Scale invoice processing

Research

I conducted qualitative research with accounting teams at several banks, together with our domain experts, to understand how invoices move through review and approval.

A recurring problem emerged: one invoice often spans multiple responsibilities, while our product treated it as a single approval unit.

Split of an invoice — How the product works

Invoice split in groups — How people actually work

Product Direction

I needed to separate responsibility without losing the context of the original invoice.

The concept was simple: split one invoice into independently reviewable parts, while keeping them connected through a shared master invoice.

Each child invoice would have its own reviewer and approval state, while the master invoice preserved the overall process.

Grouping of child invoices — One master invoice, multiple independent review flows

Validation and Feasibility

I validated the workflow with banking users and domain experts, refining responsibilities, states, and invoice context.

Engineering estimated more than eight weeks to implement it.
We had only four.

Reframing

Instead of cutting the workflow, I questioned the interaction model:

Why should users have to start the split manually at all?

Together with engineering, I found that invoices were already being parsed before users opened them.

So I changed the product logic:

every invoice would start structured, making splitting part of the standard workflow rather than a separate mode.

Product Flow

Every invoice is automatically structured into header data and line items.

Users can assign responsibilities directly to individual positions. When multiple reviewers are involved, the system creates separate child invoices, each moving independently through review and approval.

Table with all line items — Line items can be assigned to individual reviewers.

The master invoice keeps them connected and preserves the full context and overall state.

The same model works for simple invoices without introducing a separate workflow.

Impact

New Users: 700+
Saved time: 4 Weeks

The final concept reduced implementation effort from more than eight weeks to around two and enabled the bank to roll out the product to 700 new users.

The solution did more than make invoice splitting possible. It created a simpler product model that was easier to build, maintain, and scale with the complexity of the invoice.