Architecting a finance tool suite for DAOs
A robust yet simple spend management ecosystem that handles everything from payroll & bill payments to advanced bookkeeping.
Overview
I was leading Parcel’s (parcel.money) design team and primarily worked on our new app from the ground up, a refreshed and opinionated take on how a crypto-based company should transact. Please note that this page only contains the main screens to give you an idea of what Parcel looked like. If you want to learn more, reach out to me on X (Twitter).
The story
Why did we have to redesign? What was the old app like?
Spending money was a broken experience for organizations transacting in crypto. There was nobody to blame, it was a young market. Every app, including our own, wanted to be like a Swiss army knife that you could use for any type of payment. However, users had different expectations for payroll, bill payments, and expense management. It was as clear as day that the market matured and one size no longer fits all.
We stepped back and reimagined what the best payments experience would be like, from the ground up. While respecting the vast web of edge cases and restrictions that crypto presents, we built something that shows "How it should be done" rather than what's convenient to build. This was an important step to clearly position what we offer as a business.
After closely collaborating with our users and rigorous testing, we built a compartmentalized spend management application that's intuitive and clearly defines its purpose. Our users went on to process transactions worth more than $100m while we were still in beta. That's a stamp of trust & reliability on our product's design & engineering.
Payroll
A flexible payroll system that supports multi-token payouts, flexible pay cycles, contributor access & more.
Expenses
An end-to-end expense management system for both contributors and reviewers.
Payments
A seamless payments system for the fastest teams.
Bookkeeping
A powerful tool to track every cent into and out of safe accounts. This was the final piece of the puzzle and created an ecosystem for finance teams.
Special Mentions
In this grand nest of workflows and features, there were two tiny things that I have a soft spot for. Something that most other apps get wrong and the fixes our users loved.
On most apps, the ENS input doesn't reveal the underlying address, or lazily have it as a supporting text in the next line. This conflicts with the user's trust & familiarity with UI elements.
Most apps check for errors post user's action and do not have meaningful messages when dealing with multiple errors. Some don't even show you the total before making a transaction.
Zeek
We’ve also built an app that simplifies crypto to cash conversions to a one-time setup.
Unreleased Work
We kept looking for gaps to fill in the crypto space but some of them remained behind the curtains.
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