Modern Trial Balance
Modernizing the foundation of accounting workflows
Xero • 2023
SUMMARY
Xero's expansion into new regions revealed product-market fit challenges. Canadian accounting practices struggled with a Workpapers product designed for the Australian market. Through customer research, we identified that the Working Trial Balance report was central to all accounting tasks and viewed as the "source of truth" for regulatory compliance.
Leadership embraced modernizing the Trial Balance report. This allowed our team to develop an account notes feature that laid the foundation for future capabilities. Through iterative design and testing, we introduced notation functionality that significantly improved engagement and retention.
My role: Senior Product Designer leading design and research throughout the product lifecycle, collaborating with Product Manager, subject matter experts, Engineering Lead, and Design Content team.
THE PROBLEM
Interviews with practice accountants across multiple regions revealed that teams struggled to communicate workflow status and assign tasks within the Trial Balance context. This caused inefficiencies, team misalignment, and increased audit costs.
Core challenges
- •No way to annotate or communicate around specific account issues
- •Workflow communication scattered across multiple platforms
- •No centralized tracking of supporting documentation for compliance
- •Legacy technical constraints limited development options
Customer goals
- •Centralize error communication for faster issue resolution
- •Contextual, inline messaging that's always within reach
- •Threaded conversations that keep managers and preparers in sync
- •A single source of truth for workflow evidence and audit compliance.
“The Trial Balance is where our accounting workflow starts”
CUSTOMER JOURNEY
PERSONAS AND PRINCIPLES
I collaborated with lead designers to define design principles that guided our conversations, decisions, and direction. We aligned moments of customer opportunity with corresponding design principles, ensuring decisions were rooted in user needs. These principles, alongside our growing user research, shaped our approach.
We developed four key principles reflecting the workflow mindset, motivations, and aspirations of accountants: Efficient, Adaptable, Trustworthy, and Insightful. These principles were essential to our decision-making process and helped us serve regional practice accountants across the UK, US, Canada, and Australia.
Our target users fell into two primary personas: Practice Managers who needed oversight and communication tools to guide their teams, and Accountant Preparers who required efficient ways to document progress and seek guidance on complex issues.
DESIGN APPROACH
Early concepts explored annotation patterns, revealing a critical distinction between notes and comments. The core challenge: create annotation capabilities that felt integrated with the Trial Balance workflow rather than bolted-on, while working within legacy technical constraints.
DESIGN EVOLUTION
Our solution evolved through three phases based on user feedback:
Phase 1: Single input
Initial design featured one input for recording status and progress. Testing revealed accountants needed multiple notes with timestamps and attribution for proper tracking.
Phase 2: Multiple input
MVP used a popover for viewing account notes with search, add, edit, and delete functionality. Testing revealed scrolling issues and usability challenges.
Phase 3: Side drawer
Final release introduced a side drawer that received positive feedback. Users found it convenient for micro-tasks, improving usability and accessibility compliance.
This evolution solved usability issues while creating a reusable component that supported future features like Review Points.
“If we could annotate, leave a note and link back to a workpaper that would save us so much time.”
MEASURING SUCCESS
We implemented comprehensive tracking using the HEART framework and jobs-to-be-done insights, measuring open rates, dwell time, completion actions, and feature attribution across the customer journey.
Results
- •Strong adoption rates in first month
- •High volume of notes created during beta
- •Reduced context switching between tools
- •Significant improvement in customer satisfaction
TECHNICAL FOUNDATION
Working within legacy constraints, we built Notes as a scalable foundation using established UI patterns while creating new annotation capabilities. This reduced complexity while enabling the engineering team to leverage the work for future features.
The solution required careful integration with monolithic codebase and siloed database architecture. Building incrementally created a foundation for future enhancements without major architectural changes.
IMPACT
The Trial Balance Notes feature transformed how accounting teams communicate around critical workflow tasks. By building annotation capabilities directly into the core workflow, we eliminated context switching and created a foundation for future features.
Customer outcomes
- •Streamlined communication around account-specific issues
- •Reduced time spent switching between multiple tools and platforms
- •Improved documentation and audit trail for compliance requirements
- •Enhanced collaboration between managers and preparers
- •Faster resolution of account discrepancies and errors
Business outcomes
- •Met key objectives for product-market fit and engagement
- •Enabled modern, scalable technical foundation
- •Created extensible platform for future capabilities
- •Established reusable components for broader product evolution
This project demonstrated how user-centered design can modernize legacy workflows while building scalable foundations. The notes feature became the cornerstone for subsequent capabilities including review points and supporting documents.