Building an employee record-keeping system
Equipping payroll admin and HR managers with the info they need to make informed decisions, recover from errors, and stay compliant.
Company
Intuit QuickBooks
Timeline
3 months
Role
UX Researcher, Product Designer
Outcome
This effort not only closed a critical functionality gap and advanced data integrity, but it advanced QuickBooks towards its goal of becoming a human capital management system.
Summary
With over 1.1 million users, QuickBooks Payroll is an online service that's designed to help small and medium-sized businesses manage employee compensation, taxes, and compliance. For mid-market businesses, it can be especially tricky to keep track of dynamic employee data. That's why we created a way for users to effortlessly track key changes to employee info.
Competitive research
We conducted a competitive audit to familiarize ourselves with the existing employee record-keeping and effective dating experiences. The creation of competitive profiles helped us assess products that provide similar offerings.
Notes analysis
We pulled notes from employee profiles and categorized them by topics like compensation, personal info, and performance.
38%
of notes mentioned employee compensation changes
25%
of notes mentioned employee status changes
Surveys
We asked 50 QuickBooks users and 50 non-QuickBooks users to rank which employee attributes they actively track.
86% track compensation
78% track job title
64% track status
58% track department
57% track hire date
“I wish I could see these major changes for each employee in one place.”
“It would be helpful if we could see when each employee’s pay increased and when positions changed.”
“We need to be able to track when raises and promotions are given.”
Interviews
We discovered that QuickBooks users were using the Notes tab as a diary for employee pay changes.
Objectives
• Provide an aggregated view of key historical changes for both employers and employees
• Increase confidence in QuickBooks as a HCM and mid-market offering
• Enable error recovery, compliance, and planning
Defining the problem
User problem
Small business owners, HR admin, and payroll managers can’t access historical employee info, so they can't answer questions like:
• Who was Annie's manager before Rama?
• What was did Yusuf's department before he joined our department?
• When was the last time I gave Jessica a raise?
This also means that they can’t easily identify the root cause of mistakes on payroll.
Business problem
QuickBooks did not provide a cohesive view of each employee's employment history. Consequently, mid-market customers are using BambooHR, Google Drive, or Excel to track and manage employee history.
Explorations
We went broad with explorations before narrowing in on three concepts.
Concept 1
Showcase changes at the profile card level.
Concept 2
Showcase changes in a new tab, separated by category.
Concept 3
Showcase changes in a new tab, separated by past and upcoming.
How we pivoted
Thanks to usability testing, we learned that users prefer a single consolidated list over lists separated by category or timing. To accommodate effective dating, we added a status column to indicate which changes have already occurred, which were canceled, and which are scheduled.
Final concept
A single consolidated table of all attributes with the addition of a status column, sorted by effective date in reverse chronological order.
For employers
A tab within each employee profile dedicated to displaying this info in a consolidated, reverse chronological list:
•What changed
•What it changed to
•When it changed
•Who changed it
•Why it changed
For employees
We also had to consider how this experience would look for employees that use QuickBooks Workforce, our employee-facing product. From internal research and existing data, we found that:
•Employees use mobile at a higher rate than employers
•Employees prioritize what changed, what it changed to, and when it changed
•Irrelevant or sensitive info should be hidden
•Pending or scheduled changes should be hidden
A tab within their QuickBooks Workforce account dedicated to displaying this info in a consolidated, reverse chronological list:
•What changed
•What it changed to
•When it changed
Hero state
Zero state
Outcome
We created a way for business owners, HR admin, and payroll managers to effortlessly track key changes to employee history, ensure compliance, and make more informed decisions—all through their existing QuickBooks Payroll accounts. This effort closed a critical functionality gap, advanced data integrity, and advanced QuickBooks towards its goal of becoming a human capital management system.
We designed interactive tables that provide every QuickBooks Payroll user and QuickBooks Workforce user with a consolidated view of key historical changes. Additionally, we:
•Pressure tested a new design component
•Created a foundation and framework for effective dating
•Established a single source of truth for dynamic employee data
Future-proofing
Throughout the research and design process, I considered how we can include effective dating and AI in this experience.
Employee summary
A single consolidated table of all attributes with the addition of a status column, sorted by effective date in reverse chronological order.
Summary with prompts
A single consolidated table of all attributes with the addition of a status column, sorted by effective date in reverse chronological order.
Chat with prompts
A single consolidated table of all attributes with the addition of a status column, sorted by effective date in reverse chronological order.