Published October 15, 2026 · By the Sheaf team

How to export all your data from Harvest

Whether you’re leaving Harvest or just want a backup, it helps to know what each export gives you. Some things, like which hours are already on an invoice, are easy to lose.

Short answer: An administrator can download every time entry as one CSV, and every invoice and estimate as PDFs, from Settings, then Import/Export. Reports give you CSV or Excel files for expenses, invoice line items, payments, projects, clients and people. What CSVs don’t carry well: which time entry was billed on which invoice, project rates and budgets, and start and end times. The Harvest API has all of it.

Option 1: the “export all” buttons

If you’re an administrator, go to Settings → Import/Export (Harvest help). You’ll find:

Export all time: one CSV with every time entry in the account.
Export all invoices: a zip of PDFs, one per invoice.
Export all estimates: a zip of PDFs, one per estimate.

The PDFs are good for your records, but you can’t import a PDF into another tool. For invoice data you can actually work with, use the reports below.

Option 2: exports from each section

Most screens in Harvest have their own export. The useful ones:

What	Where	Formats
Detailed time	Reports → Time, detailed report	CSV, Excel, PDF. The file has more columns than the screen shows, including rates.
Expenses	Reports → Expenses, detailed	CSV, Excel, PDF. Only the PDF includes receipt images.
Invoice list	Invoices → Report	CSV, Excel, or a PDF packet
Invoice line items	Invoices → Report	CSV, Excel: each line with quantity, unit price, discount and taxes (help)
Payments received	Invoices → Report	CSV, Excel
Projects, tasks, people, clients and contacts	Each section’s list	CSV, Excel, depending on your plan and permissions

Harvest also has a “simple export” that only includes the table you see on screen (help). For a backup you want the detailed one.

What the CSVs leave out

This is where moving with spreadsheets gets painful:

Which hours were billed on which invoice. Harvest only shows this in a custom export, which is part of the Enterprise plan, and only for time that was pulled onto an invoice automatically (help). Without it, a new tool can’t tell billed time from unbilled time.
Project settings. Harvest’s own project CSV import can’t take billable rates, fees, budgets, assignments or tasks (help). Expect to set those up again by hand if you go the CSV route.
Start and end times. Time moves as durations, not clock times.
People’s email addresses, according to Clockify’s migration guide.

Option 3: the API (gets everything)

The Harvest API is available on every plan, including Free (help). It returns everything above, with the links between things intact: rates, budgets, and which time entry sits on which invoice.

Create a token. Sign in and open id.getharvest.com/developers. Click “Create new personal access token”. Use an administrator’s account so it can read everyone’s data.
Note your account ID, which is listed on the same page.
Use a tool that speaks the API, or write a script. Every request sends the token and the account ID, and the API allows 100 requests every 15 seconds (API docs).

If you’re a developer and want to write your own, we wrote about how messy real data broke our first import.

A sensible backup set

If you just want to keep your history safe, download these:

All time entries (Settings → Import/Export)
Detailed time report as CSV, for the rate columns
All invoices and estimates as PDFs
Invoice line items and payments received as CSV
Detailed expenses as PDF, to keep the receipts
Projects, clients and people lists as CSV

Moving to Sheaf

Sheaf’s Harvest import uses the API, so nothing gets lost in a spreadsheet. Paste a personal access token and your account ID, and it copies people, clients, tasks, projects with their budgets, every time entry with its rate, expenses, invoices and estimates. Billed time stays linked to its invoice, so it can’t be billed twice. The token is only used during the import and isn’t stored. Sheaf is free during beta.

Try Sheaf free Switching from Harvest

Questions

Can I export all my Harvest data at once?

Partly. Settings → Import/Export gives you all time entries as a CSV and all invoices and estimates as PDFs. Everything else comes from each section’s report, or from the API, which can read it all.

Do I need to be an admin to export from Harvest?

The “export all” options are for administrators. Other people can export the reports they’re allowed to see.

Can I get invoices as a spreadsheet?

Yes. Invoices → Report exports the invoice list, every line item, and payments received as CSV or Excel.

Will my data still be in Harvest after I export it?

Yes. Exporting and API reads don’t change anything in your Harvest account.

Related guides

Harvest is a trademark of its owner; Sheaf is not affiliated with it. Based on Harvest’s help center as of October 15, 2026.