Looking for a Harvest Alternative? Function Point is a More Robust Option. Key Comparisons

Looking for a professional time-tracking solution for your creative team but don’t want to stick with Harvest? 

Function Point is not only the perfect Harvest alternative for your team’s needs but is also an all-in-one agency management solution specially designed for a creative agency.

While Harvest is indeed a popular and reliable time-tracking tool for most applications, there are Harvest alternatives offering better technology and/or unique features designed for specific needs. 

With that being said, depending on the unique needs of your organization, you might want to consider Function Point for your time-tracking, CRM, and project management needs.

In this post, we’ll have a more detailed look at Function Point as a Harvest alternative: the similarities between the two solutions and also the key differences so you can make a better-informed decision on which solution is the right one for your organization’s current and future needs.

Without further ado, let us begin.

Considering an alternative time tracking and agency platform to Harvest? Compare the differences between Function Point all-in-one agency management software and Harvest.

Function Point and Harvest can be considered direct competitors, and both are great time-tracking and project management solutions. Both Function Point and Harvest offer similar core features, like comprehensive time tracking features, intuitive invoicing features for users, and progress monitoring in a centralized project dashboard.

However, Function Point offers a more robust set of features beyond the basic time-tracking functionalities, with all of Function Point’s plans also offering client management, project management, financial management, resource management, and business intelligence features beyond the standard time management features.

Function Point is one of the most robust Harvest alternatives on the market, especially for agencies. One of the key advantages of Function Point over Harvest is its unique approach to time tracking that allows agencies to set up preferences regarding billability (utilization vs. realization of time.) 

While harvest treats all unbilled timesheets as non-billable time, Function Point can show billable timesheets that were previously written off (lower realization than utilization), which can help the agency not only in measuring accurate billable hours but also in accurately measuring the performances of different employees.

Function Point also allows agencies to get proof of their employees’ work without the over-the-shoulder management treatment, facilitating a sustainable employer-employee relationship to maximize engagement and productivity. 

Function Point vs. Harvest: Features Comparison

In this section, we’ll compare the features offered by Harvest and Function Point as HarvestAlternative.

Harvest: Key Features

Harvest offers a free plan for one seat (one user) and two projects, while the Pro plan costs $12/user/month (unlimited users and projects).

For both plans, Harvest offers the following features:

• Versatile time tracking: offering multiple ways to track time on mobile, desktop, or browser 
• Invoicing: easy invoicing for your users and seamless payment processing for employers
• Mobile/desktop apps: easy time tracking via applications optimized for all your devices.
• Custom reports: intuitive generation of custom reports to fit your workflow. Facilitating clear insight into your team and projects.
• Vacation/leave tracking: versatile leave/vacation tracking, so employees don’t need to fill in manual adjustments.

Function Point: Key Features

Being a more robust tool, Function Point is indeed more expensive than Harvest, with the plans starting at $40/user/month. 

However, Function Point is not only a time tracking and management solution but rather an all-in-one workflow management solution offering the following set of features:

1. Resource and time management features:
   1. Time tracking
   2. Smart resource forecast by role 
   3. Forecast tentative projects
   4. Leave, vacation, and paid-time-off tracking
   5. Fully customizable work calendar
   6. Smart tracking of billable and non-billable hours
   7. Mobile/desktop app for time tracking
   8. Allocate to job/task
2. Client management features:
   1. Customer briefs
   2. Sales pipeline and opportunity tracking
   3. Create estimates and proposals
   4. Seamless email integration to Outlook and Gmail
   5. Workback schedule estimates
   6. Change order and revision tracking
3. Project management features:
   1. Retainer management
   2. Creative briefs
   3. Campaign and project hierarchy
   4. Schedule templates
   5. Gantt chart
   6. Task dependencies 
   7. Kanban board
4. Financial management features:
   1. Campaign and project budgeting
   2. Task budgeting
   3. Expense tracking and markup
   4. Batch invoicing
   5. Blended/role/staff rates
5. Business intelligence features:
   1. Customizable dashboards
   2. Profitability by client, project, and services
   3. Staff billable vs. utilization (efficiency analysis)
   4. Margin projection
   5. Project ROI
   6. Forecast reports
6. Collaboration features:
   1. Client portal
   2. Proofing
   3. Request management
   4. Team communication

As you can see, Function Point offers much more beyond the time tracking and management features offered by Harvest, and although it is more effective, you’ll get more of your money’s worth.

Function Point vs. Harvest: Costs Comparison

Being an enterprise-grade all-in-one time management software, Function Point does not offer a free plan, while Harvest does offer a free plan for 1 seat (1 user) and 2 projects. Harvest’s premium plan costs $12 per user per month, but while Function Point charges a higher price point for their premium plans, they do offer a more robust set of features, as we’ve discussed in the previous section.

All of Function Points premium plans offer the same set of features (all mentioned in the previous section.) Function Point subscription cost goes cheaper as your number grows:

• $47/user/month (paid annually) or $52/user/month (paid monthly) for 5-9 users
• $42/user/month (paid annually) or $48user/month (paid monthly) for 10-29 users
• $40/user/month (paid annually) or $46 user/month (paid monthly) for 30-49 users
• Even cheaper for more than 50 users, contact Function Point for pricing quotes.

