Xero Timesheets
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ROLE
Design lead for AU product team; integrating user feedback, AU legislation & internal business data
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CUSTOMER OUTCOME
Helping AU business owners stay compliant by enhancing the timesheet experience
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DESIGN IMPACT
Helped shape the product strategy in collaboration with team leads and contributed to the shipping of key milestones in 2023
Case study
The problem.
Timesheets in AU 🤯
The Fair Work Commission in Australia introduced new rules in March 2020. Employers must keep a record exact start and finish times, including breaks, for all employees
Capturing time in Xero ⚙️
Unfortunately, Xero Me Payroll products only allowed employees to enter total duration hours worked, not start and end times; ultimately meaning employees could not be fairly paid for their hours worked
Employee
Add time
Employees are now able to capture their start and end work and break times. As well as provide additional notes each day worked
The solution.
Employee
Check & submit
Employees at a glance can also review a summary of their weekly timesheet before submitting their hoursfor approval
Approver
Approve
Approvers now have a new auditing section where they can review submitted time and make edits without altering the original data
Research, Ideate, Test & Refine.
We conducted research to understand the mental model of users capturing work through timesheets within their business. The primary goal was to deeply understand our users' motivations, habits and challenges
To identify customer needs
499
Customers surveyed
To test prototype & understand user behaviour
16
User testing interviews
Employees who submit time + managers who approve
2
Key personas
To visualise customers' experience
1
Customer journey map
Throughout research and testing, we refined the designs in order to cater to specific persona needs
Employee
Employees who submit time, prefer to avoid visual noise when filling in information on a page
Persona insight from research
Approver
Those who approve time prefer to have all the information they need on one screen to avoid switching screens
Persona insight from research
Build, deliver & measure.
We streamlined the process for capturing and approving start and end time; enabling Australian businesses to achieve compliance and reduce operating costs by improving workflow efficiency. All together taking 12 months from the inception to the iterative release of the employee and approver experiences
1 year after launch
16%
Decrease in the average time spent to approve employee timesheets
2 years after launch
75%
Businesses using Xero now capture start and end times instead of just duration