Leaving Harvest without losing your history
Switching tools is easy. Switching without losing years of hours and invoices takes a little preparation.
The hard part of leaving a time tracker isn't signing up for the next one. It's the history: past invoices your accountant may ask about, hours you want to compare against, and invoice numbers that have to continue without a gap. Here's how to move all of it in one afternoon.
What to export from Harvest
You need three files from the same Harvest account, ideally downloaded on the same day.
- The detailed time report, as CSV. Choose the full period you want to bring along, from your first entry to today.
- The expense report, as CSV. Use the same period.
- Your invoices, as a zip of PDFs. These are the originals your clients received.
Exporting changes nothing on the Harvest side. Your account keeps working exactly as before.
Upload and check
In gonibabki, go to Settings › Import and drop all three files at once. Before anything is saved, you see what was found: clients, projects, hours, expenses and invoices. If something looks off, stop there and nothing has changed.
Importing is safe to repeat. The same file twice adds nothing new, so you can import a fresh export later without creating duplicates.
What comes along
- Clients, matched by name, with their projects and tasks.
- Hours, with their notes. Hours that were invoiced in Harvest stay invoiced, so they can't end up on a new invoice by accident.
- Past invoices, with their numbers and the original PDFs.
- Expenses, with their categories.
Two things stay behind. Rates, contacts and addresses aren't in the exports, so you add those once. Receipts aren't exported by Harvest at all: keep the originals where they are, and attach new ones in gonibabki from now on.
Your numbering carries on
This is the part people worry about most. Dutch rules ask for one continuous series of invoice numbers, and switching tools is a classic place for a gap. Because your past invoices come along with their numbers, your first invoice in gonibabki continues the series where Harvest stopped.
Before you cancel Harvest
- Check a few totals. Compare the hours for one client and one month in both tools.
- Add your rates and invoice details. Then make a draft invoice to see everything come together.
- Keep your own copy of the exports. Dutch law asks you to keep invoices for seven years, whichever tool you use.
Then cancel Harvest at the end of your billing period. Instead of about $300 a year, one person pays €39.