Designing the future of Payroll Automation at Xero
My role: Iterative UX design • Vision concepts • User research • UX flow • Prototyping • Scalable modular UI pattern • Vision presentation • Strategy
The challenge
Xero payroll users manually process all tasks for every pay run, spending significant time on repetitive work instead of growing their business.
Designed for 100k organisations processing 1.6m pay runs.
The solution
An automation hub built on a modular, scalable framework, accessible across multiple touch points. It enables users to combine tasks into automated workflows extending beyond payroll, reducing their workload, minimising errors and delivering greater value.
The first slice had 13k payslip automations set up in first 30 days of release.
Automation vision concepts
Success metrics
Automations in first 7 days
3.1k
Automation in first 30 days
13k
Introduce Payslip automation for orgs
100k
No. of posted pay runs in a year approx.
1.6m
The problem
Hypothesis
Xero payroll users, small businesses (SBs) and accountants/bookkeepers (ABs), currently have to manually process all payroll tasks for each pay run. This leads to significant time spent on repetitive tasks, preventing them from focusing on growing their business.
Introducing automation for many payroll jobs to be done, can allow both AB’s and SB’s to be a lot more efficient, reducing their workload, minimising errors and allowing them to focus on delivering greater value.
Problem narrative: An accountant with 10 clients and weekly pay runs sends payslips manually every week
A five-day design sprint was held with engineers and product teams to ideate and define the ideal vision for payroll automation, aiming to create the best possible user experience. Internal experts from across the business, including Sales, AI, Marketing and Research along with customers, were invited to share their insights, challenges, and expectations of automation at Xero.
These were captured as “How Might We” (HMW) statements, with the primary focus on: How might we automate recurring tasks?
Design and engineering sprint
The discovery process
Mapping the journey & gathering inspiration
We continued the sprint by mapping the ideal end-to-end automation journey, envisioning a seamless experience where users could manage and automate multiple payroll tasks in one place. From there, we explored inspiration across the tech industry and competitors to understand how others approached automation and identify opportunities for innovation within Xero.
The vision
With the ideal journey defined, we moved into concept development by sketching ideas for the ideal automation vision and mapping user workflows.
Through quick iterations, we explored how automation could simplify repetitive payroll tasks while maintaining transparency and control for users.
The solution discovery
Design sprint
I ran a 4 day design sprint with the core team to visualise the problems that were discovered and ideate on solutions.
The objective was to reimagine the post-sale issue notification and info gathering process as currently, this manual process involves multiple teams and the customer is sent back and forth.
The mapping exercise helped identify 7 key stages of the VQI handling process, from which 'Issue notification' and 'Information gathering' were the first customer touch points with several flaws and a key opportunity.
The solution designs
Early multiple user testing sessions with small businesses and accountants for simple payslip automation concepts validated our early hypotheses and gave us valuable insights on payslip automation preferences and requirements. Participants responded positively to features that automated routine steps but still offered flexibility to review and adjust when needed.
From these insights, we refined the vision into a modular, scalable automation hub, a flexible framework that we can build on after delivering payslip automation and could grow beyond payroll, enabling users to automate multiple workflows in one place.
I also looked at how Ai could be leveraged to help with the automation process, so it suggests and generates automated workflows based on previous history and usage.
Modular pattern with scalable design components
One automation hub, accessible across Xero, letting users build workflows that handle the repetitive work for them.
AI onboarding reduces setup friction by generating automation suggestions based on the user's payroll pattern.
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Create a new automated workflow for a client by adding a trigger and multiple actions
Smart defaults based on usage patterns, with settings that reveal more detail as users need them.
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AI does the setup. Accountants just review and approve.
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User testing
The final simplified prototype for payslip automation was tested with users to validate ease of use and ensure the clarity of options for enabling automated payslips.
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Success metrics
Automations in first 7 days
3.1k
Automation in first 30 days
13k
Organisations using payslip automation
100k
Pay runs per year
1.6m
Kirti Devi Ram
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