Time tracking
When someone changes logged time, the change should leave a mark
Silent edits to time entries are how disputes start. We made time changes a request a manager reviews, so the record is auditable, not rewritten.
Keep every project on course, all the way to paid.
Beacon is one workspace for agencies and client-service teams. Run clients, projects, tasks, estimates, time, payments, and team chat in one place, instead of a pile of tabs.
14-day trial on paid plans. No credit card required.
Project teams that bill for their work run on Beacon
Sample companies shown for illustration, not real customers.
Your whole agency on one screen
Every client, project, hour, and payout in one dashboard. See where the work stands and where the money is, at a glance.
Active projects12
Open tasks48
Hours this week126h
Owed to team$18,400
ProjectClientStatusBudget used
Payments portal
Acme Corp
In progress
72%
Meridian rebuild
Meridian Studio
Review
54%
Brand site
Halden & Co
Approved
20%
API migration
Brightpath
In progress
88%
Your project management tool handles the tasks, then hands off estimates, time, budget, and pay to a pile of spreadsheets. Beacon keeps all of it.
The task board is the easy part. The hard part is everything around it. What did we quote? How many hours have we burned? Are we still inside the budget? Who gets paid what? Most tools have no answer.
So the answers scatter. A doc for the estimate, a timer for the hours, a spreadsheet to settle up. Every hop is a place a number gets lost. We built Beacon so the whole project lives on one record instead.
1A task board
Tracks tasks, ignores hours, budget, and money
Tracks tasks, ignores hours, budget, and money
2A time tracker
Hours logged, disconnected from the plan
Hours logged, disconnected from the plan
3A spreadsheet
Estimates, budget, and payouts reconciled by hand
Estimates, budget, and payouts reconciled by hand
Beacon
The whole project on one record
The whole project on one record
Complete project management, plus the money side most tools skip
Planning, estimates, time, budget, and payouts all share the same data, so a number never has to be re-typed from one tool into the next.
Estimate the work up front, and get it approved
Scope every project with a per-developer estimate. Set the hours and either an hourly rate or a fixed price, and the total adds up for you.
- A real approval flow. Draft, submitted, approved, rejected, or sent back for a re-edit.
- Rejections carry a reason and re-edits carry a note, so nobody guesses why a number came back.
- Its own work status, from not started to in progress, completed, and ready for payment.
Payments portal · Stripe checkout
Estimated hours
48 h
Hourly rate
$85
Estimate total
$4,080
Work: In progress
Track the hours against the plan, not in a separate app
A running timer with a live indicator, and the elapsed clock shows in your browser tab so you never lose track of one that's running.
- Clock in and out, or run the timer. See it all on a calendar view.
- Every entry ties to a specific task or estimate, so the hours roll straight into the project.
- Edits aren't silent. File a time-change request, a manager reviews it, and the record stays auditable.
Refactor auth middleware
Acme Corp · Retainer · EST-1998
02:07:25
Logged today
5h 42m
This entry syncs to
EST-1998 · Acme retainer
Plan projects the way client work actually moves
The backbone. Project types, priorities, a full status lifecycle, and delivery phases, not a generic kanban with the labels changed.
- Types for one-time, retainer, maintenance, and block-of-hours work.
- Statuses from Draft through Approved, In progress, Review, and Completed, plus phases like waiting on client.
- Budgets, deadlines, milestones, per-member assignments, and subtasks under every task.
To do 4
Wire up invoice webhook
BackendMK
Empty states for reports
DesignAL
In progress 3
Refactor auth middleware
DevDR
Migrate legacy time entries
DevJP
Review 2
Rate limiting on API
ReadyTS
Watch the budget, and pay the team from the same place
Projects carry a budget, and approved estimates track what's committed. As work gets done, payout records are generated against those estimates, so the budget and the payouts stay in sync.
- Every estimate rolls up amount paid versus remaining on its own, per developer, always current.
- An approval step before anyone is paid, then paid and confirmed states.
- Whether you're over budget, and who's owed what, stop being spreadsheet questions. This is developer settlement, not client invoicing.
| Developer | Approved | Paid | Remaining | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Devin R. | $4,080 | $2,940 | $1,140 | Pending |
| Jordan P. | $2,550 | $2,550 | $0 | Paid |
| Mara K. | $3,200 | $1,200 | $2,000 | Approved |
Remaining across project
$3,140
A client directory everything hangs off
Lightweight on purpose. Just name, company, and contacts, the thing projects and billing attach to, without turning into a CRM you have to feed.
- Projects, estimates, and payouts all trace back to a client.
- Keep contacts in one place instead of scattered across inboxes.
Approvals and an audit trail, not a paper trail
Money-relevant actions leave a mark. Threaded comments with @mentions keep the discussion on the record, and an activity log keeps the security-relevant work honest.
- Comment threads with @mentions on projects, tasks, and estimates.
- An in-app notification bell with Info, Warning, and Critical severities.
- An activity log that shows who approved what and when, for the day someone asks six months later.
Estimate EST-2041 approved by Priya (Manager).
2 min ago · InfoTime-change request from Devin needs your review.
18 min ago · WarningPayout blocked. Estimate exceeds remaining project budget.
1 hr ago · CriticalPlan it, price it, track it, pay it
1
Plan
Set up the project. Type, phases, budget, deadlines, and who's assigned to it.
2
Estimate & approve
Each developer's estimate gets approved in two clicks, or sent back with a reason. Work starts from an agreed number.
3
Track time
Hours log against tasks and estimates, so budget burn is visible instead of a month-end surprise.
