Protect the margin on every engagement.
TrackBeam brings timesheets, engagements and billing into a single system, with an automatic priority engine that determines who works on what, when, and in what order. Hours are captured as the work happens, projected cost is measured against budget throughout the engagement, and overruns are addressed while there is still time to act on them.
Designed by a CPA, from several years of practice in accounting firms.
Most write-offs are decisions taken too late.
The hours are worked. They are simply worked on the wrong file, in the wrong order, by someone who was not aware the situation had changed. By the time the overrun becomes visible, the budget is committed and the only decision remaining is how much to write off.
Overruns identified too late
Budget overruns often surface at billing, when little can be done about them. TrackBeam recalculates projected cost against budget every two hours, so an overrun becomes a conversation during the engagement rather than a loss at month end.
Priorities that are slow to maintain
Re-sequencing work by hand requires a round of emails, an interruption for a partner, and a decision that is out of date within a day. TrackBeam scores every task on deadline, client tier, budget, risk and aging, then reorders the list automatically.
Hours recorded after the fact
Time reconstructed several days later is time recorded approximately. Every entry in TrackBeam is attached to a task, a configurable daily cut-off applies, and two levels of approval precede billing.
The current state of the work, at any moment.
Hours and task status are recorded in TrackBeam as they are entered. A partner can open an engagement at any point in the day and see what has been done, by whom, and how much of the budget has been consumed — without requesting a report or waiting for a period-end summary.
Hours available on entry
An hour recorded at 10:40 is available at 10:40. There is no nightly batch and no end-of-week consolidation.
Task status as it changes
Preparation, review, approval: when a task advances, it advances for everyone, without anyone needing to circulate the update.
Budget consumed, continuously
Hours against budget update with each entry, so an engagement approaching its budget is visible the same day rather than at billing.
A work list that keeps itself current.
Every open task carries a score built from five signals. When a deadline changes, a prerequisite is cleared, a budget evolves or a client changes tier, the ranking is updated accordingly — without a meeting or a manual review.
Deadline proximity
How close the statutory or agreed date is.
Client tier
The standing assigned to the client by your firm.
Projected cost vs budget
The total the engagement is heading toward.
Project risk
The risk level set on the engagement.
Aging
How long the task has been waiting without progress.
Prioritization is rule-based. No language model is involved and no part of the calculation is probabilistic, so the reason a file holds its position can be explained precisely to a partner or documented in the engagement file.
Four stages, applied to every engagement.
Every engagement moves through the same four stages. That structure is what makes the figures comparable from one client to the next, and from one season to the next.
Costing
Define the scope and budget before work begins.
Assignment
Assign the work, with prerequisite tasks in place.
Monitoring
Track projected cost against budget while the engagement is open.
Billing and close
Invoice, record any write-off, and freeze the engagement data.
Closing freezes the engagement data, so the figures measured this year remain comparable when the same client is costed next year.
Projected cost, not only cost incurred.
Most systems report what an engagement has cost to date. TrackBeam also projects the total it is heading toward and compares that projection to budget every two hours, so corrective decisions can be taken while they still have an effect on the outcome.
Three parts, one system of record.
Engagement management
Engagements tend to deteriorate gradually and then abruptly. TrackBeam applies the same four-stage structure and the same checkpoints to every mandate, so that a deviation is reflected in a figure as soon as it begins.
Timesheets and billing
The difference between hours worked and hours billed is where a firm’s margin is lost. TrackBeam narrows it by requiring every entry to be attached to a task, and by placing two levels of approval between an entry and an invoice.
Automatic prioritization
Rather than a manager re-sequencing work manually each morning, the work list maintains itself from data the firm already produces. This is the component that most changes how an engagement season is managed.
Designed for periods of high volume.
In season, the constraint is throughput rather than judgment. A batch pool groups high-volume repetitive work into a single queue the team draws from continuously, instead of waiting for assignment file by file.
Access to a batch pool is granted by peer cooptation: the members already in it decide who joins. Throughput increases while quality control remains with the team.
TrackBeam works alongside CCH iFirm.
TrackBeam is a workflow layer that operates alongside CCH iFirm. Client information is drawn from iFirm on a schedule, and billing information is returned to it. Your firm keeps the system it relies on and adds the layer it does not currently have.
I worked in accounting firms for years and I saw all the bottlenecks that made me think about TrackBeam — how write-offs occurred, how priorities were extremely slow to manage. You had to do back and forth. You did not really know. It was a mess all the time. Martin Maheux, CPA, MBA Founder, Vectac
Documented for the people who will review it.
TrackBeam runs on Microsoft Azure in the Canada East region — Microsoft’s Quebec City datacentre — on infrastructure certified SOC 2 and ISO 27001. Our Trust Center documents where your data resides, how it is protected, every third party that processes it, and what is transmitted to OpenAI when the optional reporting assistant is enabled.
Evaluate TrackBeam over a full engagement cycle.
Eight weeks, up to seven users, at no charge. Every record entered during the pilot is retained, and carries over if your firm continues.
No payment details are required to begin the pilot.