Time, WIP and Billing Agent
The Time, WIP and Billing Agent reconstructs time from emails, files and calendars, so work that was never captured is not lost. It reviews work in progress against fixed fees and the scope in each engagement letter, flags scope creep early and drafts invoices with clear narratives for the partner to approve.
Ideal forPractice managers
The difference
From 1-2 days per billing run to 4-6 hours
Partners spend billing time on fee decisions and client conversations, and the practice recovers more of the work it does.
Done by hand
1-2 days per billing run
With the Vanine agent
4-6 hours
Time returned to your team
60%
Indicative figures. We measure your own baseline in the first fortnight so the numbers you see are yours.
Recover unbilled time
Time on client calls, SARS correspondence and quick favours often goes unrecorded. The agent rebuilds it from your team's activity so the partner can decide what to bill.
Scope creep caught early
Fixed-fee engagements quietly lose money when extra work is not recognised. The agent compares work done with the engagement letter and flags it while you can still talk to the client.
Invoices clients understand
Clear narratives reduce billing queries and slow payments. Each invoice explains the work done in plain language.
Capabilities
Capture the time you worked and bill it with confidence.
Built for partners, practice managers and billing administrators at South African accounting and tax practices working on fixed-fee and time-based engagements.
Time reconstruction
Builds a draft timesheet from emails, calendar entries, document activity and Teams calls, for each staff member to confirm.
WIP review
Summarises work in progress per client and engagement, with ageing and recoverability against agreed fees.
Fixed fee monitoring
Tracks time spent against fixed fees and shows which engagements are running over budget.
Scope creep detection
Compares work performed with the scope in the engagement letter and flags out-of-scope work such as SARS audits, objections or extra entities.
Invoice drafting
Drafts invoices with clear narratives of the work performed, applying VAT correctly where the practice is a VAT vendor.
Billing run reports
Prepares a month-end billing summary for partners, showing what is ready to bill, what to write off and which clients need a fee conversation.
How it works
From your systems to a result you sign off
Staff confirm their reconstructed time, and the partner approves every invoice, write-off and fee change before anything goes to the client.
Connect the places your time and billing records already live.
Outlook email and calendars, Teams activity, SharePoint document history, timesheets in Karbon and engagement letters on file. Already use something else? We connect that too.
- OpenAI Frontier
- Your own AI platform or models
- Microsoft 365 (Teams, SharePoint, Outlook, Excel)
- Copilot Studio
- Karbon and Ignition
- Xero, Sage Business Cloud Accounting, QuickBooks Online
- Engagement letters in SharePoint
Runs weekly to reconstruct time and at month-end for the billing run, with on-request summaries in Teams or OpenAI Frontier.
Draft timesheets for staff, WIP and scope reports for partners, and draft invoices in Xero, Sage or your billing tool.
Step by step
- 01
The week or billing period ends and the agent gathers activity data.
- 02
It reconstructs draft timesheets for each staff member to confirm.
- 03
It reviews WIP against fixed fees and engagement scope and flags scope creep.
- 04
It drafts invoices with clear narratives.
- 05
The partner reviews and approves invoices before they are sent.
Deployment
Runs inside the tools your team already uses
The same agent and the same cited output, delivered three ways: through the AI assistant you have rolled out, on a model you host yourself, or inside your own software.
In the frontier assistant you already pay for
We publish the agent as an MCP server. Add it as a connector and your team calls it from the chat they use every day, with no new tool to learn.
"Load this month’s time entries"
- practice
- Accounting firm
- period
- March
On a model you host yourself
Run the agent on open-weight models in your data centre or private cloud. Your time and billing records never leave your network, which keeps POPIA and data residency straightforward.
- Llama
- Mistral
- Ollama
- or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint
Inside your own software
Trigger a run from your own workflows, and push the finished output into your ERP, GRC or reporting systems. We build the integration with your team.
- REST API
- Webhooks
- Batch jobs
- Embeddable review panel
Governed the same way, every route
Whichever way your team reaches the agent, identity, permissions and audit stay with your existing controls.
- Single sign-on through Entra ID, Okta or Google Workspace
- Reads only the documents each user is already allowed to open
- Every tool call written to an audit log you can export
How we deliver it
One agent, three ways to hold it
Start where your team already works, then take it as far into your systems as the value justifies.
DATA SECURITY & PRIVACY
Your time and billing records stay yours.
The agent runs inside your tenancy, reads only what each task needs, and never trains on your time and billing records. Every step is logged so your auditors can see exactly what it touched.
Built for regulated work.
+YOUR TIME AND BILLING RECORDS NEVER LEAVE YOUR ENVIRONMENT
More agents
More agents we build for South African enterprises
Each one is built on the same foundation: your documents, your rules, and your people signing off.
Precision AI for Institutional Workflows
