Transformed TurboTax into a year-round tool by allowing users to track their expenses by scanning or uploading their receipts
Team
Myself (Product design) • Ashley Fong (Design lead) • Winnie Tsang (PM) • Adam Hardy (PM) • Jordana Camerman (Content designer) • Kenzie Zou (Design support) • Andres Hincapie (DPM) • Development: Danish Ansari, Mohit Khaithan, Pramod Manjunath, Shubham Yadav, Ambesh Kukreja, Subhodip Banerjee
Outcome
Enabled year-round expense tracking
Self-employed (SE) users face the daunting task of manually tracking, entering, and categorizing each transaction, which is both error-prone and time-consuming. By reducing manual entry, we gave users the confidence to manage their taxes efficiently and accurately.
21 days after launch, we had 1700+ receipts from 750+ users
Problem
87% track their expenses manually
In 2024 interviews, 7/9 SE customers faced doubt when entering expenses and all of them found the process of manually tracking expenses time consuming.
“If I could categorize the receipts year-round on my own through TurboTax, I would definitely do that.”
– Quote from customer in 2023 tax year interviews
Opportunity
Last year, the number of self-employed customers who started filing on our mobile app grew by 15%
SE users saw significant growth in units and revenue overall and were the most valuable customer segment as measured by revenue per customer. As a target user group and a growing customer base, the receipt tracker had high-impact potential.
If we…
Then…
Discovery
Range of tracking methods from shoebox to excel sheet
We conducted a small survey to better understand expense tracking patterns. We found that filers:
want to see their expenses grouped by category and usually have 7+ categories
also want to see receipts ordered by date of purchase
Many are already providing the service we want to provide
We looked at 5 competitors and noted our key learnings which informed our 3 key design considerations.
Key design considerations
How do we surface the receipt tracker?
How will receipts import into tax filing?
Accessing the receipt tracker
A new dashboard to increase flexibility of design and user targetting
Once users logged into their mobile app, there were two places the receipts could be added: into the pre-existing documents page or a new receipts dashboard via an added icon. Through discussions with our team, we decided to prioritize design quality and clear surfacing of the receipt tracker.
How will we funnel users in?
Once we knew where the receipt tracker would live, we discussed how we'd market the receipt tracker to our users. We came up with a few options throughout the filing experience.
Due to marketing constraints, messaging before sign-in was out of scope for v1 of our project. We looked at opportunities within the filing experience, but these screens were owned by a separate team who didn't have the bandwidth.
The fast-tracked flow for new users meant that they were less likely to see the tooltip on our return manager. However, of the options within scope, it had the lowest lift and highest saliency.
Receipt management
Based on existing research, we explored far and wide
I brought a few iterations to crit, but the information hierarchy of showing both categories and all receipts was unclear.
We landed on a tabbed home page
Through many discussions and comparing to other apps, we landed on tabs to show both receipts and expense categories. We made receipts the default for ease of editing and took our prototype to customers.
Receipt management
We wanted to test our design, especially how we handle empty values and uncategorized receipts
Testing showed we were on the right path
Participants had no issues with the core functionalities and most understood how to handle uncategorized receipts. A few comments led us to minor UI changes, but overall we were ready to launch!
Live today
Upload receipts, categorize, and get totals
Future iterations
How will receipts import into tax filing?
We designed the future state of self-employment filing where users can access and import their receipts on the app.
How do we surface the receipt tracker?
The receipt tracker was placed into the app's top navigation; however, this project highlighted the need for a more robust mobile navigation. I began leading a bottom nav project soon after.
Setting context and showing explorations in crits
Through this project, I began to understand the need to set the right context for the audience and goal. This is definitely a skill I still need to work on, but I started to understand the prep required.
Chunking the work to stay organized
Sometime we had multiple parts moving at the same time. I learned that dividing the work into smaller more manageable sections helped to streamline and organize larger projects.
Pre-filled onboarding
Provided new users the ability to upload their prior year return to streamline and reduce their onboarding experience
Envisioning the future
Created a detailed, end-to-end vision of how TurboTax can stand out against competitors in 3 years.