Bookkeeping at Your Fingertips. An App for Easy Interaction with an Independent Accountant

Development Process

Why is the app relevant? In the United States, accounting services are expensive, but there’s usually not enough workload to employ a full-time accountant. So a common practice is to work with an independent accounting firm, which provides bookkeeping services to several businesses at the same time. This allows businesses to save on accounting costs.

The customer has decided to launch an app startup that helps companies perform bookkeeping quickly and easily. They have funded development of an MVP app to get investors onboard for further project development.

MVP development. At the first stage we implemented authorization and document uploading in the app. During this stage, the app didn’t have a sign-up feature: we manually added a customer base for the MVP via the back-end. Other than e-mail and password, we integrated two-factor authentication from the get-go.

After the user would log in, they were brought to the screen with a list of uploaded documents and the Upload Document button. The user could tap the button to launch camera and take a photo of the document. Before submitting it, the user had to specify some details, such as document name, type, etc. The document was then uploaded to the server and displayed in the upload history with all the specified details.

This MVP version proved to be successful. The customer managed to find investors, and we continued the work on the app.

Development of the full version. After receiving the funding, the customer brought in an accountant to consult us, which helped us redesign many app elements and make them easier to use. Now, once the user logs in, they immediately get to the screen with completed transactions. The app menu is located at the bottom of the screen and contains several buttons: Reports, User Profile, and Chat.

All actions are performed in the chat now. Users upload PDF documents to the chat, and the accountant manually submits them into the system via the admin panel. In the same chat users can request a report as well. When the report is ready, it will be displayed in the Reports section of the app.

All the transactions are displayed in the corresponding app section. This screen is similar to the transaction screen of banking apps, which makes it easy for users to navigate.

Further project development. Due to the global situation, project funding has stopped, but we had planned a few improvements for the app:

• Chat bot. Users would have chat buttons for all types of actions: uploading a document, requesting a report, etc. This would simplify and streamline all interactions.
• Integrating a neural network. It would gather all required data from the document and fill in forms in the app. The accountant would only have to review it.
• Authorization through social networks. Apple ID, Google, Twitter, etc.

The Hardest Part

As with any app startup, the hardest part was to identify key features and ideas. The customer had no funding or clear design documents, but had plenty of interesting features in mind. Unfortunately, timeline and budget restraints of an app startup make it impossible to implement every feature.

How we solved these tasks

The key idea we identified was document uploading. This was the only feature we implemented in the MVP to present the main concept of the app to investors. After the customer received funding, we developed this idea, designed a simple and easy-to-use interface, and started to work on the remaining ideas the customer had. For instance, transaction history and report storage.

Arina Vernigorova

Project manager

“The team focused on security and ease of use as the main criteria during development, as well as when planning further features with the customer.”