Keep the studio on beat.
Beat is clean studio time tracking — hours by show, sequence, department, and task. Approved hours become the actuals producers and finance trust for bid health, review, and handoff. No HR weight. No surveillance.
Switch without breaking the reports your studio already trusts.
Trusted by studios that bill by the shot
The product
A production actuals system — not an HRIS.
Beat captures exactly the hours you need for bid health, producer review, and finance handoff. Sharper than generic time tracking for VFX, animation, and post.
Production-native context
Every hour lands against a show, sequence, department, and task — the structure your bids and reviews already speak.
Fast daily & weekly entry
Log a week in seconds with duplication, keyboard flow, and recent-task recall. Built to disappear into the day.
Clean approvals
Lightweight submit and producer review — no multi-week corporate HR workflows, no sign-off theater.
Evidence-grade actuals
Hours Wrap can trust at finance handoff: consistent, auditable, and mapped to the way your studio plans work.
Compatibility bridge
A bridge for existing reports, exports, and connectors so switching risk does not become a rebuild.
Respectful by design
No keystroke logging, no idle-time tracking, no productivity ranking. Beat measures work, never people.
Why Beat
Where production hours belong.
Beat is built for the timecard run: hours by show, sequence, department, and task. Not payroll, not staff surveillance, and never performance scoring. Here is how it compares to where studio hours live today.
| Capability | Beat | Harvest | BambooHR | Spreadsheets |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Production context — show, sequence, department, task | ||||
| Built for studios, not generic HR or agencies | ||||
| Surveillance-free by design | ||||
| Compatibility bridge for existing reports | ||||
| Producer approvals without HR weight | ||||
| Evidence-grade actuals for finance & Wrap handoff |
Approvals
Sign-off that respects everyone's time.
A short, honest path from artist to finance. Producers review hours in production terms they already understand — no approval chains, no corporate weight, no chasing.
- Submit a week in one action
- Producer-friendly review by show and sequence
- Locked, auditable records once approved
- Exports that map straight to bid lines
- ArtistLogs the week
Show · sequence · dept · task
- LeadQuick glance
Catches mis-coded hours early
- 3ProducerReviews & approves
One pass, no HR ceremony
- 4Finance / WrapClean handoff
Evidence-grade actuals
Compatibility bridge
Move to Beat without rebuilding every report.
Beat Core stays production-native underneath. The bridge keeps familiar shapes for migration, reporting, exports, and Wrap while your studio moves actuals into Beat.
- Beat Core stays source of truth
- Familiar API shapes when migration needs them
- Existing exports and connectors keep running
- Lower switching risk
{
"time_entries": [
{
"id": 80291,
"hours": 3.5,
"show": "NEON_TIDE",
"sequence": "sq040",
"department": "FX",
"task": "Ocean sim — shot 0220",
"spent_date": "2026-06-08",
"is_locked": true,
"approved_by": "producer@studio.co"
}
],
"per_page": 100,
"total_entries": 1
}to log a full week of hours
show · sequence · dept · task
producer review, no HR chains
monitoring or surveillance signals
Built to be trusted
Credible to the people who sign off.
Replacing the system of record for studio hours is a trust decision. These are the commitments that make Beat safe to adopt for producers, finance, and technical buyers.
Compatibility bridge
Route shapes, pagination, fixtures, and migration notes are documented before Beat claims replacement credibility, so connectors keep working.
Audit trail
Every time-entry create, edit, and delete writes an append-only audit event with actor and timestamp. Approved weeks lock.
Studio-scoped data
Tenancy is enforced on the server. Members, rates, and hours are scoped to their studio, and finance-sensitive rates are redacted by role.
Exportability
Your actuals are never trapped. CSV exports for users, projects, tasks, and time entries map straight to the lines your reports already use.
Wrap ingestion path
Evidence-grade hours coordinators and producers can hand to finance — shaped for the Wrap ingestion path without a maze of side spreadsheets.
Product philosophy
Measure the work. Never the people.
Beat wins by being simpler and more production-aware — not by surveilling artists. These lines are not features we're missing. They're commitments we keep.
What Beat will never do
- Keystroke or screen tracking
- Idle-time surveillance
- Productivity ranking or scoring
- Hidden monitoring of any kind
- Payroll, HRIS, or performance reviews
What Beat is built for
- Hours mapped to real production work
- Transparent, artist-visible records
- Actuals built for bid health & finance
- Approvals without corporate weight
- Respect for the people doing the work
Get your studio back on beat.
Production-native timesheets, clean approvals, and a compatibility bridge for the reports you already run. See how Beat fits your pipeline in a 30-minute walkthrough.