How to Automate CROSStrax

The case file is what the client is actually buying

CROSStrax is investigation case management software, written by investigators for the agencies doing the work. Its users are private investigators, though that label covers more businesses than it sounds: surveillance firms working insurance fraud, criminal defence investigators, process servers, corporate security teams and executive protection outfits.

The unit of work is a case, and the case file is the product. A client is not buying hours of somebody sitting in a parked car. They are buying a document that says what was observed, when, and from where, with photographs and video attached and a chain of custody that will survive an opposing attorney reading it aloud.

So everything the agency owns ends up in that file. The assignment as the client wrote it, the subject, the investigators on it, the hours, the mileage, the footage, the notes typed at two in the morning, the invoice and the final report. Lose any part of it and the case stops being sellable.

Every finished case has an hour of admin behind it

The billable work is the field work. The unbillable work is everything wrapped around it, and there is plenty.

An insurance carrier assigns a surveillance job through its own vendor portal, and the assignment arrives with a budget, a deadline and a report format it has to match. The report goes back into that portal. So does the invoice, which gets rejected for a coding reason somebody has to go and read. A law firm wants a status update on a case that has not moved because the subject has not been home in three days.

Then the checking. Is the subject still registered at that address. Has the company in the file changed its officers since the assignment came in. Has a hearing date shifted in a way that makes this week's surveillance pointless. Does the investigator still hold a current licence in the state the job is in, and did the agency's own renewal get filed.

Every one of those answers is sitting on somebody else's website.

CROSStrax

Assignments and rejections in one list Open jobs and bounced invoices read from every carrier portal each morning and set against the case file, with the stated reason attached.

Licences that expire before the case does Agency and investigator credentials checked on each state board's register, with renewal and continuing education dates listed per person.

A subject checked before the quote goes out Corporate filings, property records and public listings gathered on a named subject, so the budget is agreed against what the work will really take.

Case Management holds what the investigator already knows

The platform is thorough about the case itself, and an agency running the whole of it gets real hours back.

Case Management keeps every note, photograph, video and document in one searchable file rather than spread across an inbox and a phone. Billing and Expenses turns logged time, mileage and costs into an invoice and syncs to QuickBooks, so the bookkeeping is not a second act of typing. Investigation Reports build as PDFs from templates the agency writes itself, so a report is drafted in an afternoon rather than assembled over two days.

What all of it shares is a starting point. It organises, formats and bills material already in the file because an investigator put it there.

The facts that decide whether a case is worth working this week are not in the file yet. The carrier's portal knows the invoice bounced. The court's site knows the hearing moved. The state board knows a licence expires in six weeks. The corporate registry, the property record and the subject's own public posts each know something, and none of them will say so unless somebody opens a browser.

The licence board and the carrier portal can be read overnight

Overnight, while nothing is moving on a case, every one of those sites can be signed into and read. A case reaches the desk in the morning already checked.

Every open assignment in each carrier's vendor portal listed each morning against what the case file says, so a report due tomorrow that nobody has started is visible while there is still a night to fix it. Submitted invoices checked for rejections, with the portal's own stated reason set beside the case number, instead of surfacing weeks later when the payment fails to arrive. Hearing and trial dates re-read on the court's site where a date drives the deadline.

The licensing side is the part nobody enjoys. Agency and individual licences checked against each state board's register, with renewal windows and continuing education deadlines listed by date, per investigator and per state, because an expired credential does not only cost the next job. It puts a question over the report already filed under it.

And the open-source work at the front of a case. Corporate filings, property records and public listings for a named subject, gathered into one place before an investigator decides whether the assignment can be done for the budget offered.

An investigator's day should start in the field

A bounced invoice does not announce itself. It waits in the carrier's portal for the investigator who sat on a subject until midnight to go and look.

WebRun is an agent that works a real Chrome browser, signed in as you. It opens the carrier's vendor portal, a state licensing register, a court records site or a public filing search, reads what is there, and writes what it found onto the case in CROSStrax.

Reading runs unattended. Submitting a report or an invoice to a client, approaching a subject, and anything that touches an active investigation stay with a licensed investigator, drafted and waiting.

The workflows below are already built, and each one names what it opens.