NEELANK SACHAN
Interaction Designer
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Account Payable Automation
Fintech SaaS AI-based invoice processing platform with automated invoice validations, matching, approvals & ERP posting
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Year
2023-2024
Duration
8 months
Role
Technologist, Lead Designer
Platform
Web
Team
VP - Product Design and UX, Director -UX, Associate UX Designer, PM, 4 Front End Engineers
Tool stack
Figma, Jira, Miro
My Role
Understood the domain of Account Payables, and was the PoC from the UX team.
As the design lead on this 0 to 1 project, I worked on creating wireframes, prototypes and a design strategy based on the available resources, and minimising enhancements to the Design System.
Challenge
To create a web product which works seamlessly with the users to process invoices and automate invoice handling.
Intelligently highlight invoices and discrepancies that need the user’s(invoice processor, approver...) attention. And resolve them.
Instil confidence and trust on system accuracy and compliance to regulations. Such that the invoice processing rate goes up over time.

Create a system that is transparent to the relevant roles and are collaborative.
Status Quo
Highradius mainly serviced the Account Receivables SaaS. With Account Payable Automation, Highradius set it’s sight on entering the Account Payables SaaS.

Since this was a 0 to 1 product, we had to start by first understanding the domain of Invoice Handling in Account Receivables.
Solution
HighRadius Accounts Payable Solution Software
A software that helps teams can automate invoice processing, streamline approval workflows, seamlessly handle exceptions, ensure compliance, and gain insights through comprehensive reporting. Elevating their Account Payables processes!

Unfortunately, I can only show some screens from this product currently as this are not released in public domain by Highradius.
View Invoice Matching and Resolve Exceptions
  1. Clearly highlighting to the invoice processor where, what, why the exceptions exist.
  2. Offering the ability to collaborate with other users by commenting and tagging.
  3. Being able to navigate to the sources of these invoice lines and view their invoices pdfs/images.
  4. To be able to understand whether the invoice lines and totals are within accepted tolerance limits.
  5. Modify the mapping of an invoice lines to different PO and GRN lines.
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View & resolve matching of Purchase Order with Invoice and Goods Receipt Note
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Get an overview of the invoices that need attention
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View Invoice and extracted data highlighted, side-by-side for quicker processing
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Sort and filter Invoices
All features listed below were created:
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AI Invoice Data Capture
Automatically classify and parse emails as invoices, credit notes, and payment queries. Also, extract details from email bodies and attachments. Automate GL coding and cost allocation for Non-PO invoices based on predefined rules
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Exception Resolution
Exception worklist provides a sorted list for resolving exceptions by supplier criticality, type, amount, and due date. Exception Auto Clearance uses business rules to auto-resolve exceptions, assign owners and recommend decisions. Moreover, the new processing workflow automates compliant invoice processing while eliminating manual intervention.
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Automated Matching and Policy Check
Automated matching ensures mandatory fields on invoices, matches supplier and legal entity master data, validates calculations, and flags exceptions. With 3 Way Matching you can match invoice details with both - purchase orders (PO) and goods receipt notes (GRN). Flagging potential duplicate invoices based on key invoice fields becomes faster and policy checks enforce AP policies to control Non-PO spending and manage exceptions.
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ERP Integration
Schedule batch imports of data like legal entity, COA, and supplier information using SFTP or API connectors in Master Data Import. With transactional data import, the solution pulls POs and GRNs for matching checks. Additionally, invoice posting and payment status integrate invoice approvals and payment updates. With accrual posting, you can automate month-end accruals and reversals quicker than ever.
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Reporting and Analytics
AP Aging Reports help you identify invoice processing times by legal entities and aging buckets. Exception reports support you by highlighting reasons and suppliers for invoice exceptions. The spend analytics dashboard tracks purchase trends and top suppliers. With process and team efficiency reports you can assess invoice processing times, delays, and improvement opportunities - all at your fingertips.
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AP Workspace
AP professionals can bulk assign or reassign invoices to processors based on workload. Drafting invoices is made easy with autocreation from sources like email and supplier portals. AP processors can add and modify invoices, run validations, and perform realtime matching swiftly. They prioritize exceptions, collaborate with stakeholders, and ensure accurate cost allocation, enhancing efficiency and compliance.
Process
step 1 of 8
Understand user requirements
With numerous calls the product owners, we first needed to understand the design space we are catering to. Exploring various other competitors, listing down what makes our offering more efficient than what’s already out there in the market.

