Harvest + Asana
Connect Harvest and Asana to Keep Time Tracking and Project Management in Sync
Automatically sync tasks, time entries, and project budgets between Harvest and Asana so your team can focus on work, not data entry.
Why integrate Harvest and Asana?
Harvest and Asana are two of the most widely used tools on project-driven teams — Asana for organizing and tracking work, Harvest for capturing the time and costs behind it. Together, they give you a complete picture of project health. But keeping them in sync manually is tedious, error-prone, and slow. By connecting Harvest and Asana through tray.ai, teams can automate the flow of tasks, time data, and budget information between both platforms in real time.
Automate & integrate Harvest & Asana
Use case
Auto-Create Harvest Projects from New Asana Projects
When a new project is created in Asana, tray.ai can automatically provision a matching project in Harvest, with the same name, client association, and budget settings. This removes the manual setup step that often delays teams from tracking time on day one. Finance and project leads can trust that every billable engagement in Asana has a corresponding Harvest record ready to go.
Use case
Log Time Entries in Harvest When Asana Tasks Are Completed
As team members mark tasks complete in Asana, tray.ai can trigger time entry creation or reminders in Harvest, prompting accurate logging while the work is still fresh. This cuts down on end-of-week time reconstruction, where hours get estimated rather than actually recorded. Teams get more reliable utilization data, and clients get more accurate invoices.
Use case
Sync Harvest Budget Alerts Back to Asana as Task Comments or Updates
When a Harvest project hits a defined budget threshold — 75% or 100% utilization, for example — tray.ai can post a comment or update directly on the corresponding Asana project or task. Project managers stay informed inside the tool they already use to plan and assign work, without having to monitor Harvest separately. Early warnings make scope conversations possible before overruns happen.
Use case
Create Asana Tasks from Uninvoiced Harvest Time Entries
When Harvest flags time entries as uninvoiced or ready for billing, tray.ai can create follow-up tasks in Asana for account managers or finance team members to review and process. This closes the loop between time tracking and billing, so nothing slips through at month-end or billing cycle close. Teams can assign, prioritize, and track invoicing tasks just like any other deliverable.
Use case
Mirror Asana Task Assignments to Harvest Team Member Allocations
When tasks are assigned or reassigned in Asana, tray.ai can update or create corresponding team member records and assignments within the relevant Harvest project. Harvest always reflects who's actively working on what, which makes per-person utilization reporting and capacity planning actually reliable. Resource managers get a live view of team workload without cross-referencing both tools by hand.
Use case
Generate Weekly Time Summary Reports in Asana from Harvest Data
On a weekly schedule, tray.ai pulls time and budget summaries from Harvest and posts them as updates or comments on your Asana projects. PMs don't have to manually pull Harvest reports and paste data into project updates. Teams stay aligned on project pacing without leaving Asana.
Use case
Archive or Close Harvest Projects When Asana Projects Are Completed
When a project is marked complete in Asana, tray.ai can automatically close or archive the corresponding Harvest project, preventing new time entries from being accidentally logged against finished work. Harvest stays clean, and financial reporting reflects only active engagements. Teams avoid the familiar headache of orphaned Harvest projects inflating WIP figures.
Get started with Harvest & Asana integration today
Harvest & Asana Challenges
What challenges are there when working with Harvest & Asana and how will using Tray.ai help?
Challenge
Maintaining Consistent Project Mapping Between Two Systems
Harvest and Asana each use their own internal project IDs and naming conventions, making it hard to reliably link records across both platforms — especially as projects get renamed, duplicated, or archived over time.
How Tray.ai Can Help:
tray.ai has a built-in data store that persists cross-system ID mappings, so Harvest project IDs and Asana project GIDs stay linked regardless of name changes. Workflows reference these stored mappings at runtime, so updates and lookups always hit the correct records in both platforms.
Challenge
Handling Different User Identity Models
Team members often have different email addresses, display names, or account structures in Harvest versus Asana, which makes automated assignment and time attribution unreliable when the two systems don't share a common user identifier.
How Tray.ai Can Help:
tray.ai's workflow logic can normalize user identity by mapping Asana user GIDs to Harvest user IDs using a lookup table maintained in tray's data store. Task assignments in Asana translate to the correct Harvest team member records, keeping time attribution accurate.
