Traack vs ChatGPT

ChatGPT is a general agent that will have a go at almost anything. It reads a spreadsheet, finds the odd row, drafts the memo, searches the web, writes and runs code. It is genuinely good at all of that, and if you want one assistant for the whole company and you want it today, ChatGPT is a great choice.

Traack AI agents are specialized in internal audit and SOX control testing work, and built for internal audit / SOX compliance teams. We capture your company's institutional knowledge, the custom workflows and testing procedures your team does by hand, and our agents run continuous testing on those procedures. Every step and action the agent takes is recorded so an external auditor can follow.

If you want a general assistant for one-off analysis and writing, use ChatGPT. If you want to take the busy work out of control testing, quarter after quarter, that is what Traack agents are for.

Who ChatGPT is for

• You have a question you will ask once, about a file you will probably never open again.
• You want one assistant the whole company can use, not a separate tool for each team.
• Most of what you need is writing: memos, summaries, emails and first drafts.
• You cannot take on a new vendor right now. A tool your security team has already approved beats a better one they have not.

Who Traack is for

Traack is for internal audit and SOX compliance teams.

• You test the same controls every quarter, and most of the work is doing it again rather than working out how.
• You test a sample because testing everything by hand would take too long.
• You have to hand a workpaper to a reviewer, or to your external auditor, and show how you got to every answer in it.
• Your evidence is scattered across Salesforce, QuickBooks, Jira, Slack, Google Workspace and Microsoft 365.
• You want the way your team tests a control written down once, then run the same way every time.
• Your own security review starts with retention, isolation and encryption, and wants specifics rather than reassurance.

Where Traack stands out

These are the parts a general assistant was never built for, and they are where most of the time goes.

• It knows the framework. The agent is grounded in COSO's Internal Control-Integrated Framework, so it uses the five components, keeps design and operating effectiveness apart, and is careful with words like deficiency and material weakness.
• We write your test procedures with you. We sit down with your team and get it on paper: what the population is, which attributes matter, where the thresholds sit, what counts as an exception. After that the agent runs it the same way every quarter, so nobody has to remember how the prompt was worded last time.
• It tests everything, not a sample. The agent runs Python across every row rather than reasoning over a handful, and it checks the population is complete before it starts, because a clean result on half the data is worth nothing.
• It shows its working. Every command, query and answer is saved and replayable, and each conclusion points at the file, field and row it came from. A citation points at a document; your auditor wants the row.
• It leaves the judgement to you. Anything unclear gets flagged for a person rather than quietly passed, and nothing is filed until a reviewer signs it off.
• Your evidence stays yours. It never trains a model, ours or anyone else's, and the providers we use keep nothing once a request finishes. Everyone works in their own isolated workspace, everything is encrypted, and you decide when it is deleted. More detail further down.
• The work is still there next time. ChatGPT's agent works in a sandbox that disappears when the session ends, so yesterday's analysis is not something you can pick back up. You upload the file again and rebuild it. In Traack everyone has a workspace that stays put, with the evidence, the scripts and last quarter's workpaper still in it. For a control you test four times a year, that rebuild is most of the cost.
• It keeps testing without being asked. Procedures run against new records as they arrive, so exceptions turn up the week they happen. A chat only does something when somebody opens it and asks.
• It connects to where your evidence actually is, with access you can switch off whenever you want, read-only until you say otherwise.

The systems we connect to, all read-only until you approve otherwise:

SalesforceQuickBooksJiraSlackGoogle DriveGoogle SheetsGmailGoogle CalendarOneDriveOutlook

Side by side

Data governance, privacy and security

Audit evidence names people, shows how money moves and records where controls failed. It is the most sensitive material your team handles, so here are the specifics rather than the reassurance.

• Your evidence is never used to train a model, ours or anyone else's. The model providers we use work under zero data retention agreements, so nothing is kept on their side once a request finishes.
• Everyone works in their own isolated workspace with its own storage. Evidence never crosses between people, teams or clients.
• Everything is encrypted, both in transit and at rest: uploaded files, workspace contents, database records and backups.
• You decide what is kept. Files and threads go when you delete them, and the whole workspace goes within 30 days of a written request or the end of the contract.
• The agent only reads unless you say otherwise. Anything that would send, change or delete stops and asks you first, and the log records who said yes.
• Integrations use access you can revoke at any time, either from Traack or from the system itself.
• Every action, by us or by the agent, is written to a log you can read and export.
• You sign in with Google or a one-time email code, so there is no password to store. Single sign-on is available for organisations.

These are the answers your own security review will ask for, and they are the same ones we give your auditors. Customers under NDA can ask us for the SOC 2 Type II report, penetration test summaries and the subprocessor list. The security page has the full detail.

The control question you will be asked about us

Whichever tool you pick, somebody on your side has to answer for it. COSO put out guidance in February 2026 on internal control over generative AI, applying the same five components to AI systems rather than treating them as a special case. Expect to be asked how the AI you brought in is controlled, and expect to answer with evidence rather than a policy.

That is the question Traack is built for. The agent only reads unless you approve otherwise. Everything it runs and everything it gets back is saved and replayable, so you can show what happened rather than describe it. Each person's evidence is kept separate, none of it trains a model, and you decide when it goes.

A general assistant answers a smaller version of the question. It can tell you what was said in a chat. It cannot hand a reviewer the actual sequence of steps behind a conclusion, on which records, in what order, in a form they can run again themselves. That second part is what an audit rests on.

How to decide

• Pick one control you test every quarter. Run it in ChatGPT end to end and keep the output.
• Wait a week, then run it again from scratch, the way you would next quarter.
• Compare the two. How much of the second run was rebuilding what the first one did, rather than testing anything?
• Then decide whether that is worth doing four times a year, for every control you own.

Sources

What we say about ChatGPT here comes from OpenAI's documentation and reporting on agent mode, connectors and memory, checked in September 2026. OpenAI moves quickly, so if you spot something out of date, tell us and we will fix it.

• OpenAI — Company knowledge in ChatGPT (Business, Enterprise, Edu)
• Journal of Accountancy — COSO creates audit-ready guidance for governing generative AI
• OpenAI — Memory and new controls for ChatGPT
• Composio — ChatGPT agent mode explained: what it can and cannot do