Maya Chen
All work

B2B fintech · Web and mobile

Rebuilding onboarding for a small-business payroll app

A setup flow owners can finish in one sitting, without calling support.

Role
Lead product designer
Timeline
10 weeks
Team
PM, 3 engineers, support lead
Tools
Figma, Maze, Dovetail

The problem

New customers had to enter company details, tax IDs, bank accounts and every employee before running their first payroll. Many stopped halfway and booked a support call instead.

Constraints

  • Tax and banking steps were legally required and could not be skipped.
  • Engineering could not change the verification backend this quarter.
  • Owners often set up on a phone between other jobs.

Key decisions

  1. Decision 1

    Split setup into “run payroll” and “finish later”

    I mapped which fields were truly needed for a first pay run. Everything else moved into a checklist owners could return to, so the first goal felt reachable.

  2. Decision 2

    Explain each sensitive field in plain words

    Support transcripts showed people stalled on tax IDs and bank verification. Each of those fields now says why it is needed and where to find it.

  3. Decision 3

    Save progress on every field

    Because setup happened in short bursts, nothing could be lost. I designed resume states that drop owners back on the exact step they left.

The solution

The shipped flow leads with one clear goal, groups the legal steps behind short explanations and turns the rest into a progress checklist on the dashboard.

Results

In usability sessions, every participant reached a first pay run without help. The support team reported far fewer setup calls after launch.

What I learned

I would bring the support lead into research from week one. Their call notes were the best map of where people got stuck.

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