Tax
Budget

Empowering small business owners to stay ahead of tax deadlines through an efficient financial management and advance tax estimation system

Role

Design lead (Switcher, Create panel)

Timeline

October 2024- February 2025

Team

2 Design leads (Create panel & Switcher), 2 Designers (editor), Content designer

Deliverables

Formulation & testing of integrated editor, switcher & Create panel

ComplYant

2023

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Overview

About

ComplYant

ComplYant creates tools to help small business owners (users) manage their finances through secure document storage, automated alerts, and tax form assistance.

About

ComplYant

ComplYant creates tools to help small business owners (users) manage their finances through secure document storage, automated alerts, and tax form assistance.

About

ComplYant

ComplYant creates tools to help small business owners (users) manage their finances through secure document storage, automated alerts, and tax form assistance.

The problem

Missed tax payments leading to late fees

In 2023, we did not have a tax estimation tool and 45% of our users were paying up to a $1000 in late fines and were unaware of the taxes they owed based on their registered business type.

The problem

Missed tax payments leading to late fees

In 2023, we did not have a tax estimation tool and 45% of our users were paying up to a $1000 in late fines and were unaware of the taxes they owed based on their registered business type.

The problem

Missed tax payments leading to late fees

In 2023, we did not have a tax estimation tool and 45% of our users were paying up to a $1000 in late fines and were unaware of the taxes they owed based on their registered business type.

Two-step solution

Managing finances and anticipate payments & deadlines

Provide small business owners a consolidated overview of owed taxes, amounts, and deadlines tailored to their business type so that they can be aware of their tax obligations well in advance of deadlines

Two-step solution

Managing finances and anticipate payments & deadlines

Two-step solution

Managing finances and anticipate payments & deadlines

Feature #1

Tracking business transactions

Manage Connections page

A way for small business owners to manage their business' finances that were spread across various forms like cash flow, bank payments and data stored on online accounting platforms like Quickbooks

Feature #1

Tracking business transactions

Manage Connections page

A way for small business owners to manage their business' finances that were spread across various forms like cash flow, bank payments and data stored on online accounting platforms like Quickbooks

Feature #1

Tracking business transactions

Manage Connections page

A way for small business owners to manage their business' finances that were spread across various forms like cash flow, bank payments and data stored on online accounting platforms like Quickbooks

Feature 2

Consolidated tax management dashboard

Tax Budget dashboard

Transactions data gathered from the Manage Connections page (above) were then used to calculate near-perfect estimate of taxes owed and their deadlines

Feature 2

Consolidated tax management dashboard

Tax Budget dashboard

Transactions data gathered from the Manage Connections page (above) were then used to calculate near-perfect estimate of taxes owed and their deadlines

Feature 2

Consolidated tax management dashboard

Tax Budget dashboard

Transactions data gathered from the Manage Connections page (above) were then used to calculate near-perfect estimate of taxes owed and their deadlines

Impact

User testing was used to evaluate design success against KPIs

85%

Reduction in dependencies on other softwares

Users would spend lesser time on accounting platforms

98%

Users were clearer on taxes owed

As well as deadlines they were owed on

65%

Were willing to pay premium fees for the features

A business KPI, we were able to exceed an initial 50% estimate of users who might be wiling to upgrade to access this feature

Impact

User testing was used to evaluate design success against KPIs

85%

Reduction in dependencies on other softwares

Users would spend lesser time on accounting platforms

98%

Users were clearer on taxes owed

As well as deadlines they were owed on

65%

Were willing to pay premium fees for the features

A business KPI, we were able to exceed an initial 50% estimate of users who might be wiling to upgrade to access this feature

Impact

User testing was used to evaluate design success against KPIs

85%

Reduction in dependencies on other softwares

Users would spend lesser time on accounting platforms

98%

Users were clearer on taxes owed

As well as deadlines they were owed on

65%

Were willing to pay premium fees for the features

A business KPI, we were able to exceed an initial 50% estimate of users who might be wiling to upgrade to access this feature

Process

Generative research

User interviews with small business owners

14 in-person interviews at L.A's Access Summit

While we knew SMB’s were failing to pay their taxes, we didn’t fully understand why so I conducted an open ended user study to understand their struggles, specifically around payment of quarterly taxes

Generative research

User interviews with small business owners

14 in-person interviews at L.A's Access Summit

Generative research

User interviews with small business owners

14 in-person interviews at L.A's Access Summit

Interview setup

Understanding financial habits

How did users do their taxes? How did they track transactions? Did they ever pay in cash?