The core features being:
  1. Highlight exceptions in the invoices based on three-way matching of Invoice, Purchase Order and the Goods Receipt Note.
  2. Ability for the users to collaborate with other processors, approvers or . managers and handle invoices.
  3. A dashboard to provide an overview and track invoice aging supported with reports
step 2 of 8
Prioritise features for MVP based on HLP and LLP
Realising the project timeline with the resources available was crucial to build this MVP. Resources being design and engineering team members and of course time itself.

Go to market strategy played a part in prioritising features based on must-have, should-have and could-have.
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Prioritise features
step 3 of 8
Create a Wireframe click-through prototype to get buy-ins
With many white-boarding sessions with the product owners we quickly gained an understanding of the stakeholder expectations. We then dived right into a wireframing and rapid prototyping mode. Being able to have quick turn around times using the HiRa wireframing Kit, we had daily check-ins with the PMs.

We also had discussions with the engineering teams based off the wireframe prototypes to help them gain an understanding of what the system needs were. Thus, helping them kick-start in setting up project stack and explore possible third party libraries and packages which was not available internally.
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Create wireframes to kick-start design realisation
step 4 of 8
Iterate and integrate user and stakeholder feedback
Fine tuning the concept mocks, creating more variations as per user feedback and after considering various approaches we honed in on a user flow which was to be frozen for the MVP.
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Freeze features post consensus
step 5 of 8
Create visual design based on the wireframes
The HiRa UI design system kit was then used to skin the agreed upon MVP wireframes. And a detailed click-through prototype showing all user flows, reflecting what the real life application would feel and work like was created.
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Create High-Fidelity click-through prototypes
step 6 of 8
Setup design walkthroughs with engineering team
The engineering was always aware of the deliverables design team was working on. A detailed walkthrough of the clickthrough visual prototypes by me, helped them create a good understanding of the system they would be building.
step 7 of 8
Plan design documentation and development sprints
A lot of new components were to be introduced via this new product. I had to create documentation for components that would go into the Highradius design system as well as the components local to the Account Payable Automation product. Keeping in mind the capacity of the product and design system engineering teams, these components and product screens were planned for the development sprints.
step 8 of 8
Test and call out bugs or request for enhancements
Testing components in isolation on Storybook and then in-context of the product clearly helped us prevent and fix any front-end defects that could reach end user. Championing consistent user experience.
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Test and ship
Impact
AI/ML technology extracts data from PDFs/Images, reducing the team’s manual effort. It can create draft invoices swiftly, enhancing efficiency, and accuracy in business operations.
50% Gain in Efficiency by Reducing Invoice Processing Cost
Sets tolerance levels for discrepancies, which helps minimize errors and ensure correct payments, ultimately giving more control to the AP team.
3x Exceptions Handled per Day
Categorisation of exceptions and streamlining cross-functional collaboration. It creates a task list of various stakeholders and recommends exception resolution decisions - thereby allowing teams to resolve more exceptions in less time.
Learnings
  • Workings of invoice handling in the Accounts Payables domain.
  • Not a new learning but something that was reinforced through this project is, initial feedback from users goes a long way in the creation of a product that is truly useful and helps in carrying out every day tasks more efficiently for the user.
Let's create something humans actually need
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This body is identified as Neelank Sachan, the mind is ignited with curiosity to always learn and the soul is searching for meaning through the growth of ecosystem it exists in.
Tool stack for this portfolio website
Good old pencil and paper
skill
Figma
skill
react.js
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next.js
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TypeScript
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tailwind
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gsap
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vercel
© Neelank Sachan 2024