Overview
Knit People provides comprehensive cloud-based payroll and HR services tailored for accountants and small businesses across Canada. As the year comes to a close, accountants and small business owners are tasked with the crucial responsibility of meticulously reviewing their annual payroll data and generating T4s for clients or employees. This undertaking can be overwhelming due to the extensive amount of information that necessitates careful scrutiny, coupled with the challenge of ensuring compliance with the stringent guidelines set forth by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA).
As a Product Designer and acting Product Manager at Knit People
I had the opportunity to lead the road map and designs for the Year-End process as well as the Onboarding process. My responsibilities include:
User research - surveys, user interviews
Competitive analysis
Mockups and Prototype
User testing
Project planning
Roadmapping
Problem Space
Handling year-end tax filings and T4s can be quite a task if you're not adequately prepared. Whether you're a new business owner or an accountant juggling multiple client employees, having software that organizes and guides you step by step is crucial. Putting off this process until the last minute can lead to some headaches.
Unfortunately, the product fell short of allowing clients to start the year-end process earlier and lacked user-friendly guidance. As a result, customer service was bombarded with calls during year-end, with users either seeking help or stumbling upon filing errors due to the absence of preventive measures.
This has caused a spike in frustrated calls, with clients expressing dissatisfaction and even considering a switch to our competitors. Urgent improvements in the year-end process was needed to prevent potential client loss and ensure a more positive wrap-up to their year.
These were some of the issues we were hearing:
“I really need to know Knit in order to complete my year-end tax filings. I’m jumping all over the place just to get setup to generate my employee T4s. Is there no easier way to this?”
“This is so frustrating. Every time I make a mistake, I have to call support.”
“Knit is supposed to help me with my payroll and taxes, but it’s made year end filing so complicated I’m considering bringing my business elsewhere.”
The Opportunity
This presented a valuable chance to rethink the inner workings of the Knit app. We kicked off by completely revamping the Onboarding process, and recognizing the urgency, we swiftly moved on to redesigning the year-end process—a critical aspect in retaining our valued customers.
Proposed Solution
Turn filing taxes and generating T4s in to a process on its own. A step by step process that will walk the user through steps in order to complete year-end tax filings.
Give in app prompts that will allow customers to start the process way ahead.
Allow users to correct their own mistakes.
Have preventative measures in place to stop users from filing incorrect taxes.
How we got to the solutions
User research via interviews and surveys
The findings I can share:
The existing year-end process lacked a streamlined approach, involving multiple steps and requiring users to navigate through different sections of the software.
Users expressed the need for a more efficient way to edit T4s without relying on support calls.
The preference for using the official government T4 form over a custom one was emphasized. The current custom T4 form utilized by Knit was found confusing due to the orientation of the T4 boxes.
There needs to be a confirmation step at the end of the process, allowing users to conveniently bulk download all T4s for efficient distribution to their employees.
Wireframes
I created low-fidelity wireframes delineating the comprehensive flow and layout of the proposed solution. These wireframes were then presented to my team, fostering a collaborative discussion to gather feedback and address any potential technical constraints. This collaborative process proved invaluable, serving as a guide for my decisions in shaping the final designs.
Simultaneously, in the early stages of design, we distributed a survey to our clients. The survey sought insights on the critical aspects that must be prioritized during the year-end process, ensuring that our design aligns closely with the needs and expectations of our user base.
The Year-end Process Final Designs
*Showing only a few screens
A CTA in app will show on the Company overview to prompt the user to get started with their year-end process closer to the end of the year.
Income and Deduction types needs to be first verified and confirmed before proceeding to T4s. That way all income types are mapped to the correct T4 box.
Users can click on the ‘Action’ menu to edit the income or deduction type.
I provide help articles on the bottom left that help users with the T4 box allocations.
Once income and deduction types are verified, they can now generate T4s for their employees.
Before you generate T4s, there’s a checklist of what needs to be completed as well as what they can expect during the final T4 generation steps.
This view allows the user to view each employee’s T4 one at a time. They can navigate through each individual employee T4 on the top right.
There’s also a “See full list”, where they can view all the employees in a list form with all employee T4s on a scrollable page.
Confirmation modals to remind the user that once everything has been confirmed, it will be final and cannot be changed or undone.
There are two types of modals:
1. For those who are filing passed our (Knit) internal deadline
2. For those who are filing before the internal deadline. In that case, the use case request for Knit to file on their behalf.
Once all employee T4s are reviewed and confirmed, a T4 package will be available for download with all the employee T4s as well as the T4 summary.
Note: This is just a blank form. The purpose is to show the position of the form.
What I learned
While at Knit, I finalized the designs for a revamped onboarding process and a year-end process. Unfortunately, these designs didn't go live due to technical constraints and other priorities. However, I conducted user testings, using prototypes that are now shown here with a handful of customers. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive, and all the users I tested with expressed enthusiasm for the potential launch of the new processes. If the designs had been implemented, I anticipate a noticeable reduction in user frustration and a decrease in support calls overall.
The subsequent phases would have involved assessing the effectiveness of both the year-end and onboarding processes. Regarding the year-end process, I aimed to gauge the number of users who successfully completed their tax filings independently, without requiring support assistance. In the case of the onboarding process, the focus was on overcoming the challenge of having trial customers successfully run their initial payroll. I intended to measure the success by tracking the number of new clients who completed the onboarding process and successfully ran their first payroll.
Users often find Knit frustrating due to the software's lack of structure. While redesigning the onboarding and year-end processes is a significant step toward improving the user experience, it's just the start of my efforts. If I were to continue working on Knit, the next steps would involve a more detailed restructuring of the software architecture.