and no sales call to sit through.