./payflow

b2b invoicing, rebuilt for the 40,000 smbs that hated it.

role:

lead product designer

team:

2 pd · 6 eng · 1 pm

timeline:

jan — sep 2025

platform:

web app

[ payflow — final invoicing dashboard, full-bleed shot ]

$ cat ./context

the problem

invoicing was the #1 reason customers threatened to leave.

finlab’s invoicing module was a straight port of a 2016 internal tool. an 11-step wizard, three different “save” buttons, and a reconciliation view nobody could explain.

new smbs took 4.5 days on average to send their first invoice. 38% of all support tickets were about reconciliation. customer success flagged it as the top churn driver two quarters in a row.

the brief >

“make invoicing something our customers stop noticing.”

22 min

time to first invoice (was 4.5 days)

−41%

invoicing support tickets within one quarter

+32%

activation (first invoice sent, w1)

68 nps

module nps (+18 vs. old tool)

$ cat ./process

research → flows → iterations

(a) research

users didn’t want more features. they wanted fewer decisions.

19 customer calls, 3,200 support tickets mined and tagged, and four afternoons shadowing bookkeepers. every “missing feature” request traced back to the same thing: too many choices per screen.

[ research synthesis board ]

[ user flow diagram — v4, 11 steps → 3 ]

(b) flows

11 steps became 3, with smart defaults doing the rest.

the wizard collapsed into a single composer: 3 visible fields, everything else progressive. reconciliation was reframed as an inbox-zero pattern — match, snooze, or flag.

three rounds of testing. one sacred cow killed.

usability tests with 8 users per round. the beloved “advanced mode” toggle confused 7 of 8 — we cut it in round two and nobody asked for it back.

[ wireframes v1 — v3, side by side ]

$ open ./solution

what shipped

[ invoice composer — final ui, annotated ]

[ reconciliation inbox ]

reconciliation as inbox zero — match, snooze, flag. median session: 4 minutes.

[ mobile receipt capture ]

receipt capture on mobile web — no app install, 78% of receipts now arrive same-day.

$ tail ./outcome

after launch

rolled out to all 40k customers over six weeks with zero rollbacks. invoicing dropped out of the churn-driver top five for the first time since tracking began.

“we stopped getting angry emails about invoicing. that’s never happened before.”

— laura m., head of support @ finlab

// next case — 02/04

./pulse →

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