Project Overview

Flexible Chart of Accounts

Flexible Chart of Accounts is an comprehensive accounting foundation in FreshBooks that can be customized for the needs of business owners, while keeping accounting user-friendly.

Note: “Flexible” is a name used for project purposes to distinguish between the old and the new functionality. In product, this feature enchancement uses its original name.

Feature Explained

What is Chart of Accounts?

A Chart of Accounts is the foundation of the accounting software. Think of the Chart of Accounts as a table of contents or a map of your business accounts — it’s a great overview of all accounts to keep business owners organized.

A well designed Chart of Accounts should include all the accounts a company uses to run their business and none of the accounts they don’t need.

In FreshBooks, the CoA affects several product areas, such as: Expenses, Reports, Bills, Bank Reconciliation.

The Chart of Accounts can look different for every business. Examples:
1. A fitness studio might show 3 different Income Accounts: Membership Sales, Fitness Class Sales, Product Sales
2. An advertising agency might have many specific advertising sub accounts including: Podcast Advertising, Online Advertising and Print Advertising

Problem Definition

Not robust, lacks functionality

Previously, FreshBooks only supported default Chart of Accounts. This worked well enough for small business owners, but it did not support the needs of scaling businesses or the accountants that support them.

Problems with the previous CoA

It did not contain accounts used commonly by small and scaling businesses
Owners did not have access to the accounting features and have to create a separate accountant login in order to access them
Owners could not create, edit, archive, delete, or indicate the hierarchy of an account
Owners could not specify accounts at transaction level (expenses)
It did not easily reconcile with reports

UX Strategy

UX strategy

Vision

A platform where small business owners can effortlessly capture their finances, confidently partner with accountants, and gain insight to grow their business, all without having to learn accounting.

Goal

An comprehensive accounting foundation that can be customized for the needs of business owners.

Plan

Give owners access to accounting features only available to accountants, in a user-friendly way.

Process

Design thinking

The design thinking process was comprehensive, involving collaboration with a cross-functional team on a large, complex, and high-impact project for FreshBooks.

Discovery

• UX audit

• User interviews

• Personas

• Journey mapping

• Competitive analysis

Ideation

• User flows

• Wireframes

• High-Fidelity design

Prototyping

• Prototyping

Testing

• Usability testing

• A/B testing

Implementation

• Final design

• Design handoff

Discovery

UX audit

We ran a UX audit to identify usability and experience issues with the previous CoA.

User interviews

User interviews were conducted with both business owners and accountants. Owners expressed a need for a product that grows with them as their accounting needs change. Most owners that had an accountant had the impression that FreshBooks was not the accountant’s preferred software because of its inflexibility to grow with them.

Note: to protect the identities of participants, generic images/names are used here.

Journey mapping

Based on a synthesis from the user interviews conducted, I’ve created a journey map that gave a holistic view of the previous accounting user experience by uncovering pain points throughout a series of interactions with the aim to identify opportunities for improvement.

Competitive analysis

Most competitors do offer the abilty for owners to customize their Chart of Accounts, but their accounting functionality isn’t so user-friendly and thus requires accountant’s help. The aim was to identify product-market fit.

Ideation

User flow

When creating the user flow, in order to showcase processes and steps that users need to go through in order to accomplish their goals, I leveraged existing functionality but included new enhancements.

Testing

Usability testing

I conducted usability testing using a prototype, asking participants to complete tasks in CoA, Expenses, and Reports. The goal was to identify potential usability issues and validate our assumptions. Task success rates indicated that the new solution is user-friendly and likely to enhance workflow efficiency.

Note: to protect the identities of participants, generic images/names are used here.

A/B testing

To gather quantitative data, we also conducted A/B testing to compare two variants. Findings show that participants found both Version A and B of the prototype seamless and easy to use but due to accessibility problems later discovered in Version A, we’ve decided to proceed with Version B.

Solution

Robust yet simple accounting

A comprehensive accounting foundation that can be customized for the needs of small to scaling businesses, while keeping accounting user-friendly. Flexible Chart of Account is about fortifying FreshBooks’ foundation to scale. Making the foundation more robust and customizable unblocks future accounting features.

Improvements

It now contains accounts used commonly by small and scaling businesses
Owners now have access to the accounting features and don’t have to create a separate accountant login in order to access them
Owners can now create, edit, archive, delete, and indicate the hierarchy of an account
Owners can now specify accounts at transaction level (expenses)
It now easily reconciles with reports
Owners can now create Journal Entries
Owners can disable these features in Settings > Advanced Accounting

Note: Advanced Accounting and customizable Chart of Accounts are only available on Plus, Premium, and Select plans while Trial users can access the feature for 30 days.

Outcome

Final design

All product areas that encompass the Flexible Chart of Accounts (i.e., Chart of Accounts, Expenses, Reports) were designed leveraging product’s well established design system. The goal was to uphold consistency and achieve ease of use.

Design system

For the Expense dropdown menu, I improved the design system by introducing headers inside the component. The goal was to visually separate two Expense categories (Operating Expenses and Cost of Goods Sold), and to better organize the information for the scrolling interaction with the dropdown.

Design principles

Unfold Like an Onion
Adapt to the Task
Maintain Flow
Set Expectations
Don't Add, Evolve

Screens

Result

Impact

The feature enhancement had a substantial impact as evidenced by success metrics.

30,000.000

customers impacted

85%

adoption rate

88%

engagement rate

Metrics

Adoption rate (85%) was calculated by the proportion of users who enabled Advanced Accounting and upgraded to Plus, Premium, or Select plans after adopting accounting features during their Trial period, since launch.
Engagement rate (88%) was calculated by tracking users who performed meaningful actions, such as creating, editing, and archiving accounts, as well as creating journal entries, per month.
Data points (via FullStory):
- Segments (to filter users)
- Event Funnels (to track feature interactions)
- Dashboards & Trends (to visualize and validate engagement)

Project Details

Project details

Role: Product Design, User Research

Client: FreshBooks

Team: Product Designer, Design Leadership, Product Managers, Engineering

Tools:

Design: Figma, Zeroheight, Miro
Project management: Jira, Confluence
Research: UserInterviews.com
Analytics: FullStory, Looker, Pendo

Year: 2022

Link: FreshBooks.com