Which tool wins for engineering teams?
The honest answer: it depends on your workflow. But for most small engineering firms (5–25 people), the differences are significant enough to matter.
Here's a quick breakdown before we go deeper:
- Timely — best for automated tracking and remote/hybrid teams
- Avaza — best for end-to-end project management with invoicing built in
- Harvest — best for straightforward invoicing, but requires manual discipline
All three tools are solid. But engineers — unlike consultants or creatives — tend to switch context constantly: CAD sessions, client calls, documentation sprints, code reviews. That makes accurate time capture genuinely hard, and the tool you pick needs to solve that specific problem.
How does each tool handle engineering workflows?
Timely: automatic tracking that engineers actually use
Timely's biggest differentiator is its AI-powered Memory timer, which captures everything you work on automatically — without engineers needing to start and stop timers. For teams where "I forgot to log Tuesday" is a weekly problem, this alone can justify the cost.
Key strengths for engineering firms:
- Automatic activity capture across apps, meetings, and documents
- Privacy-first design — managers see logged hours, not the raw activity detail. This matters in GDPR-conscious markets like Belgium and the Netherlands
- Integrates with Google Calendar, making it easy to match logged hours to client projects
- Mobile app with offline mode — useful for site visits or on-location engineering work
A 15-person engineering bureau in Amsterdam switched from Harvest to Timely and saw a 25% increase in billable hours recovered — simply because engineers stopped forgetting to log time. That's not a small number at €80+/hour rates.
Annual cost for 10 users: approximately €3,480 on the Pro plan. The ROI math is straightforward: recovering even 5% more billable hours per engineer pays for the tool within months.
Avaza: project-first with strong invoicing
Avaza is the all-in-one option — time tracking, project management, resource scheduling, quoting, and invoicing in one platform. For engineering firms running milestone-based projects with multiple deliverables, this integrated approach reduces the admin overhead significantly.
What sets Avaza apart:
- Resource planner for capacity management across engineering projects
- Native support for multi-currency invoicing — relevant for Belgian and Dutch firms billing international clients
- Strong Peppol/e-invoicing compatibility, which matters now that Belgium's mandatory e-invoicing framework is in full effect in 2026
- Custom fields for engineering-specific data (hours per sprint, phase completion, etc.)
A Belgian engineering team of 8 replaced their stack of separate tools with Avaza and reported 30% faster project turnaround for their automotive clients — largely because quoting, tracking, and invoicing no longer lived in different systems.
Annual cost for 10 users: approximately €2,160 on the Team plan. The lowest cost of the three, with the broadest feature set.
Harvest: simple and proven, but shows its limits
Harvest is the easiest to set up and has excellent invoice integrations. If your engineers already have good time-logging habits and you just need clean invoicing output, it works well.
Where Harvest falls short for engineering teams:
- No automatic tracking — every entry is manual, which leads to inaccuracy over time
- A 20-person consultancy in the Netherlands reported 15% time entry inaccuracy using Harvest alone, requiring a workaround with an additional tool
- Limited project complexity handling — it's built for simplicity, which can feel constraining for multi-phase engineering projects
- Integrates well with tools like Yuki and Basecone, which are popular in Belgian and Dutch accounting workflows
Annual cost for 10 users: approximately €2,880. Solid value if the manual input issue doesn't bite you — but for most engineering teams, it eventually does.
What's the best choice for small engineering firms in Belgium and the Netherlands?
Here's a practical decision guide:
Choose Timely if:
- Your team is remote or hybrid and struggles with consistent time logging
- You want the highest billable hour recovery with minimal admin
- GDPR compliance and employee privacy are priorities
- You're willing to pay a small premium for automation
Choose Avaza if:
- You need project management, quoting, and invoicing in one tool
- You're running milestone-based engineering projects with multiple phases
- Peppol/e-invoicing compliance is a priority (it should be in Belgium in 2026)
- Budget efficiency matters and you want to replace multiple tools at once
Choose Harvest if:
- Your team already has strong time-logging discipline
- You primarily need clean, fast invoicing with minimal complexity
- You're integrating with Yuki, Basecone, or similar Dutch/Belgian accounting tools
- You prefer a minimal, no-frills interface
For most engineering firms in the 5–25 employee range, Timely or Avaza will deliver better ROI than Harvest — especially as project complexity grows and e-invoicing compliance becomes non-negotiable.
Getting started: three practical steps
Before you commit to any platform, do this:
- Run a 14-day trial with 3 engineers on one live project — not a test project. Real conditions reveal real issues.
- Calculate your ROI using this formula: (billable hours recovered × hourly rate × 12 months) − annual subscription cost. Even a 5% improvement in hour capture often covers the tool cost within the first quarter.
- Check your integration stack — confirm the tool connects with your CRM, accounting software (Teamleader, Snelstart, Yuki), and your Peppol setup before you migrate.
If you're an engineering firm looking to sharpen how your business presents itself online — not just how it tracks time — Luniq builds websites specifically for engineering and technical service companies. A strong site paired with accurate billing data is a compelling combination when you're pitching new clients.
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