Document management for Accountants
Document management for Accountants
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Accountants need to collect clients' documents in order to start working on their tax returns. Currently there is no seamless way for accountants to collect, organize, securely store client documents and import data into clients' tax returns. Our customers have lost trust and they've started looking for external solutions.
Accountants need to collect clients' documents in order to start working on their tax returns. Currently there is no seamless way for accountants to collect, organize, securely store client documents and import data into clients' tax returns. Our customers have lost trust and they've started looking for external solutions.
I was the Lead Designer on this team working with the Research team to uncover issues with the current system, coming up with the strategy to solve the short and long term, in a way that scales for the Intuit ecosystem of products to consume. I also mentored our Design Intern during this project.
Meet our customer, Rene.
Meet our customer, Rene.
Rene is a Certified Tax Professional with 8 years of experience.
She works for a multi-service Tax firm, Lawson LLC. They offer Tax consulting, Bookkeeping, and Payroll services.
Her Tax Firm, a small business
4 full-time employees including 2 Tax preparers and 1 office administrator.
They do about 500 Tax returns a year.
Needs
Collect client information faster.
Reduce the manual data entry so that they can focus more time on Tax consulting.
Organize and safely store client information and documents for audit purposes.
Customer Problem Statement
Customer Problem Statement
I am an accountant working for a multi-service firm
Trying to find client information and documents when I'm preparing their taxes for the year
But it takes me a lot of time and effort to achieve that
Because I have a lot of clients and each client has several documents and they are not organized in the right way
Which makes me feel worried that I’m wasting time and I need a better way to do this.
Ideal State
Ideal State
In an ideal world, Rene has all the necessary data and documents at the point of need.
Success measures
Success measures
Adoption of the Document management features
Increase the number of firms that upload a file, create a folder, or copy a file to their firm documents.
Strategy for solving this problem
Strategy for solving this problem
1. Identifying usability issues with the current system
1. Identifying usability issues with the current system
I worked with our Design Researcher to conduct a usability testing of the current solution. We used the issue matrix to surface the big problems based on their severity, frequency, and the number of customers impacted.
We uncovered 3 major flaws in the current system and decided to go ahead and solve them quickly so that we have a less broken experience for 2019 Tax season.
2. Addressing the most critical issues
2. Addressing the most critical issues
⚠️ Problem 1
⚠️ Problem 1
Accountants found it confusing that “Firm documents” and “Shared documents” are presented as two sections side by side.
✅Solution
✅Solution
⚠️ Problem 2
⚠️ Problem 2
Accountants have to create folder structures for every client manually. This process is tedious and time-consuming when they have to do this for hundreds of clients.
✅Solution
✅Solution
⚠️ Problem 3
⚠️ Problem 3
Accountants needed an easy way to organize documents by tax year. The current way of organizing documents by tax year is cumbersome and not efficient as a long term solution.
✅Solution
✅Solution
The outcome
The outcome
We released these short-term fixes in Nov 2018 and noticed an increase in usage of document management features during the peak of Tax Year 2019. We also observed an increase in the adoption of document management after the fixes were released.
Qualitative feedback from surveys and customer care calls showed the positive impact of these changes on customer experience.
3. Solving for the ideal experience
3. Solving for the ideal experience
The success of short-term fixes gave the team energy to focus on the end-to-end journey of accountants and holistically solve for their data and document needs. We decided to start by observing accountants collecting tax data from their clients and then preparing tax returns.
Observed 22 Accountants collecting client documents and preparing tax returns
Observed 22 Accountants collecting client documents and preparing tax returns
Key insights
Key insights
💡 Accountants want to search and retrieve tax information quickly when they need it.
💡Accountants feel responsible for keeping their clients' documents backed up and secure.
💡Accountants take printouts of client documents and store them securely.
💡Documents are often shared within the firm and with clients.
Key pain points with their current system
Key pain points with their current system
⚠️ "I don't know how to get to the documents in the system"
⚠️ "I don't get the complete picture of what do I have and what is missing when I am in the tax return"
⚠️ "In the event of an audit, I don't have confidence that I have all the documents"
These pains spanned across two distinct stages of Tax preparation process - Collecting data and Preparing Tax returns.
Solving for the Intuit ecosystem
Solving for the Intuit ecosystem
Though we started solving for the Accountants' needs, we uncovered similar needs across other Intuit products. We decided to expand the scope of this project to solve for the Intuit ecosystem of products. The goal was to create a scalable widget for document management that all Inuit products can leverage.
I collaborated with product teams across business units to make sure that we address their customer and business needs. I worked with architects and developers from those teams spanning different geographies to develop this scalable widget experience that all Intuit ecosystem of products can customize and consume.
One of the challenges I faced was making sure that the single widget works well for the needs of different product experiences across devices and its target customers.
Plan to execute
Plan to execute
Bringing the cross-functional and cross-business unit teams together
Bringing the cross-functional and cross-business unit teams together
With the number of cross-functional and cross-business unit teams involved, solving for the inter-team dependencies, prioritization of the work, and communication became a challenge.
Service Design Blueprinting helped the teams align on a common goal
Service Design Blueprinting helped the teams align on a common goal
I ran the Blueprinting, which helped the teams understand the touchpoints, dependencies, hidden steps, backend systems, policies, metrics, and data behind the experience.
This also made the team align on a common goal. Everyone felt they are part of the game. Tough conversations happened early on.
Collaboration tools helped teams stay on the same page
Collaboration tools helped teams stay on the same page
Mentored the "Best intern ever"!
Mentored the "Best intern ever"!
Mario joined the team as a Design Intern while we were ramping up the usability testing of the widget. It was a great experience mentoring him and working together on this project . His drive and passion for customers have truly contributed to the success of this project.
The widget in action
The widget in action
Documents widget in Proconnect
Documents widget in QuickBooks
Documents widget in Turbotax
Documents widget in Experts Platform
The outcome of the long-term solution
The outcome of the long-term solution
The widget experience that we built has been widely adopted by other products at Intuit over the period and is powering document management experiences for millions of customers today.
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