Harvest User Management Guide

• Model type: role-based
• Description: Harvest uses two fixed account-level roles (Administrator and Member). Members can be elevated to Project Manager on a per-project basis via a toggle, but there are no custom roles or granular permission sets. All permissions are predefined.
• Custom roles: No
• Custom roles plan: Not documented
• Granularity: Coarse: account-level role (Admin vs. Member) plus per-project Project Manager flag. No field-level or resource-level permission customization.

1. Log in as an Administrator.
2. Navigate to Settings → Team (https://app.getharvest.com/settings/team).
3. Click 'Add a Team Member'.
4. Enter the new user's first name, last name, and email address.
5. Select role: Administrator or Member.
6. Optionally set weekly capacity, cost rate, billable rate, and department.
7. Click 'Send Invitation'. The user receives an email to set their password and activate their account.
8. Assign the user to projects via the Projects section or from the user's profile.

Required fields: First name, Last name, Email address

Watch out for:

• Adding a user immediately increases the seat count and triggers a prorated billing charge for the current billing period.
• The Free plan is limited to 1 seat (the account owner); any additional user requires upgrading to a paid plan.
• Invited users must accept the email invitation before they can log in; pending invitations still consume a seat.
• There is no domain-based auto-provisioning; every user must be manually invited or provisioned via an IdP connector.

• Can delete users: Verify in tenant
• Delete/deactivate behavior: This app exposes delete operations in its API documentation, but the admin-console path may present removal as deactivation, archiving, or deletion depending on tenant configuration. Confirm whether the UI action is reversible before treating removal as recoverable.

1. Log in as an Administrator.
2. Navigate to Settings → Team (https://app.getharvest.com/settings/team).
3. Locate the team member to deactivate.
4. Click the user's name to open their profile.
5. Click 'Archive' (or the archive/deactivate option).
6. Confirm the action. The user is immediately deactivated and loses login access.

Watch out for:

• Deactivated users can be reactivated at any time, which will re-consume a seat and may trigger a prorated charge.
• There is no bulk deactivation UI; each user must be archived individually.
• Deactivating a user does not reassign their open tasks or project manager responsibilities-Administrators must manually reassign these.
• If the account owner needs to be changed, Harvest support must be contacted directly as there is no self-serve ownership transfer.

• Where to check usage: Settings → Team (https://app.getharvest.com/settings/team) shows all active and archived members. Settings → Billing shows current seat count and cost.
• How to identify unused seats: Administrators can review the Team list and filter by last activity or check Reports → Time to identify members with no recent time entries. There is no built-in 'inactive user' report; manual review of time entry data is required.
• Billing notes: Billing is per active (non-archived) seat. Adding a user mid-cycle incurs a prorated charge. Deactivating a user mid-cycle may result in a prorated credit applied to the next invoice. Annual plans are billed upfront for the full year based on seat count at time of purchase; seat additions during the year are charged prorated for the remainder of the annual term.

There is no bulk CSV import, so each team member must be invited individually - a real drag at scale. Pending invitations count against your seat limit immediately, meaning billing starts before a user has even logged in. Identifying unused seats requires manually cross-referencing time entry reports, since Harvest has no built-in inactive user report.

The most consistent friction points reported by Harvest admins center on provisioning and offboarding gaps. Bulk user import via CSV does not exist, making large-team onboarding tedious.

Permanent user deletion is not supported - only archiving - which leaves some teams feeling account cleanup is never truly complete.

The binary Admin/Member model is frequently flagged as too coarse for organizations that need intermediate access levels, and ownership transfer requires contacting Harvest support rather than a self-serve UI action.

Common complaints:

• No bulk user import via CSV; each user must be invited individually, which is time-consuming for large teams.
• No permanent user deletion; only archiving is available, which can make account cleanup feel incomplete.
• No built-in inactive user report to identify unused seats; admins must manually cross-reference time entry reports.
• Adding a user immediately triggers billing even if the invitation has not yet been accepted.
• No custom roles or granular permissions; the binary Admin/Member model is considered too coarse for organizations needing intermediate access levels.
• Ownership transfer requires contacting Harvest support rather than being self-serve.
• No domain-based auto-provisioning without a third-party IdP connector on the Premium plan.

Every app your team evaluates for time tracking should be weighed against the provisioning overhead it introduces - and Harvest's overhead is entirely manual without a third-party connector.

Teams on the Pro plan get unlimited seats and projects but no SSO; upgrading to Premium unlocks SAML SSO and timesheet approval workflows, though SCIM provisioning remains unavailable at any tier.

If your organization needs automated user lifecycle management, you will need to either build against the REST API or rely on a supported IdP connector.

Bottom line

Harvest is a capable time-tracking tool, but its user management is deliberately minimal. Every app your team relies on for access control will need more than Harvest can offer natively - no SCIM, no custom roles, no bulk import, and no self-serve ownership transfer.

For small teams with stable headcount, the manual workflow is manageable. For organizations with frequent onboarding and offboarding cycles, the per-seat billing-on-invite model and absence of automated provisioning will create compounding overhead that is worth factoring into your tooling decisions.