Understanding our user

Discussed role and activities, age of company, state of operation and size as well as mode(s) of sales

Understanding pain points

General difficulties faced in the last year? Long term and recent issues around tax payments?

Interview setup

Understanding financial habits

How did users do their taxes? How did they track transactions? Did they ever pay in cash?

Understanding our user

Discussed role and activities, age of company, state of operation and size as well as mode(s) of sales

Understanding pain points

General difficulties faced in the last year? Long term and recent issues around tax payments?

Interview setup

Understanding financial habits

How did users do their taxes? How did they track transactions? Did they ever pay in cash?

Understanding our user

Discussed role and activities, age of company, state of operation and size as well as mode(s) of sales

Understanding pain points

General difficulties faced in the last year? Long term and recent issues around tax payments?

Individual interview transcripts

Key insights

Root causes behind missed tax payments

Disorderly tracking of business transactions

New business owners often used personal banking accounts, made cash transactions and/or had manual (pen and paper) methods to track of transactions resulting in lost transaction data, underestimation or complete inability to estimate owed taxes.

Lack of clarity on type & estimation of taxes owed

New business owners were unaware of the specific kind of taxes they owed based on the kind of business they’d registered to be. Additionally, they didn’t know how to calculate owed amounts or associated deadlines and this information wasn’t readily available.

Limited ability to take financial risk

Newer business owners had limited financial runway and hesitated to trust third party organization with their financial data. The latter were also expensive and yet often weren't holistic in their capabilities

Key insights

Root causes behind missed tax payments

Disorderly tracking of business transactions

Lack of clarity on type & estimation of taxes owed

Limited ability to take financial risk

Key insights

Root causes behind missed tax payments

Disorderly tracking of business transactions

Lack of clarity on type & estimation of taxes owed

Limited ability to take financial risk

Narrowing down

on our key users' persona

To ground every design decision in future research and clarify who we were designing for, thereby making it more appealing as a premium (paid) feature (which was a business goal)

First time business owner

‣ Self/family managed finances ‣ Mixed personal/business accounts ‣ Excel/manual finance tracking ‣ Generally, needing the most amount of infrastructure/aid to paying taxes

Narrowing down

on our key users' persona

To ground every design decision in future research and clarify who we were designing for, thereby making it more appealing as a premium (paid) feature (which was a business goal)

First time business owner

‣ Self/family managed finances ‣ Mixed personal/business accounts ‣ Excel/manual finance tracking ‣ Generally, needing the most amount of infrastructure/aid to paying taxes

Other identified but non-target personas

Advanced first time owners (> 1 year of exp.) ‣ Hire tax accountants during tax season ‣ Separate bank account for business ‣ Subscribed to accounting platforms (ex. Quickbooks) - AND- Seasoned pros (With pre-existing ventures) ‣ Had in house tax accountants ‣ Multiple bank account for business ‣ Had premium subscriptions to accounting platforms (ex. Quickbooks)

Other identified but non-target personas

Understanding stakeholder

both internal and external, at a more granular level

Internal business goals evolved as below

‣ Create a product offering that appeals to new business owners at a premium subscription ‣Establish a unique offering beyond tax budgetting

Users wanted

‣ Easy discovery of tax obligations based on business transactions, location and business type. ‣Minimizing their reliance on external sources for tax calculations, budgeting, and management

Understanding stakeholder

both internal and external, at a more granular level

Internal business goals evolved as below

‣ Create a product offering that appeals to new business owners at a premium subscription ‣Establish a unique offering beyond tax budgetting

