Harvest is fine. It's also a 19-year-old product with a REST API that hasn't evolved much and a UI that feels like 2014. Engineering teams who care about modern tooling tend to bounce off it pretty fast.
Engineering teams evaluate tools differently than other audiences. The first question is usually "does it have an API that I can pipe into our data warehouse / Slack / Linear / GitHub workflows?" The second is "does it ship a SDK or MCP server for the AI tooling we already use?" Harvest answers the first one yes (REST API, mostly unchanged since the early 2010s) and the second one no. Tempough answers both: webhooks with HMAC signatures and replay-on-failure, a versioned REST API with OpenAPI schema generation, and an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that lets Claude Code, Cursor, or Zed read time entries and run reports against your workspace as a scoped first-class citizen. For engineering managers who want time tracking to be a build-block rather than a data silo, that matters more than the timer UI.
Not a generic critique — the specific places engineering teams typically run into the wall.
It works, but it's a thin layer over the core entities — you can't script most workflows. Tempough's REST API ships scoped tokens (read-only vs. read-write, per-integration), full CRUD across every entity, and JSON cursor pagination. The docs are short because the API is consistent.
Harvest has limited webhook coverage and inconsistent payload shapes. Tempough fires HMAC-signed webhooks for every entity lifecycle: invoice + timesheet + expense + time-off + change order + client + project lifecycle. Replay endpoint for missed deliveries. Wire it into Slack, Linear, GitHub, or a data lake in an afternoon.
Keyboard shortcuts are sparse, navigation is mouse-heavy, the design language is mid-2010s SaaS. Tempough is keyboard-first — every workflow (open timer, switch project, submit week) has a shortcut. Important when your team is engineers who don't want their hands leaving the keyboard.
Harvest has admin / manager / member as fixed roles. Tempough has permission groups: bundle granular keys (view team time, approve timesheets, manage projects, see margin reports, etc.) and assign them to staff. Means contributor engineers can be locked to their own time without seeing teammates', payroll can see Reports but not Settings, etc.
The same surface, audience-tailored to what engineering teams actually need.
Tempough was designed to be extended via webhooks + REST. Every UI workflow has a corresponding API endpoint with the same scope. The Swagger UI at /api/v1/docs/public/ documents the customer surface; tokens have per-scope ACL so a Slack bot can read time entries without being able to touch invoices.
HMAC-signed deliveries on every state change: invoice paid, timesheet submitted, approval granted, budget threshold crossed, change order added, client created. The replay endpoint lets you re-fire missed events while your endpoint was down. Audit log records every delivery attempt.
Cmd+K command palette, single-key shortcuts on every screen, timer toggleable from anywhere. Tab order is sane. The whole product is built assuming you don't want to take your hands off the keyboard.
$13/seat/mo for Team Pro, flat. No per-API-call charges, no per-webhook charges, no integration fees, no "premium tier" upsell. The bill is the same every month. Harvest's new usage-fee rollout makes this an unusually relevant point.
Team Pro is the right fit because engineering teams typically want the webhooks + API surface, branded invoices for client-facing work, and the team-groupings concept for splitting engineering / design / PM in reports. API + webhooks technically unlock at Partnership ($12/mo, 2 seats), so a tiny team can try that path first.
Why teams leave Harvest, audience-agnostic.
Audience-specific tour of the feature surface.
Step-by-step walkthrough — most teams finish in under an hour.
Two-week trial. No credit card. Full feature set.