Expense - UX Case Study

Zono Business Expense Management Platform

Expense management platform that helps businesses track, manage, and report expenses. It provides better visibility and control over business spending.

Zono expense dashboard on a desktop, with a welcome summary, pending requests, and company cards.

Project Details

Managing employee expenses was often a fragmented and time-consuming experience. Reporting, submitting, approving, and reimbursing expenses involved multiple steps and disconnected workflows, with limited guidance for users. Businesses also faced a steep onboarding process, requiring significant setup before they could start seeing value.

Simplifies the expense lifecycle through a centralized, intuitive platform, enabling businesses to self-onboard, get started quickly, and scale as their needs evolve.

Quick Facts

My Role
UX / UI Designer
Platform
Desktop Web Application
Domain
Fintech
Team
PM + 1 Designer + 8 Engineers + 2 QA
My Contribution
Research, Interaction Design & UI Design, Dev Handoff.

Design Process

We followed a structured design process to understand the existing system and design a solution that meets both project and business goals.

Six design steps: Understanding Task, Understanding User Goals, Mind Mapping, Brainstorming and Ideations, Wireframes, and High Fidelity Mocks.

Mind Map

I gathered everything that shapes the expense experience into one mind map, organized by business, technology, user, and environment contexts. Whenever I faced a design decision, I could return to the map to check what a good expense experience needs and what to avoid.

Mind map of business and technology contexts, including spend limits, approval policies, receipt capture, and live tracking.
Mind map of user and environment contexts, including employee, approver, administrator, and business owner needs.

Understanding the Users & Their Pain Points

Employee

  • Struggled to manage bills and receipts as proof of expense
  • Spent significant time manually uploading and entering expense details
  • Found it difficult to track small, receipt-less expenses
  • Lacked visibility into where their reimbursement stood in the process
  • Needed time to learn and get comfortable using the application

Approver

  • Mundane tasks that could be automated
  • Proofs not properly maintained
  • Expense submissions handled over email
  • Advance payments hard to approve

Digital Platform Users

  • Too many in-app ads
  • Want WhatsApp notifications
  • Want in-app update notifications
  • Need better support for cash expenses

Administrator

  • Time-consuming expense tracking
  • Records hard to maintain
  • Tedious pending/prepaid reimbursement
  • Hard to check policies across categories
  • Excess back-and-forth in approval/reimbursement

Digital Platform Users

  • Too many in-app ads
  • Want WhatsApp & in-app notifications
  • Need better cash expense support
  • Want custom categories & exchange rate support

Key Insights

  • Users distrust existing platforms that add to their workload instead of easing it
  • They need a guided system that automates manual tasks and requires minimal learning
  • Personalized, transparent, real-time tracking reduces turnaround time

Business Focus

  • Better platform integration, security & fraud control
  • Actionable insights on spend, ROI, assets & liabilities
  • Visibility into where to cut costs and spend smarter
  • Analytics to manage expenses alongside overall business health

User Research - Persona

Managing employee expenses was often a fragmented and time-consuming experience. Reporting, submitting, approving, and reimbursing expenses involved multiple steps and disconnected workflows, with limited guidance for users. Businesses also faced a steep onboarding process, requiring significant setup before they could start seeing value.

Vishnu Menon

Administrator Age: 46 Role: Head of Finance

Goals

  • Regular expense reports
  • Easy role-based limits and better budgeting
  • Instant feedback on rejected claims
  • Mileage tracking and real-time alerts
  • Lower operational costs through automation

Nikhil Shetty

Approver Age: 32 Operation Manager

Goals

  • Easy submission of approved claims to finance
  • Analyze spend data for irregularities and savings
  • Optimize operational costs and spending
  • Make regulations clear and easy to follow
  • Create and enforce expense policy

Sreekanth Pillai

Business Owner Age: 28 Role: Founder

Goals

  • Easy submission of approved claims to finance
  • Analyze spend data for irregularities and savings
  • Optimize operational costs and spending
  • Make regulations clear and easy to follow
  • Create and enforce expense policy

Siddharth Rao

Employee Age: 26 Role: Medical Representative

Goals

  • Immediate filing and efficient tracking of expenses
  • Faster process from submission to reimbursement, with quick approvals
  • Auto-categorization of spend and clear view of pre-approved limits
  • Insights on expense patterns to optimize spending
  • Easy fixes for rejected/unapproved claims

Solution Overview

  1. 01

    User and stakeholder interviews revealed strong alignment on goals, with a few gaps that offer clear direction for UX improvements

  2. 02

    This research forms the foundation for building well-informed personas

  3. 03

    Personas capture key user characteristics and behaviors, guiding the platform toward a more intuitive, user-friendly design

Competitor Feature Listing & Comparison

A detailed feature-by-feature comparison across 6 leading competitors

  • Zoho Expense
  • Ramp
  • Brex
  • Airbase
  • Pleo
  • Pleo
Spreadsheet comparing expense features across Zoho Expense, Ramp, Brex, Airbase, Pleo, Payhawk, and Zono. View Full Competitor Feature Comparison

User Journey

Managing employee expenses was often a fragmented and time-consuming experience. Reporting, submitting, approving, and reimbursing expenses involved multiple steps and disconnected workflows, with limited guidance for users. Businesses also faced a steep onboarding process, requiring significant setup before they could start seeing value.

Simplifies the expense lifecycle through a centralized, intuitive platform, enabling businesses to self-onboard, get started quickly, and scale as their needs evolve.

Design Preview

Managing employee expenses was often a fragmented and time-consuming experience. Reporting, submitting, approving, and reimbursing expenses involved multiple steps and disconnected workflows, with limited guidance for users. Businesses also faced a steep onboarding process, requiring significant setup before they could start seeing value.

Administrator Module on a desktop, with the settings menu open over the expense dashboard.

Mobile App Employee Module

Employee home, with a card, recent requests, and expense totals. Create reimbursement request form with travel and office expenses. Card settings, including PIN, ATM limit, and KYC status. Request list filtered by status, with amounts and dates. Empty expenses screen with a prompt to create an expense.

User journey