Users wanted

‣ Easy discovery of tax obligations based on business transactions, location and business type. ‣Minimizing their reliance on external sources for tax calculations, budgeting, and management

Narrowing down

on our key users' persona

First time business owner

‣ Self/family managed finances ‣ Mixed personal/business accounts ‣ Excel/manual finance tracking ‣ Generally, needing the most amount of infrastructure/aid to paying taxes

Understanding stakeholder

both internal and external, at a more granular level

Internal business goals evolved as below

‣ Create a product offering that appeals to new business owners at a premium subscription ‣Establish a unique offering beyond tax budgetting

Users wanted

‣ Easy discovery of tax obligations based on business transactions, location and business type. ‣Minimizing their reliance on external sources for tax calculations, budgeting, and management

Understanding stakeholder

both internal and external, at a more granular level

Internal business goals evolved as below

‣ Create a product offering that appeals to new business owners at a premium subscription ‣Establish a unique offering beyond tax budgetting

Users wanted

‣ Easy discovery of tax obligations based on business transactions, location and business type. ‣Minimizing their reliance on external sources for tax calculations, budgeting, and management

Project scope refinement

& feature planning

Based on need identified during the user interviews

Help visualise owed taxes & upcoming deadlines

Use the transaction data collected from to power a Tax Budget dashboard where we would highlight upcoming tax owed

Track & register all business transactions

A "Manage connections” page where users could keep track of all financial transactions including cash, bank account and accounting platform transactions/data. This would be a unique offering when compared to compeditors

Encrypting data to build trust

Buidling trust was the foundation required for features 1 and 2 above to be succesful. We incorporated affordances to inform and educate users along the way

Project scope refinement

& feature planning

Based on need identified during the user interviews

Help visualise owed taxes & upcoming deadlines

Use the transaction data collected from to power a Tax Budget dashboard where we would highlight upcoming tax owed

Track & register all business transactions

Encrypting data to build trust

Buidling trust was the foundation required for features 1 and 2 above to be succesful. We incorporated affordances to inform and educate users along the way

Project scope refinement

& feature planning

Based on need identified during the user interviews

Help visualise owed taxes & upcoming deadlines

Use the transaction data collected from to power a Tax Budget dashboard where we would highlight upcoming tax owed

Track & register all business transactions

Encrypting data to build trust

Buidling trust was the foundation required for features 1 and 2 above to be succesful. We incorporated affordances to inform and educate users along the way

An important development in product strategy

Findings from the research study sparked the exploration into development of an additional tool that was eventually called Expense Tracking (marked at “Out of scope*” in the diagram above). A different team started working simultaneously to build this tool. I worked closely with the team so users would have a seamless experience as information/data would flow between the two tools. This also led to development of additional constraints around third party integrations on the “Manage connections” page that is discussed later.

An important development in product strategy

Design

Design brief : Single source of truth

Coalesce all (forms) of business transaction data in a trustworthy manner) to accurately forecast taxes owed & associated deadlines based on the specific business type and filing status of each SMB

Design specific goals

to measure success

Based on discoveries made in the interviews and the broad project scope identified at this stage, I hashed out design goals and mapped them to corresponding product requirements, bringing about alignment between our product manager, engineers and myself. This became our source of truth for upcoming user tests.

Develop trust around data handling

Requirements: ·Provide information around data handling and use · ·Support affordances for complete control over data sources (i.e connecting, disconnecting and syncing)

Provide accurate tax estimates

Requirement: · Collect all financial data and filing information associated with the user and their business. · Calculate and display taxes based on the same.

Exapnd product offering

Requirements: · Support all data sources i.e accounting platforms, bank accounts and manual transactions · Develop an in-app budgetting feature for taxes and mark deductible income (out of scope*)

Design specific goals

to measure success

Develop trust around data handling

Requirements: ·Provide information around data handling and use · ·Support affordances for complete control over data sources (i.e connecting, disconnecting and syncing)

Provide accurate tax estimates

Requirement: · Collect all financial data and filing information associated with the user and their business. · Calculate and display taxes based on the same.

