Keito gives accounting firms a focused record for client time, approval, scope decisions, AI-assisted work, and invoice evidence when they do not need a broader practice-management platform to own the whole workflow.
Illustrative engagement review
Illustrative billing state
Review ready
Submitted time
164h
Needs review
6
Billing-ready
91%
Client work captured
Engagement and service context
Exceptions reviewed
Scope and billing decisions
Invoice evidence prepared
Approved records only
Karbon includes time tracking, billing, payments, reporting, and wider accounting-practice management. Keito is the narrower choice for firms that want reviewed time and client billing evidence in a focused workspace, with explicit boundaries around any data transfer.
Define clients, engagements, services, contributors, billable rules, reviewers, and billing periods in Keito before changing the live capture process or moving any historical records.
Resolve missing descriptions, incorrect service codes, non-billable work, scope changes, and write-off questions while the engagement team can still explain the record.
Use approved time and decision context for client summaries, invoice preparation, or a firm-governed downstream process without assuming automatic Karbon import, synchronisation, or reconciliation.
Choose the right operating boundary
Karbon publicly positions its product as an accounting practice-management platform with built-in time tracking, budgets, billing, payments, and reporting. That breadth is useful for firms that want one platform to coordinate much of the practice. Keito serves a different decision. It keeps human time, AI-assisted delivery costs, client and engagement context, approvals, scope decisions, and invoice evidence in a focused billing workspace. A firm might prefer Keito when it wants delivery and finance reviewers to share a clear source record, when flat team pricing matters, or when technical and AI-assisted work needs to sit beside professional time. A credible comparison must also name the limits: Keito does not claim to reproduce Karbon's complete practice-management, client-portal, workflow-automation, payment-collection, or general-ledger connection set. It does not claim a native Karbon integration, automatic historical import, two-way synchronisation, automatic invoice reconciliation, or a risk-free migration. Buyers should decide which system owns clients, engagement workflow, invoices, payments, and accounting records; test the handoff with representative data; preserve historical evidence; and approve the operating controls before switching live work.
Choose Karbon when the firm wants its broader practice-management, billing, payments, and reporting suite to own the workflow
Choose Keito when the priority is a focused reviewed record for human and AI-assisted client work, billing evidence, and flat team participation
Map system ownership, historical records, transfer controls, invoice evidence, and rollback steps before changing the live process
Workflow fit
Keito keeps Karbon time tracking alternative connected to client, project, billable status, approval, and invoice context before the work reaches finance.
Choose Karbon when the firm wants its broader practice-management, billing, payments, and reporting suite to own the workflow
Choose Keito when the priority is a focused reviewed record for human and AI-assisted client work, billing evidence, and flat team participation
Map system ownership, historical records, transfer controls, invoice evidence, and rollback steps before changing the live process
Keep client, engagement, service, contributor, billable status, work explanation, and approval state connected before finance uses the record for billing.
Record professional time and approved AI-agent or model costs against the same client project so the firm can review the complete delivery evidence without implying automatic ingestion from every tool.
Move the active capture and review process in stages, keep historical evidence available, and validate exports or API-based handoffs rather than presenting a one-click Karbon migration that Keito does not provide.
The difference is not just recording time. It is whether the record can support billing, project decisions, and client conversations.
Primary product scope
Keito focuses on reviewed human and AI-assisted work, billing context, client evidence, and project economics.
Karbon is positioned as a broader accounting practice-management platform with time, budgets, billing, payments, reporting, and workflow capabilities.
Billing review
Delivery leads resolve descriptions, scope questions, billable status, and approval exceptions before records become invoice evidence.
Buyers should evaluate how Karbon's native work, time, billing, and approval flow matches their existing practice controls.
Team participation
Flat-rate team plans let staff, partners, contractors, and billing reviewers share the workflow without a separate charge for every seat.
Firms should compare current total pricing for every staff member and reviewer who needs access to the chosen practice workflow.
Migration boundary
Keito supports a staged, firm-controlled move of active capture and review with explicit exports and handoffs.
No native Karbon import, two-way synchronisation, payment migration, or automatic reconciliation is assumed.
A Karbon time tracking alternative is a different system for capturing, reviewing, and using professional time in client billing workflows. Keito is a focused option for firms that want approved human and AI-assisted work, invoice evidence, and project context without asking the tool to replace every practice-management function.
Buyers should compare product scope, client and engagement structure, time capture, budgets, approvals, billing and payment ownership, reporting, AI-assisted work, migration controls, integrations, and total team cost. Karbon offers a broader accounting-practice suite, while Keito concentrates on the reviewed delivery record behind client billing.
An accounting firm should choose Karbon when it wants Karbon's broader practice-management, workflow, billing, payment, and reporting capabilities to own more of the operating process. Keito is better suited to a focused time, approval, AI-cost, and invoice-evidence workflow, so it should not be presented as feature-for-feature replacement parity.
Yes, a firm can migrate the active time-review process in stages, but Keito does not promise a one-click or lossless Karbon migration. The firm should map clients, engagements, services, people, billable rules, open work, historical evidence, reviewers, billing cutoffs, exports, and rollback steps before changing live capture.
A Karbon migration should preserve the client, engagement, service, contributor, duration, billable status, description, rate context, reviewer, approval state, scope or write-off decision, invoice reference, reporting period, and transfer status. Keito keeps new reviewed records traceable while the firm retains historical source evidence under its own retention policy.
No native Karbon integration or automatic synchronisation is claimed. Keito supports structured capture, review, reporting, exports, API, CLI, and agent-friendly options, but each firm must design, test, approve, and monitor any transfer between Keito, Karbon, its invoice process, payment systems, and general ledger.
Solo includes 1 licensed user, unlimited AI agents, Mac desktop and iOS apps, Stripe payments, and standard CSV and Excel exports. Pro adds your team. Business adds integrations, planning, advanced reporting, and stronger controls.
1 licensed user
For independent consultants, freelancers, and small studios running work with AI agents.
Team collaboration
For teams that need shared workspaces, approvals, and team-level project visibility.
Advanced operations
For organizations that need integrations, planning, advanced reporting, and stronger controls.
AI agents do not require licenses on any plan.
Solo, Pro, and Business can use API keys for agent workflows.
Solo, Pro, and Business include standard CSV and Excel data export.
Start with Solo, add people on Pro when you need reviewers or collaborators, and see how Keito turns tracked effort into clearer reports.