Simplifying Complex Reconciliation Processes for High-Volume Enterprise Partners
An enterprise partner reconciling payouts.
Overview
Reconciliation is the process of matching bank payouts with reservation records to verify payment accuracy.
Problem
Our platforms lacked tools to reconcile bulk payouts across multiple properties, forcing enterprise partners to manage the process manually at scale, creating a significant operational burden and adoption barrier.
Goals & success metrics
Our core objective was to build a centralized, scalable reporting engine to reduce operational overhead and mitigate churn risks among enterprise partners. Success was measured through engagement with the feature introduction email, report downloads, task completion speed, and in-product feedback.
My role
I led the end-to-end design strategy for the MVP, working closely with a cross-functional team of a Product Manager, Engineering Manager, UX Writer, and three Engineers. I drove user research synthesis, roadmap prioritization, and the complete UX design execution from discovery through delivery.
Confidentiality note: To respect my non-disclosure agreement, I’ve omitted sensitive information, anonymized company and product names, and adjusted figures to protect confidential data.
Discovery
To define our MVP, we needed to understand how enterprise partners actually handle reconciliation today. We set out to answer two fundamental questions:
Discovery questions
- Q1: What does the full reconciliation journey look like for an enterprise partner?
- Q2: What do partners really need at each stage to make this process painless?
Activity #1: Desk research
To get up to speed quickly, we leveraged a wealth of existing internal FinTech research, past interview transcripts, and customer support data. This allowed us to build on existing insights without duplicating research efforts.
Discovery synthesis presented in a research report.
Strategy
Following a comprehensive discovery phase, we mapped our enterprise partner pain points across their end-to-end reconciliation journey. By breaking down each stage of their workflow, we identified the biggest friction points, unmet needs, and opportunities to simplify reconciliation, giving us a clear direction for the tool's core functionality.
Enterprise partner (we'll call her Paula): Reconciliation journey
Record reservations
Paula's team manually tracks incoming reservations across thousands of properties.
User need
- Ability to filter and view portfolio-wide reservation data because manual tracking across thousands of properties creates severe operational overhead and errors during reconciliation.
Portfolio-level Reservations Report Deprioritized
- Provide a centralized hub to download reservation data across the entire portfolio.
Record payouts
Paula's team manually tracks incoming payouts across thousands of properties.
User need
- Ability to filter and download payout data across the entire portfolio because gathering payout files manually across thousands of properties causes high operational friction.
Portfolio-level Payout Report MVP
- Provide a centralized hub to download payout data across the entire portfolio with a date-range filter.
Match reservations & payouts
Paula's team uses spreadsheets and internal tools to match reservations against payouts.
User need
- Complete, raw transaction data in a single export because cross-referencing information across multiple disconnected systems and spreadsheets is time-consuming and error-prone.
Downloadable CSV MVP
- Consolidate reservation, payout, and traceability details into a single CSV to streamline data matching.
Verify deductions
Paula's teams validate fees, commissions, taxes, and exchange rates to reconcile gross amounts with net payouts.
User need
- Clear line-item deduction visibility because a lack of breakdown transparency makes auditing how gross amounts convert to net payouts difficult.
Downloadable CSV MVP
- Include deduction data in the same CSV, covering commissions, taxes, exchange rates, and applicable fees.
Resolve disputes
When discrepancies arise, Paula's team cross-references records and escalate issues to Booking.com.
User need
- Direct paths to trace and escalate transaction discrepancies because identifying root causes manually is slow and customer support channels take too many steps to reach.
Dispute Resolution Deprioritized
- Search by Reservation ID or Payout ID and provide a direct path to FinTech support escalation.
Execution
A look inside the reconciliation tool MVP
Delivery & handoff
Delivery included a Figma file containing end-to-end user stories, detailed UI designs, and developer handoff documentation.
End-to-end screen flows with implementation notes for engineering.
Results & reflection
We performed remote interviews and moderated prototype testing with a small group of partners, comprising individuals from their finance departments, leading to qualitative insights and findings.
“Close used to eat the first week of every month for my whole team. Now it's an afternoon.”— Head of Finance, Enterprise Accommodation Group
Outcome