Exapnd product offering

Requirements: · Support all data sources i.e accounting platforms, bank accounts and manual transactions · Develop an in-app budgetting feature for taxes and mark deductible income (out of scope*)

Design specific goals

to measure success

Develop trust around data handling

Requirements: ·Provide information around data handling and use · ·Support affordances for complete control over data sources (i.e connecting, disconnecting and syncing)

Provide accurate tax estimates

Requirement: · Collect all financial data and filing information associated with the user and their business. · Calculate and display taxes based on the same.

Exapnd product offering

Requirements: · Support all data sources i.e accounting platforms, bank accounts and manual transactions · Develop an in-app budgetting feature for taxes and mark deductible income (out of scope*)

Information architerture

mapping for two overlapping flows

And additional touchpoint defined for interactions between both pages with the existing experience. This helped determine all the user touch-points that needed design work or design recommendations

Information architerture

mapping for two overlapping flows

And additional touchpoint defined for interactions between both pages with the existing experience. This helped determine all the user touch-points that needed design work or design recommendations

Information architerture

mapping for two overlapping flows

And additional touchpoint defined for interactions between both pages with the existing experience. This helped determine all the user touch-points that needed design work or design recommendations

Flow for Feature #1

i.e Manage connections

Upon conceptualising "Manage Connections" we realised it could have multiple entry points (and hence leevraged) across the platform (beond Tax Budget). Thus the resulting information architecture and user flow (below) was extensive and required multiple rounds of cross functional team discussions and iterations.

Flow for Feature #1

i.e Manage connections

Flow for Feature #1

i.e Manage connections

View flow in Figma

Flow for Feature #2

i.e Tax Budget Dashboard

Two versions would exist - one for users without a premium account and/or a business and one for users with all above entitlements and all financial data connected on the manage connections page.

Flow for Feature #2

i.e Tax Budget Dashboard

Two versions would exist - one for users without a premium account and/or a business and one for users with all above entitlements and all financial data connected on the manage connections page.

Flow for Feature #2

i.e Tax Budget Dashboard

Two versions would exist - one for users without a premium account and/or a business and one for users with all above entitlements and all financial data connected on the manage connections page.

View flow in Figma

Wireframing

In order as laid out in the lo-fi screens below:

01 Flows

Analyzing the user flow for both new and returning users through onboarding, information collection, and strategies for building trust

02 Interactions

Investigating how information should be organized and how different sections of the tool should interact with each other

Wireframing

In order as laid out in the lo-fi screens below:

01 Flows

Analyzing the user flow for both new and returning users through onboarding, information collection, and strategies for building trust

02 Interactions

Investigating how information should be organized and how different sections of the tool should interact with each other

Wireframing

In order as laid out in the lo-fi screens below:

02 Interactions

Investigating how information should be organized and how different sections of the tool should interact with each other

01 Flows

Analyzing the user flow for both new and returning users through onboarding, information collection, and strategies for building trust

Testing mid-fidelity

prototype to get early feedback

Post internal feedback and apporval we ran testing on mid-fidelity prototypes (both mobile & web)

Testing mid-fidelity

prototype to get early feedback

Post internal feedback and apporval we ran testing on mid-fidelity prototypes (both mobile & web)

Testing mid-fidelity

prototype to get early feedback

Post internal feedback and apporval we ran testing on mid-fidelity prototypes (both mobile & web)

Few of the test recordings

User research results

and improvements (below)

We used usertesting.com to run 60 unmoderated tests with both mobile and web prototypes. Users were prompted through 13 steps and asked to think out loud as they completed the flow.

83%

Of participants said they would trust the platform

The content and visual information on the working of the product successfully reassured SMB and gave them the sense of control they needed to needed to log into their bank accounts/accounting platforms without hesitation 🎉

91%

Of participants completed the flow < 11 seconds

Disiscoverability of steps and information based on the newly designed flow was great!

User research results

and improvements (below)

We used usertesting.com to run 60 unmoderated tests with both mobile and web prototypes. Users were prompted through 13 steps and asked to think out loud as they completed the flow.

