How to export your data from Harvest before you cancel

Short version: there is no single “export everything” button in Harvest. Your time, your invoices, your payments, your expenses and your client list each come out of a different menu, and some of them need an Administrator and an active plan. Menu paths below were checked against Harvest’s Help Center on 1 November 2026. Harvest changes its interface from time to time, so if a menu has moved, the Help Center articles in the sources are the place to look.

Why one export is not enough

Most people leaving Harvest download one time report and call it done. Months later a client asks about an old invoice, or the tax office wants to see what was paid when, and the account is gone. The time report does not contain your invoices, the invoice list does not contain your payments, and nothing in the reports contains your client contacts.

So take each kind of data out separately, keep the original files untouched, and only then cancel. Half an hour, once.

What Harvest lets you export

What you see depends on your plan and your role: Administrators can export everything, Managers only the projects and people they manage, and Members only their own time and expenses.

• Time: every time entry as CSV or Excel, from a report or from account settings.
• Invoices: one row per invoice (CSV or Excel), one row per line item (CSV or Excel), or a ZIP of PDF copies.
• Payments received: one row per payment, CSV or Excel.
• Expenses: one row per expense as CSV or Excel; receipt images only in the PDF export.
• Clients and client contacts, projects, tasks, people, estimates: CSV or Excel lists from their own sections.

Step by step

1. All your time

If you are an Administrator, the quickest way is Settings → Import/Export → Export all time. Harvest writes a detailed time report of the whole account as CSV, either at once or by emailed link when the file is ready.

If you are not an Administrator, or you want to control the columns, run Reports → New report → Detailed time, choose the widest timeframe you can and no filters, click Run report, then Export → CSV. The CSV holds more than the screen shows: rates, amounts, the rounded hours and the invoiced flag per entry. If your plan supports custom exports, Export → Custom lets you pick the columns. For this purpose, take everything.

A detailed time export typically has one row per entry with these columns: Date, Client, Project, Project Code, Task, Notes, Hours, Hours Rounded, Billable?, Invoiced?, Approved?, First Name, Last Name, Roles, Employee?, Billable Rate, Billable Amount, Cost Rate, Cost Amount, Currency and External Reference URL. Two of them matter more than they look:

• Hours vs. Hours Rounded. If rounding is switched on in your account, Harvest states that Billable Amount and Cost Amount are calculated from Hours Rounded, not from Hours. Whatever tool reads the file later needs to know which column your money came from.
• Invoiced? This is the only record of which hours were billed. If you import the file somewhere else and this column is ignored, every hour looks unbilled.

2. Your invoices, three ways

Invoice reports need an Administrator. Go to Invoices → Report, click New report, choose Invoice report, the widest timeframe, all clients, status All, and run it. If you invoice in several currencies, the report has one section per currency. Open Export and take all three:

1. Export invoices to CSV. One row per invoice: number, client, issue date, amounts invoiced and paid, balance and tax amounts. This is the file that lets you continue your numbering and keep track of open balances.
2. Export line items to CSV. One row per line on every invoice, with project, description, quantity, unit price, discount and taxes.
3. Export invoices to PDF. Harvest emails a link to a ZIP with a PDF of every invoice on the report. These are the documents you actually sent, so keep them with your accounting records. The same ZIP is available as Settings → Import/Export → Export all invoices.

3. Payments received

Still under Invoices → Report → New report, choose Payments received report, the widest timeframe, and export it to CSV. One row per payment with the date it arrived, the invoice it paid and the tax share.

4. Expenses and receipts

If your plan has expenses, run Reports → New report → Detailed expense over the widest timeframe and export it twice: as CSV for the data and as PDF, because only the PDF contains the receipt images. Receipts usually have statutory retention periods, so do not skip the second one.

5. Clients, contacts, projects, tasks, people

• Manage → Clients → Import/Export exports clients (name and address) and, separately, client contacts (name, title, email, phones).
• Projects → Export, Manage → Tasks → Export and Team → Export list projects, tasks and active teammates. Archived teammates are missing from the Team export, but their time is in the time export.
• If you use estimates, the Estimates section exports them as CSV, and Settings → Import/Export → Export all estimates gives their PDFs.

Check the files before you leave

• Compare totals. Add up the Hours column and compare it with a Time report over the same range in Harvest. If they differ, a filter was set or the timeframe was too narrow.
• Count the invoices. The number of rows in the invoice CSV should match the number of invoices on your Invoices overview with the filter set to All.
• Keep the originals. Saving a CSV from Excel or Numbers can turn 2024-03-07 into 07.03.2024, swap decimal points for commas, and strip leading zeros from invoice numbers. Look all you like, but save any copy under a different name.
• Follow the emailed links straight away. Harvest notes that export links sent by email stop working once the account is closed.

