CASE STUDY DRAFT / PLACEHOLDER CONTENT
Rebuilding estate accounting for professionals who can't afford errors
Senior Product Designer · Estateably
TL;DR
Accounting is where estate professionals spend the most time and carry the most risk. I led the redesign of Estateably's core accounting tools from discovery to launch: building the research program, mapping the full accounting journey, and defining how we'd measure success. Results: [~40%] faster passing-of-accounts preparation, [~85%] enterprise activation within 90 days, and a foundation for the company's enterprise growth.
Problem framing
A passing of accounts is the formal record of every transaction in an estate, reviewed by beneficiaries and often a court. If it doesn't balance, filings get delayed or rejected and professionals carry the liability. Estateably began as fiduciary software that was never meant to handle accounting. Accounting had been layered on through patched features and workarounds, and the backend had no chart of accounts or book of record, so entries couldn't be mapped properly. The result was reports users couldn't rely on, and inaccurate reports were a major driver of churn. For the business, the revamp was one of Estateably's largest product investments and a prerequisite for winning larger firms and enterprise clients.
Constraints & trade-offs
• Accuracy over speed. Every number has to tie out. A tool professionals need to double-check is a tool they won't trust. • New foundations. Design worked alongside a backend rebuild that introduced a proper chart of accounts and book of record. • Design system migration. The revamp ran in parallel with a move to the Untitled UI library, so we were redesigning the workflows and the components beneath them at the same time. • Regulated outputs. Reports must match court and jurisdiction formats [name the provinces or standards]. • Expert users. Accountants and lawyers arrive with established mental models and spreadsheet habits. • Live data. Customers were mid-estate, so the new experience couldn't break active files.
Research insights that changed decisions
Through [30+] interviews with estate lawyers, accountants and trust officers, synthesized into themes with Claude, we found that most entries start as a document and that real-world data usually arrives incomplete. Users were re-keying statements by hand and fixing discrepancies only at report time, which is where errors piled up. This shifted our direction from improving the reporting screens to fixing how data enters the system in the first place.
Solution
Add the final approach, key interactions, and annotated process visuals. Explain how the design addressed the problem.
Process visual placeholder / Flow, iteration, or annotated solution
Step 1
Step 2
Outcomes / impact
Over [the first X months after launch]: [~40%] faster passing-of-accounts preparation [~85%] enterprise activation within 90 days [Reduced churn or support tickets tied to report accuracy]
My Final Thoughts
The biggest lesson from this project was that trust isn’t designed on the report screen. It’s designed at the moment data enters the system. Once we stopped treating accuracy as a reporting problem and started treating it as an input problem, the rest of the experience followed. It also changed how I think about designing with AI. The parser was only valuable because we designed a clear way for people to review, correct and confirm what it suggested. AI did the heavy lifting, and the design made sure humans stayed in control of what counted as true. If I did it again, I’d [bring the parser team into discovery earlier / measure suggestion accuracy from day one / pick what’s true for you]. The approach carries well beyond accounting: any workflow where messy real-world input has to become reliable operational data.