QBOA Revenue Share Dashboard
Project Overview
Currently, we have various incentive programs for QuickBooks Online users (accountants) to sell Intuit products, but it takes them way too much time to figure out the programs, causing many to give up. So we want to provide a financial incentive for accountants and partners to sell Intuit products in an intuitive and consistent manner. This dashboard would be a one-stop portal for the accountants to do so.
Goal
Provide a financial incentive for accountants and partners to sell Intuit products in a bill-my-client relationship in an easy to understand and consistent manner.
My Role
Design lead
- led 1st round of customer research
- led interaction design and visual design
- partnered with accountant council, 3 product managers and marketing team
Customer and Potential Impact
This new dashboard will be integrated into two core product - QuickBooks Online Accountant and TSheets Pro.
TSheets Pro: 7237 accountants mapped to 11078 paying BillMy accounts. They are charged a total of $945,486.98 every month, with an average of $85.34 a month and a max of $2,294/month.
Total QBOAs: 259K-270K, Total BMYs: ~1M (only active US BMYs that have already GNSed (means paid) and mapping these BMYs back to QBOAs)
Customer Problem
I am an Accountant who works with clients across multiple Intuit products including QBOA, IOP, and TSheets PRO
And would like to be rewarded for steering business Intuit’s way
But I have to spend way too much time figuring out the various programs and often times give up
Because there are so many different pricing structures and incentives
Which makes me feel lost in a maze
Ideal State
In a perfect world, I would have a single, clear program with increasing rewards as I bring more business to Intuit
The biggest benefit to me is I can make more money, while automating work by fitting my clients in the right Intuit software
Which makes me feel rewarded and a champion for Intuit
Existing Learning from accountants and Accountant council
Many accountants prefer a bill-my relationship(bill clients) over bill-me, as it keeps financial relationship simple, and rev share can be a strong incentive to sell units. The success of the IOP and TSheets rev share programs, as well as other examples in market e.g., Gusto, are tangible examples of how effective rev share programs can be.
However, some accountants, particularly our larger partners, have rules of engagement that prevent them from taking rev share for software recommendations. We need to meet their needs as well.
All accountants would like a program that is simpler and more consistent across product lines.
Customer Research
First round of interview, we interviewed 9 accountants/CPA firm to understand their experience with revShare
Competitive Analysis
Gusto: Their accountant belong to different tiers based on how many clients they have, and therefore get different commission percentage. This model is very encouraging for accountants to get more clients. Also, they can see the commission they get for each month from each client, which is very clear.
Some cons are: they don't see a trend of the commission, which could provide better perspective on how they are doing on commission. Also, they don't see more detailed billing info than the commission $, which accountants is curious about.
I also looked at Sure Payroll, cashback websites (Ebates, RetailMeNot, MyFrugal) and bank reward sites (AmEx, Chase)
Recommendations and Principles
Create a more competitive advantage
Reconsider changing RevShare strategy from 30% over 12 months to 20% over the life of the subscription
Reconsider changing RevShare strategy from 30% over 12 months to 20% for second year and 10% for the last year
Capture new users and incentivize our loyal users
Validate Hypothesis
Build a lighter version of the dashboard, test and learn before investing resources to build a robust experience that might not be utilized.
Access Point
We found several places that can provide access points for customers to discover this revenue share dashboard:
Design Explorations
I explored layouts/designs that can help users to understand the following tasks:
• What is happening on this page?
• Has anything changed since the last time I logged in?
• Is there anything that needs my immediate attention?
• Do I need to worry about something?
• Do I need to take any actions?
Design 1
Placed the most useful information according to the user feedback on top of the page as separate cards;
added the highly requested trend data viz graph;
added a right-side drawer for entering more detailed information when redeeming payments or manage redemptions.
—> Click on redeem to show redeem payment drawer
Design 2
I also designed a more future looking version that provides future functionality for this portal, adding some of the features the users mentioned in the interview.
Next Steps
At this point, we have made a study plan to conduct a 2nd round of user interview to validate our first draft of the design.
Some of the initial questions we want to answer:
• Where do they expect to see the info once new client is added?
• What info do they expect to see? What’s most important?
• When do they expect to be paid rev share? How often?
• When will their next rev share payment be issued?
• Which clients are contributing to this amount?
• Rev share payment history by month
• Which clients are contributing to their rev share?
• Rev share payment history by client
• Which months have they received a rev share for this client?
• What’s the total amount of rev share they’ve earned with this client?’
• How much did they pay for this client to get that commission $$?
• Would they like to be notified explicitly as soon as the payout amount is available?
Compliance requirements:
• Are customers aware that there’re tax implications associated with receiving rev share?
• Where would they expect to find this info?