CASE Study
Custom accounting workflow system
Designed a custom workflow system for a UK accounting firm, translating complex financial operations, user roles, document states, and ML-assisted invoice and receipt processing into a clear information architecture and usable day-to-day product.
Role: End-to-end product design, information architecture, and interaction design
Context and problem
- Employees manually processed large volumes of receipts and invoices across multiple clients.
- Documents arrived in inconsistent formats, requiring extensive manual classification.
- Information was fragmented across folders, spreadsheets, and disconnected tools.
- Wide range of digital proficiency meant workflows had to be intuitive and predictable.
- Accuracy was critical, as small mistakes could affect financial reporting.
Goal
Design a unified workflow system that simplified document processing, reduced manual effort, and preserved established accounting practices while creating a scalable foundation for future automation.
My role
Product Designer
- Product discovery
- Information architecture
- Workflow modelling
- Interaction design
- Prototyping
Constrains
Low digital literacy
The interface minimized abstraction, reduced navigation complexity, and relied on familiar interaction patterns rather than advanced UI techniques.
Existing accounting model
Financial periods and folder structures reflected established accounting processes and therefore became fixed constraints that the product needed to support rather than redesign.
Operational priority
Daily document processing took precedence over administrative features such as employee or supplier management.
Large data sets
Users regularly navigated years of financial records, requiring efficient hierarchy, search, and recovery from deep navigation states.
Accuracy
Financial workflows demanded clear validation, confirmation, and visibility of system state to reduce operational errors.
Trust in automation
Machine-extracted information always remained reviewable and editable so users retained confidence and control over the workflow.
High Variability in Document Formats – Receipts and invoices came in inconsistent layouts, requiring a flexible ML parsing system and UX that allowed correction without friction.
Using empty states as workflow guidance
The system required users to review documents across multiple accounting periods while maintaining the rule that every document belongs to a specific folder.
Rather than treating empty states as placeholders, they became guidance points that helped users understand the next valid action without breaking the accounting workflow.
Making workflow status scannable
Accounting staff frequently switched between clients and accounting periods while processing large volumes of documents.
To reduce unnecessary navigation, folders communicate both their contents and current state at a glance.
Visual states distinguish:
- Empty folders
- Active empty folders
- Populated folders
- Active populated folders
This enables users to quickly identify where work is required without opening every folder individually. Folder states are communicated through both icons and color, ensuring they remain distinguishable without relying on color alone.
Reducing complexity in expense coding
Expense codes are one of the most frequently referenced pieces of information during document processing.
To speed up recognition and reduce classification errors, payment types were reinforced with visual cues while preserving existing accounting terminology.
This improved scanability without requiring users to learn a new coding system.
System thinking
The product’s information architecture reflected the accounting firm’s real operational model rather than imposing a generic software structure.
The model defined relationships between:
- Clients
- Accounting periods
- Documents
- Suppliers
- Expense codes
- User roles and permissions
- Workflow states
These elements needed to remain distinct while still feeling like one coherent system. The focus was on reducing cognitive load while preserving strict business rules and enabling future workflow automation.
Designing this product reinforced that effective enterprise UX starts with modelling workflows rather than interfaces.
Many of the project’s UX decisions emerged from understanding relationships between data, permissions, and operational constraints, rather than visual design alone.