Challenges
The existing platform seamlessly manages a company's budgets and invoices. To improve our service, the business had to come up with more innovative ways to handle or change expense management.
Introducing supplier invoices, also known as bills
Efficiently manage outstanding payments for services already rendered.
Approach
I set out to understand the requirements of the feature, mapping out its attributes and functions. It was important to run competitive analysis and design a flow that would allow users to effectively upload and track bills, while also providing a level of assurance.
Bill creation
Now users can upload the supplier invoice via OCR or forward it to the permissions mail and have it reflected in their drafts on the platform.
Upload your Invoice
Employee touch point
Depending on the access level the employee can select category and source of funds. They can also save partially, save or bring someone else in for approval.
Admin touch point
Admins have the option to edit and approve the request depending on the permissions granted to the employee.
Responsibilities
- Translated PRDs into design solutions that addressed both customer workflows and business requirements
- Conducted competitive research into supplier invoice patterns and best practices to inform design decisions
- Led feature scoping sessions with users, engineers and customer success to align on requirements and feasibility
- Partnered with marketing to develop launch materials and drive feature adoption
Conclusion
Designing the bills feature reinforced how critical it is to map permission structures early in the process. With multiple user roles — employees, managers, and admins — each touchpoint had to balance autonomy with oversight. The biggest takeaway was learning to design flexible approval flows that scale across different organizational structures without adding unnecessary friction to the end user experience.