Helping users manage financial transactions in property management software
HEMLANE
Re-designing the experience for users to import transactions, synchronize accounts, and other quality-of-life features to make accounting easier.
IMPACT
My impact was reducing feature churn on Hemlane’s accounting features and improving customer satisfaction and outcomes.
Hemlane users had expressed negative sentiments about the state of financial bookkeeping features through product reviews and exit surveys. My work aimed to remedy these customer pain points and provided new accounting capabilities for users who utilize Helmane to help manage finances, accounting, and other bookkeeping processes for property owners.
Within the first 30 days, my design changes helped contribute to:
-
41% decrease in customer churn compared to the previous year
-
Realized a 30% adoption rate (% of users who synced their bank accounts)
-
Improved customer satisfaction and NPS scores
Overview
Timeline
JAN - APR 2024
Role
LEAD UI/UX DESIGNER
Platform
DESKTOP & MOBILE RESPONSIVE WEB
Tool
FIGMA
Hemlane is a SAAS, property management software startup that strives to enhance its product and develops new helpful features for users to manage and perform tasks for their properties and rentals. In early 2024, the product team decided to redesign the accounting product and implement a new bank transactions import feature to improve the user experience in the financial tab.
I took charge as the lead UX designer for the Bank Sync feature project as the last part of the whole accounting redesign. Through research and collaboration with developers, I gained valuable insights and overcame challenges, ultimately designing a product that made an impact on the business and received a positive reception.
BACKGROUND
Customers were churning because the accounting feature has been lacking :(
The team has noticed from feedback and reviews on various platforms that users faced difficulties managing their financial records on the Hemlane platform. Users often end up using another software to handle the financial aspects of their properties, which is one of the main reasons people are switching to our competitors.
"We have outgrown Hemlane. The accounting and maintenance services are not sufficient for our operations."
The accounting body of Hemlane is not suitable for the amount of doors for my portfolio... [The] product just doesn't fit my needs anymore."
BACKGROUND
Hemlane is a software-as-a-service product to manage property, tenants, and outstanding tasks to keep managed property running.
Hemlane makes tasks easier for property owners, property managers, and tenants. There are many useful features offered on the platform, including some key functionality like:
-
Rent collection – collect or pay rent on the Hemlane platform.
-
Financial transaction tracking – Record and track transactions for your property
-
Repair coordination – Access a 24/7 coordination service for repair work orders.
And more.
FIRST CHALLENGE
I joined the project at a sudden notice because the previous lead designer had resigned, so I was left with a lot of catch-up to do. I learned about the discovered problem, proposed solution, and project plan. I then examined the existing redesigned part of the accounting tab to gather style guides.
THE GOALS
What we want
-
Iterate and design a more intuitive version of the dashboard to display both newly imported records from bank sync & the existing payment records from the Hemlane platform.
-
Implement new features to edit, exclude (hide from view), connect, and split transactions for bookkeeping.
MY IMPACT
What I did
-
Updated the financial dashboard to fully display different statuses of transactions.
-
Created high-fidelity mockups ready for development.
-
Designed individual modals for different actions including splitting and editing the transactions.
-
Exercised interdepartmental collaboration and held multiple work sessions.
RESEARCH
Conducted UX audit, analyzed competitors, and gathered existing best practices.
Examined 3 major competitors' financial management features
ANALYZING & BRAINSTORMING
Created user personas and user flows
User flows focused on the journey owners take to manage transactions in different ways
CHALLENGE
A major hurdle
Unaccounted complexity from different user permissions
-
The transaction data that's imported from the bank complicates the existing workflow and user viewing permissions of transaction and request data on the platform.
-
Participated in work sessions and meetings to try to come up with a solution
-
The more the team learned about the problem, the more confusing it got.
The solution
-
Due to time constraint, we needed to make a decision quickly.
-
The team decided to move forward with simplifying the plan and created a MVP, intended to improve and iterate in phases in the future.
-
It wasn't the perfect solution for our problem, but it was a tradeoff we would make to ensure it launched on time.
Problems & Solutions
How to display the direction of the money flow?
We have been displaying money flow between two accounts solely through text. It is hard and more cumbersome to read especially on a data table dashboard.
How can we show the direction of money flow with sender/receiver clearly marked?
Solution
Redesign the fields. Show the two parties of the transaction and then use arrow icons to indicate the direction of money flow.
Old
New
DESIGN
Wireframes
A shot of wireframes for the merge transaction process
Hi-fidelity mockups
Updated dashboard
Split transaction modal
Edit transaction modal
Transaction details modal
PROTOTYPE
Try how it works
The prototype includes the dashboard and actionable interfaces for editing, splitting, and connecting transactions.
LAUNCH AND FEEDBACK
Beta-launched and positively received :)
"I'm thrilled about the new connect to bank feature. I'm going in [and] categorizing all of the connected transactions now. It came just in time because I was trying to manually add a few of my YTD transactions in prep for my taxes next year."
Iterations
We received many feedbacks, which some users expressed they only wanted the year-to-date transactions. I had a follow-up with the engineer and created a modal with the ability to pick the specific time range which they wanted the transaction records to be imported from.
In-app screenshot
CONCLUSION
Importance of collaboration
This project serves as a strong reminder of the importance of actively seeking help, learning, and ensuring alignment across different parties. Through close collaboration with project managers, engineers, and other departments, we successfully overcame challenges and launched the product according to the adjusted date. User feedback was gathered at both the beginning and end of the project, laying a robust foundation for future enhancements.