Challenge
Managing Webhook Reliability and Event Volume
High-activity teams can generate a large volume of Asana task events and Harvest time entry updates at once, creating real risk of missed events, duplicate records, or workflow bottlenecks if the integration isn't built to handle concurrency.
How Tray.ai Can Help:
tray.ai's infrastructure handles high event throughput with automatic queuing, retry logic, and concurrency controls. Duplicate detection logic can be built directly into workflows to ensure that rapid-fire events in either system produce clean, idempotent records rather than duplicate Harvest entries or Asana tasks.
Challenge
Keeping Budget and Time Data Accurate Across Billing Periods
Time entries in Harvest are often edited, deleted, or adjusted after initial logging, which means data synced to Asana at one point can go stale — leading to inaccurate budget comments, outdated project updates, or reports that no longer reflect reality.
How Tray.ai Can Help:
tray.ai workflows can listen for Harvest time entry update and deletion events, not just creation, triggering corrective actions in Asana like revised comments or updated status fields. Scheduled reconciliation workflows can also run at defined intervals to compare Harvest actuals against previously synced Asana data and resolve discrepancies.
Challenge
Scoping Integrations to the Right Projects Without Over-Triggering
Not every Asana project should create a Harvest project, and not every Harvest entry needs to surface in Asana. Without careful filtering, automations can create noise, clutter, or billing records for internal or non-billable work.
How Tray.ai Can Help:
tray.ai's workflow builder supports rich conditional logic, so teams can filter triggers by Asana project tags, custom fields, team membership, or naming conventions. Only projects and tasks that match defined criteria — like a 'Billable' custom field set to true — will kick off downstream actions in Harvest, keeping both platforms clean.
Start using our pre-built Harvest & Asana templates today
Start from scratch or use one of our pre-built Harvest & Asana templates to quickly solve your most common use cases.
Harvest & Asana Templates
Find pre-built Harvest & Asana solutions for common use cases
Template
New Asana Project → Create Matching Harvest Project
Automatically creates a new project in Harvest whenever a project is added in Asana, mapping project name, client, and budget details so time tracking is ready from day one.
Steps:
- Trigger: New project is created in Asana
- Map Asana project fields (name, owner, due date) to Harvest project schema
- Create a new project record in Harvest with matched details
Connectors Used: Asana, Harvest
Template
Completed Asana Task → Log Time Entry Reminder in Harvest
When a task is marked complete in Asana, this template sends a time-logging prompt or creates a draft time entry in Harvest, so hours are captured accurately and on time.
Steps:
- Trigger: Task status changes to 'Complete' in Asana
- Look up the corresponding project in Harvest using project mapping
- Create a draft time entry or send a Harvest reminder for the assigned team member
Connectors Used: Asana, Harvest
Template
Harvest Budget Threshold Alert → Asana Project Comment
Monitors Harvest project budget utilization and posts an automated warning comment on the corresponding Asana project when a configurable threshold is crossed.
Steps:
- Trigger: Harvest project budget utilization reaches defined threshold (e.g., 75%)
- Look up the linked Asana project using a stored project ID mapping
- Post a formatted budget alert comment on the Asana project
Connectors Used: Harvest, Asana
Template
Weekly Harvest Time Summary → Asana Project Status Update
Runs on a weekly schedule to pull time and budget data from Harvest for active projects and post a formatted summary update on each corresponding Asana project.
Steps:
- Trigger: Scheduled weekly workflow execution
- Query Harvest API for time entries and budget data across active projects
- Post a formatted hours-logged vs. estimate summary as an Asana project status update
Connectors Used: Harvest, Asana
Template
Asana Project Completed → Archive Harvest Project
Automatically closes or archives the corresponding Harvest project when its Asana counterpart is marked complete, preventing stale time entries and keeping financial data clean.
Steps:
- Trigger: Asana project status changes to 'Complete'
- Look up the linked Harvest project ID from the integration mapping store
- Update Harvest project status to archived or closed via API
Connectors Used: Asana, Harvest
Template
Uninvoiced Harvest Entries → Asana Billing Follow-Up Tasks
Scans Harvest for uninvoiced time entries at the end of each billing period and automatically creates prioritized follow-up tasks in a designated Asana billing project for the finance team.
Steps:
- Trigger: Scheduled end-of-period workflow or Harvest invoice status webhook
- Query Harvest for all uninvoiced time entries grouped by client or project
- Create individual Asana tasks in the billing project with entry details, amounts, and due dates
Connectors Used: Harvest, Asana