83%

Of participants said they would trust the platform

91%

Of participants completed the flow < 11 seconds

Disiscoverability of steps and information based on the newly designed flow was great!

User research results

and improvements (below)

We used usertesting.com to run 60 unmoderated tests with both mobile and web prototypes. Users were prompted through 13 steps and asked to think out loud as they completed the flow.

83%

Of participants said they would trust the platform

91%

Of participants completed the flow < 11 seconds

Disiscoverability of steps and information based on the newly designed flow was great!

Final designs

Step 1: Onboarding

From the Tax Budget Board

To help new users add their tax profile (married/single), upgrade and supplement the tool with their business type for accurate estimation.

Step 1: Onboarding

From the Tax Budget Board

To help new users add their tax profile (married/single), upgrade and supplement the tool with their business type for accurate estimation.

Step 1: Onboarding

From the Tax Budget Board

To help new users add their tax profile (married/single), upgrade and supplement the tool with their business type for accurate estimation.

Step 2: Connect accounts

On the Manage Connections page

For users to connect/add transactions manually, from any bank account or an acccounting platform. Detailed below is an example for adding a bank account:

Step 2: Connect accounts

On the Manage Connections page

For users to connect/add transactions manually, from any bank account or an acccounting platform. Detailed below is an example for adding a bank account:

Step 2: Connect accounts

On the Manage Connections page

For users to connect/add transactions manually, from any bank account or an acccounting platform. Detailed below is an example for adding a bank account:

Step 3: Get insights

Upon return to the Tax Budget Dashboard

The dashboard now displays essential information- near-accurate estimation of taxes owed, a breakdown of each tax type based on the type of business and receive relevant alerts based on deadlines.

Step 3: Get insights

Upon return to the Tax Budget Dashboard

The dashboard now displays essential information- near-accurate estimation of taxes owed, a breakdown of each tax type based on the type of business and receive relevant alerts based on deadlines.

Step 3: Get insights

Upon return to the Tax Budget Dashboard

The dashboard now displays essential information- near-accurate estimation of taxes owed, a breakdown of each tax type based on the type of business and receive relevant alerts based on deadlines.

Outcome

First release & iterative improvememt

I collaborated with engineering to build out this first version of the tool, for both mobile and web devices. I tested the first version with 2 users to get these results. We continued improving the tool, focusing on the aspects below:

87%

Said this enabled their dependencies on other tools

Most users were depending on different softwares for different aspects of the tax filing process. Most participants believed this tool brought together all their tax related needs into one experience

98%

Of users said the were now clear on taxes owed

Nearly all users were now aware of exactly what taxes they owed and at what times through the year

66%

Were willing to pay a premium price

Which overshot the initial estimate and was a big win!

Outcome

First release & iterative improvememt

87%

Said this enabled their dependencies on other tools

Most users were depending on different softwares for different aspects of the tax filing process. Most participants believed this tool brought together all their tax related needs into one experience

98%

Of users said the were now clear on taxes owed

Nearly all users were now aware of exactly what taxes they owed and at what times through the year

66%

Were willing to pay a premium price

Which overshot the initial estimate and was a big win!

Outcome

First release & iterative improvememt

87%

Said this enabled their dependencies on other tools

Most users were depending on different softwares for different aspects of the tax filing process. Most participants believed this tool brought together all their tax related needs into one experience

98%

Of users said the were now clear on taxes owed

Nearly all users were now aware of exactly what taxes they owed and at what times through the year

66%

Were willing to pay a premium price

Which overshot the initial estimate and was a big win!

Design

Design brief

Maintaining our single source of truth

Coalesce all (forms) of business transaction data in a trustworthy manner) to accurately forecast taxes owed & associated deadlines based on the specific business type and filing status of each SMB

Design brief

Maintaining our single source of truth

Coalesce all (forms) of business transaction data in a trustworthy manner) to accurately forecast taxes owed & associated deadlines based on the specific business type and filing status of each SMB

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