Client name changed to protect confidentiality.
The request
What they asked for
Wexcombe Hale wanted a single internal place where account management lives. Account managers needed a clear view of what to do today. Their leads needed to see workload, health and risk across a team. Leadership needed forecasts, reports and a model of the business without waiting for someone to assemble a deck.
The scope was wide on purpose. It had to cover the daily grind and the monthly review, and it had to be safe to give to different people at different levels.
The problem
What was broken
Account management is mostly small decisions made constantly: who to contact, what is overdue, which client is quietly unhappy. When the information behind those decisions is scattered, the decisions get made from memory. A client with a falling health score and a cancelled meeting looks fine if the score is in one tool and the meeting is in another.
It also made the work invisible to the people managing it. An AM lead could not see workload without asking. Leadership could not see which accounts were at risk without a round of status updates. And finance sat in separate tools, so the cost of serving a client was never next to the revenue it earned.
- The day’s priorities were assembled by hand every morning from several tools.
- Client health was a feeling, not a measure.
- Workload across a team was invisible until somebody burned out or dropped a ball.
- Forecasts and reports were rebuilt from scratch each cycle.
- Finance tools sat outside the place where clients are managed.
What we built
The system, piece by piece
Design principle
One hub, with the view changing by role
The hub is organised around the person using it. An account manager opens it and lands on today’s work. A lead opens it and sees the team. Leadership opens it and sees the business. The data underneath is the same, and role-based access controls what each person can see and change.
Permissions are a core module, because a hub that holds client health, forecasts and finance cannot be open to everyone. There are roles, a view of colleagues and the organisation, and feature flags so new capability can be switched on for one group before it reaches the rest.
For account managers
Today first, then everything else
The account manager’s home is a today’s-work view: what is due, what is scheduled, what needs a reply. Calendar and Gmail are connected, so meetings and threads show up beside the tasks they relate to. ClickUp sync brings task work in so the AM is not maintaining the same list in two places.
Around that sit the tools an AM reaches for during the week.
Planner
Plan the day and the week against clients, with calendar events alongside.
Client management
Accounts, contacts, activity, comments and onboardings in one record per client.
Pipelines and sequences
Structured stages for onboarding and follow-up, with sequences for repeatable steps.
Health scores
A measured view of how an account is doing, so attention goes where it is needed.
Streaks
Light-touch habit tracking, so routine work like check-ins does not slide.
Books, transcripts and comments
Shared reference material, call transcripts and discussion kept attached to the client they belong to.
For leads
Seeing a team without asking for status
Team workload shows who is carrying what. Activity shows what has actually happened on accounts. Health scores and accounts views show which clients need a lead’s attention. Announcements and push notifications let a lead tell a team something once and know it landed.
For leadership
Forecast, reports and a model
Leadership gets forecasts built on the account and pipeline data the team already maintains, and reports that read from the same records. Modelling, spreadsheets and pivots sit inside the hub for the analysis that does not fit a fixed report, and maps and dashboards give the shape of the book of business at a glance.
Insights pull these together. The point is that a leadership question and an account manager’s update are about the same underlying record, so the answer to one is not a different number from the answer to the other.
Finance and AI
QuickBooks, Gusto, Stripe and an MCP server
QuickBooks, Gusto and Stripe are connected for finance. That puts revenue, payroll cost and payments next to the clients they relate to, so the cost of serving an account can be compared with what it pays.
An MCP server lets AI tools work with the hub’s data. The AI access setting and the permissions system sit in front of it, so assistants get the access a person in that role would have and nothing wider.
Trade-offs
Decisions that shaped it
A hub this wide can turn into a junk drawer. These choices were about keeping it useful.
Sync, do not replace
ClickUp, Gmail, Calendar and the finance tools stay the places where their work happens. The hub brings the information together and does not ask people to move house.
Permissions from the start
Roles and RBAC were built into the foundations, because adding access control to a hub that already holds client health and finance is much harder than starting with it.
Feature flags for a wide product
With this many modules, new capability can be turned on for one group first. That keeps a large product from changing under everyone’s feet at once.
Today first
The first screen an account manager sees is today’s work, not a menu of everything the hub can do. A wide product lives or dies on what it opens to.
Analysis inside the product
Spreadsheets, pivots and modelling live in the hub so analysis stays attached to the same records, rather than drifting into exports.
Handover
Who runs it
Leadership and AM leads manage roles, feature flags, settings and organisation structure from inside the hub. Logs record what changed. Community and announcements give the team a place to talk to each other instead of a separate channel for hub news.
Operations
How it runs day to day
The morning starts in the today’s-work view and the day is run from the planner. Weekly check-ins use health scores, team workload and activity. Month-end reporting reads from the same records, so nobody rebuilds a report from scratch.
Administration is built in. Roles and permissions are managed inside the hub, feature flags control what is on for whom, logs record what happened, and settings hold the rest. Changing who can see what does not require a developer.
| Rhythm | Where the team works |
|---|---|
| Daily | Today’s work, planner, calendar and inbox |
| Weekly | Health scores, team workload, activity, pipelines |
| Monthly | Forecast, reports, dashboards, modelling |
| As needed | Announcements, permissions, feature flags, logs |
Measurement
What the system measures
These are what the hub tracks. They are definitions, not results.
- Client health scores
- Team workload
- Account and contact activity
- Pipeline and onboarding progress
- Forecast
- Streaks on routine work
- Finance data from QuickBooks, Gusto and Stripe, next to client records
Scope boundaries
What we chose not to build
- A second task tool
- ClickUp stays where task work is managed. The hub syncs from it instead of competing with it.
- A replacement for the accounting system
- QuickBooks, Gusto and Stripe remain the books. The hub reads from them to put finance next to clients.
- One view for everyone
- A flat hub would either overshare or be useless. Roles decide what each person sees.
- AI with a wider key
- The MCP server is bound by the same permissions as a person in that role.
Outcome figures
Outcome figures are held back for confidentiality and will be added when the client approves publication.