While you’ll indeed need to pay more with Function Point, you’ll also gain access to a more robust set of features that can cater to your business’s more advanced and/or specific needs.

Another key advantage of Function Point offers Harvest is its much more in-depth customizable reports. While Harvest does offer job profitability reports, FunctionPoint offers far more in-depth and versatile reports. For example, FunctionPoint allows agencies to visualize and analyze profitability with different filters, such as by job type, different types of customers, AEs, services, and so on.

Is Function Point a Good Harvest Alternative?

According to Capterra, a prominent user review site for software solutions, Function Point is not only a great time-tracking alternative for Harvest but also an all-in-one agency management software designed for the creative industry. Function Point offers up-to-date time tracking and reporting features, facilitating streamlined communication between teams, vendors, and clients.

G2Crowd also named Function Point as a leading product in its Professional Service Automation Grid, as well as a High Performer in the Project Management Software Grid® rankings.

Function Point can assist creative businesses in a wide variety of project management tasks. Onboarding and deployment are very easy, and by subscribing to Function Point, you’ll always get access to dedicated customer support ready to answer all your questions and provide relevant suggestions according to your needs.

Looking for a Harvest Alternative? Choose a Time-Tracking Solution According To Your Needs

When choosing any tech solution for your business, including a time-tracking and project management solution, it’s crucial to first identify your objectives and your needs in achieving these objectives.

If you need: to monitor and manage a remote team

Choose: Function Point

With remote working and work-from-home situations becoming the norm of today’s post-COVID reality, you’ll need an effective and efficient way to monitor and manage your remote workers.

Obviously, as an employer, you don’t want to pay for the hours your remote employees have spent watching YouTube videos or playing video games in their homes. 

Function Point offers comprehensive time tracking features for managing remote workers, like the ability to accurately track billable and non-billable hours to make sure you know when your remote workers are working and when they are not, so you can accurately pay only for the billable productive hours.

You might be surprised by the fact that some people may waste up to a whopping 60% of their working hours during remote work situations, and you’ll need a way to effectively identify this type of employee so you can act accordingly.

Harvest, on the other hand, offers fairly limited features for remote employee tracking since workers would need to turn on or off the timer manually. Harvest lacks advanced time tracking features and doesn’t offer any project management tools. So, it’s more difficult for Harvest users to track time against a specific task they’re working on. While Harvest does offer integration with popular task management tools like Asana, it’s not a native integration, so it’s not always reliable and 100% accurate.

Function Point, on the other hand, offers status in/out feature, integrated with Function Point’s task and project management solution. So, users can stay within the Function Point interface and don’t need to switch to another app to work on tasks.

If you need: to improve your team’s productivity

Choose: Function Point

Function Point is not only a time-tracking solution but also a comprehensive all-in-one solution that your team can (and should) use throughout the day as they accomplish their daily tasks. With Function Point, you can easily monitor how productive each of your employees was at each end of the day.

Function Point offers the ability to view staff workload in real-time, and employees are automatically assigned tasks as a project progresses via dependencies. You can easily track which employee is already at full capacity (or overworked) and which still has room for more work which is updated in real-time when users track time against their work. 

With improved transparency and accountability throughout the whole workflow, you can improve your team’s productivity significantly.

On the other hand, Harvest features fairly limited features that can help boost productivity. The accuracy of the Harvest’s time tracker depends on the worker’s ability to stay on task while the timer is on (which isn’t very effective for procrastinating employees.)

When it comes to boosting your team’s productivity, Function Point is a clear winner.

If you need: an affordable time-tracking solution

Choose: Harvest

Harvest is more affordable than Function Point despite offering fewer features than Function Point.

So, if you are only looking for an affordable time-tracking solution for your projects and don’t really need advanced project management, resource management, and productivity features, among others, then Harvest is a more viable solution.

If you need: a streamlined invoicing solution

Choose: Function Point

Function Point offers pretty robust expense tracking and cost-calculator features. Function Point offers everything offered by Harvest when it comes to invoicing capabilities. But on top of that, Function Point also offers batch invoicing and better accuracy thanks to the utilization vs. realization feature, as we’ve mentioned above.

Despite all these robust features, it’s still fairly easy to track and calculate how much you should charge your clients with Function Point, and you can simply copy-paste the amount into your actual invoice.

If you need: A time-tracking and collaboration solution to use together in a team

Choose: Function Point

Compared to Harvest, Function Point is a  comprehensive time-tracking solution. Function Point can accurately track time against tasks an employee has been assigned, freeing employees from having to keep track of what billable item is associated with any given task. This provides employers with more accuracy in tracking their employees’ billable hours while at the same time offering more convenience for employees.

Function Point also offers other robust time-tracking features like the ability to configure billability (utilization vs realization) so employers accurately differentiate between billable and non-billable hours. Managers can also configure Function Point as they see fit, for example specifying the solution to stop tracking outside business hours, even if an employee continues to use the device.

Harvest, on the other hand, is a fairly simple time-tracking tool that only allows you to start or stop tracking manually. Since it does require manual input from employees, the accuracy may be compromised.