2026-09-03

The negative-hours problem: what Harvest corrections do to a migration

Harvest accounts accumulate corrections: an entry of minus two hours that cancels a mistake in a week that was already locked. They are legitimate, they affect what clients owe, and almost every importer throws them away.

How they get lost

Importers skip entries with no time, which is reasonable; notes-only entries have nothing to log. The check is usually “less than one minute”, and a negative entry is less than one minute. It vanishes, and the total goes up by exactly the amount that had been corrected away.

What it cost in one account

A real account we imported this month reconciled with 26 rows off. All of the hours difference traced to 15 negative entries, 52 hours in total, all on one project in late August. Priced at the client’s rate that was $3,317 the client would have been billed for twice. The report showed the gap by client, project, member and year before anything went out.

What a correct import does

• Imports negative entries with their sign. They reduce the day’s total, and the grid shows them as what they are.
• Skips zero-hour entries, and counts them in the report instead of listing them as missing.
• Compares money in integers. A floating-point comparison flagged fifteen entries as one cent off when nothing was wrong.

How to check your own

Export detailed time from Harvest, sort by hours, and look at the bottom. If there are negatives, any tool you evaluate needs to show you where they went. The reconciliation report is how we answer that.