Before you cancel or close

Harvest offers two ways out, and they treat your data differently:

• Scheduling a cancellation keeps the account open until the end of the paid period, then closes it. Harvest keeps the data for around six months, and an Administrator can reactivate within that window. The catch: invoice and payments received reports need an active plan. Once it lapses you cannot run them without asking support for a courtesy reactivation.
• Closing the account immediately can only be done by the Account Owner, in a web browser, under Settings → Billing. Harvest then emails the owner a download link for time and invoice data that works for one week, and deletes everything after 10 days. A mistaken closure can be reversed by contacting support within those 10 days, not after.

Either way, export first, check the files, then cancel. Not the other way round.

Bringing the history into Weft

Weft is a local-first time tracker and invoicing app, paid for once instead of monthly. Its importer was built around two of the files above: the detailed time report and the invoice list. The Harvest alternative page compares the two side by side.

• Check first, free. Drop the time CSV into the free Harvest checker. It reads the file in your browser, with no account and no upload, and shows hours, billable amounts per currency, invoiced and uninvoiced time, and your effective rate per client. If rounding was on in Harvest, it works out which hours column your amounts came from and offers the same rule for those projects.
• Imports that must match. Weft only imports once its own totals reconcile with your file. Columns are matched by name, so re-ordered, renamed or custom exports work, as do semicolon-separated files and German dates from a spreadsheet re-save. Rows already imported are skipped, and an import can be undone.
• Invoices keep their numbers. The invoice CSV comes in as a read-only list with status, amounts and open balance, and Weft suggests the next invoice number so your sequence continues where Harvest stopped. Line items and the PDFs stay in your Harvest ZIP; keep that with your records.
• Expenses are recognised but not imported yet. Keep the CSV and PDF from step 4.
• No lock-in in return. Weft’s own export is one ZIP with every table as CSV, your time in Harvest’s column names, every invoice PDF and e-invoice, and every receipt, on every plan.

Questions people ask

Can I export all my data from Harvest at once?

No, there is no single button. Administrators get the closest thing under Settings → Import/Export: all time as CSV, all invoices as PDFs and all estimates as PDFs. Payments, expenses, clients and client contacts each come from their own section, as in the steps above.

How do I cancel my Harvest subscription?

In a web browser (not the mobile or desktop app), go to Settings → Billing, click Manage, choose Cancel plan and finish with Schedule cancellation. The account stays usable until the end of the period you paid for, then closes. Cancelling stops the next renewal but does not refund a charge already made. Export your invoice and payments received reports first: they cannot be run once the plan has lapsed.

What happens to my data if I delete my Harvest account?

If the Account Owner closes the account immediately, Harvest emails them a link to download time and invoice data that works for one week, and permanently deletes everything after 10 days. If you schedule a cancellation instead, Harvest keeps the data for about six months and an Administrator can reactivate, but reactivating starts a new subscription at current pricing.

Can I export Harvest invoices as PDFs?

Yes. Under Invoices → Report, run an invoice report with status All over the widest timeframe, then choose Export → Export invoices to PDF. Harvest emails a link to a ZIP with one PDF per invoice. Administrators can also use Settings → Import/Export → Export all invoices.

Who owns Harvest now?

Bending Spoons, which acquired Harvest in 2025. Since then many customers have reported large price increases after Harvest moved from per-seat to usage-based pricing. If that is why you are leaving, export everything first, then compare Harvest alternatives.

Sources

• Harvest Help Center, “Exporting data”, checked 1 November 2026. support.getharvest.com
• Harvest Help Center, “Detailed time and detailed expense reports”, checked 1 November 2026. support.getharvest.com
• Harvest Help Center, “Invoice reports and payments received reports”, checked 1 November 2026. support.getharvest.com
• Harvest Help Center, “What reports and exports are available in Harvest?”, checked 1 November 2026. support.getharvest.com
• Harvest Help Center, “Version 2 billing and Free accounts: Cancelling your subscription or closing your account”, checked 4 November 2026. support.getharvest.com
• Wikipedia, “Harvest (software)”, on the acquisition by Bending Spoons and the pricing change, checked 4 November 2026. en.wikipedia.org

Weft is not affiliated with Harvest or Bending Spoons. Harvest is a trademark of its owner, used here only to identify the product. Retention periods for invoices and receipts depend on where you are taxed; this article is not tax advice.

Check your Harvest export Weft and the alternatives

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