4
Get paid
Completed work becomes a payout against the estimate. Paid versus remaining updates itself.
All of it, in one place
The whole workspace, not a pile of subscriptions. Everything an agency runs on lives under one login.
Clients
A directory with logos, colors, and contacts that everything rolls up to.
Projects
Status, priority, phase, budget, dates, assignments, and filters.
Tasks & boards
Kanban, checklists, subtasks, comments, and @mentions.
Estimations
Hourly or fixed estimates with a real approval workflow.
Time tracking
Timers, manual logs, a calendar view, and CSV, XLSX, or PDF export.
Payments
Work out and track team payouts from logged time and estimates.
Team chat
DMs and group chats tied to a client, project, or task.
Notifications
Deadline reminders, mentions, and per-user preferences.
Project management for teams that bill for their work
Agencies juggling retainers and fixed bids
When half your work is a monthly retainer and the other half is a fixed bid, "how are we doing on this account" is a hard question. Beacon ties every logged hour back to the estimate it belongs to, so margin isn't a month-end surprise.
"We stopped finding out we'd blown a fixed bid after we'd already blown it."
| Developer | Approved | Paid | Remaining | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Devin R. | $4,080 | $2,940 | $1,140 | Pending |
| Jordan P. | $2,550 | $2,550 | $0 | Paid |
| Mara K. | $3,200 | $1,200 | $2,000 | Approved |
Remaining across project
$3,140
Dev shops paying a bench of contractors
A rotating bench means payouts are the hard part. Approve an estimate, let the developer log time against it, and the payout reconciles itself, with an approval step before anyone gets paid and an audit log for when someone asks why.
"Contractor settlement went from a two-day spreadsheet to a review queue."
To do 4
Wire up invoice webhook
BackendMK
Empty states for reports
DesignAL
In progress 3
Refactor auth middleware
DevDR
Migrate legacy time entries
DevJP
Review 2
Rate limiting on API
ReadyTS
Freelance teams that share the work
Two or three people splitting client work still need to agree on who's doing what and who's owed what. Roles keep it clear, with Admin, Manager, and Developer, and the timer keeps everyone honest without a heavy process on top.
"Finally, one place we both trust for who did the hours."
Refactor auth middleware
Acme Corp · Retainer · EST-1998
02:07:25
Logged today
5h 42m
This entry syncs to
EST-1998 · Acme retainer
Every org is walled off from every other one
Multi-tenant means one thing above all. Your data is yours. Isolation is enforced at the data layer, not hoped for in the UI.
Strict tenant isolation
Per-org data separation enforced at the data layer. One customer can never see another's data.
Role-based access
Admin, Manager, and Developer roles gate what each person can see and do.
Encrypted credentials
Passwords hashed with bcrypt. JWT auth with an active-user check on every request.
Audit logging
Security and money-relevant actions are written to an activity log you can review.
GDPR-minded data handling
Org data export and delete, plus tenant-scoped file storage.
Hardened by default
Input validation everywhere, rate limiting, and hardened HTTP headers.
Why teams switch to Beacon
Sample testimonials from fictional companies, shown for illustration, not real customers.
★★★★★
The estimate and the payout used to live in different universes. Now the hours a developer logs roll straight up against the number we approved. I stopped doing the month-end reconciliation entirely.
★★★★★
What sold me was the time-change request. A contractor can't quietly edit an entry. It comes to me first. When you're paying out on logged hours, that one bit of friction is worth a lot.
★★★★★
We're three people. We didn't want enterprise process, we wanted to stop arguing about who did which hours. Approve an estimate, run the timer, see the remaining balance. That's the whole thing for us.
From the founder
I ran a small dev shop for years, and every month ended the same way. Someone sat down and matched estimates against logged hours against what each contractor was owed, by hand. It was slow, it was error-prone, and it was where trust quietly leaked.
Beacon is the tool I wanted back then. One place where the estimate, the hours, and the payout are the same record. If that is your month-end too, I would love for you to try it.
Sam RiveraFounder, Beacon
Start free. Pay for the payout side when you need it.
Per member, per month. Every paid plan includes a 14-day trial, no credit card required.
From the blog
Opinions on estimating, tracking, and getting paid for client work.
Estimations
An estimate is a promise. Treat it like one.
A good estimate is not a guess you email and forget. It is a record with a status, an owner, and an approval. Here is how we think about the estimation workflow.
Product
The gap between the estimate and the payout is where money leaks
Most teams estimate in one tool, track hours in another, and settle up in a spreadsheet. Every hop is a place a number gets lost. Here is why we built the whole loop into one system.
Questions, answered
Agencies, dev shops, and client-service teams that bill for their work. If you estimate projects, track time, and pay a team or contractors, Beacon is built for you. If you run purely internal work and never bill, a general task tool may suit you better.
Those tools stop at the task board. Beacon carries the work from the estimate you quote, through the hours logged against a budget, to the payout the team receives. The money side is built in, not bolted on.
Yes. Every paid plan starts with a 14-day free trial, and there is a free plan for small teams. No credit card required to start.
Both. Beacon has a native timer tied to tasks and estimates, and it turns logged time and approved estimates into team payouts with an approval step.
You can recreate your clients, projects, and tasks in Beacon. There is no one-click import yet, so a migration is manual for now.
Every organization is isolated at the data layer, so one customer can never see another's data. Passwords are hashed with bcrypt, access is role-based, and you can export or delete your data at any time.
Keep every project on course
Plan it, estimate it, track it against the budget, and pay the team, all in one place.