Reimbursement Process Made Easy

Designed a product that will streamline the reimbursement process of MSMEs through simple snapping of receipt and typing in a few details

Duration:

January 17-29, 2022
(2 weeks)

Contribution:

User Research, Wireframing and Prototyping

Team:

Marga Hernandez, Sam Sauler

Tools Used:

Notion, Whimsical, Figma

Challenge

  Personal finance tools often mix with business expenses which results in accounting and finance management nightmare


  Employees don’t have an easy way to log information about their purchases on companies behalf

Solution

  Provide other ways of spending on company allowances


  Streamlined process of reimbursement, from request to tracking the progress

According to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), in the year 2020, they recorded a total of 957,620 business enterprises operating in the country. Of these, 952,969 (99.51%) are MSMEs and 4,651 (0.49%) are large enterprises. Oftentimes, MSMEs do not have access to useful tools that can streamline their financial management and processes. As a business needs to expand and grow, employees might sometimes purchase on a company's behalf. As a result, a tedious reimbursement process arises.

To find out the pain points and current problem we conducted a user interview with 3 employees who reimburse company expenses, with those 3 participant we came up with one persona, so let’s meet - Angie Crisostomo

Angie Crisostomo

OC Budgetarian

23 years old


Sales Associate in a Retail Industry

Monthly income: Php 22,000


  • Strict with her personal budget since her income is not that big yet

  • Likes using mobile apps to organize her personal and financial records

Angie faced these current problems…

Employees are unwilling to shell out money for company expenses

Shelling out their own money might be a hassle as it mixes with their personal finances.

Creating reimbursement claims is a tedious process

Keeping the receipts and the need to submit a hard copy of those receipts was inconvenient for the employees.

Waiting for reimbursement release is a hassle

A lengthy approval process, few options for tracking current status, and inconsistent notification of reimbursement approval

So, after finding out these current pain points, we asked ourselves: How might we help MSMEs make an old, outdated, tedious process feel like a breeze?

Solution

To address the pain points mentioned, we came up with the following features:

Cash disbursement with pre-set limits

  • We introduced a Virtual Card, that MSME owners can pre-load allowances

  • It can be used for in-store purchases thru the Quick Response (QR) Code technology

  • It will eliminate the employees’ need to shell out money from their own pocket

Digital Request Form

  • A streamline process of just snapping the receipt and typing in of few details

Status Monitoring for Requests

  • Dashboard that shows all relevant transactions

  • Shows status of reimbursement claims status: ONGOING REVIEW, INCOMPLETE, REJECTED, and RELEASED

  • SMS notification with release date upon admin's approval

Testing the Design

To validate our initial design proposal, we conducted 2 rounds of moderated usability testing with 3 employee participants (SME employees, shelling out their own money for company expenses) on each round.

First round of Testing

Common comments are that the process is not complex. One employee also said that the processes are quite fast and pretty convenient.

They are also looking for other payment methods aside from using the QR scanner.

And lastly, they are looking for a way to easily view the list of pending requests.

After iterating our design, we conduct our Second Round of Usability Testing

For this round, employees liked the straightforward process, especially after QR scanning.

But they also noticed that some texts are a little small and the copy "Requests" might be too broad for reimbursements.

Final Proposed Design

After the 2 rounds of Usability Testing here is our proposed design that will address the opportunities of the mentioned challenges above.

View Design Prototype

Got some ideas? Let’s Collaborate