Novabook Practice Management Platform — full case study

The work in detail

Overview

• Novabook is a B2B accounting platform serving UK startups and small businesses. This project focused on building internal tooling for two teams that had never had a dedicated product: Sales and Accountants.
• Before this work, both teams managed their entire client portfolio across a mix of Asana, spreadsheets and Google Drive. There was no central system. Compliance deadlines were being missed. Sales opportunities were going unnoticed. The goal was to design a practice management platform that gave both teams a clear, up-to-date view of every client from a single place.

Two teams, no product

• Novabook provides accounting, payroll and bookkeeping services to UK startups. At the time of this project, the two teams responsible for delivering those services were operating without any dedicated tooling.
• The Sales team managed their pipeline and client records in spreadsheets. When they needed to check which services a client was on, or whether there was a billing issue, they had to manually pull information from multiple files and email threads. There was no way to spot a lapsed subscription or an upsell opportunity without going looking for it.
• The Accountants team tracked compliance deadlines in a shared spreadsheet. Filing dates, confirmation statement deadlines and payroll input windows were all logged manually. When something was missed, there was no early warning. By the time anyone noticed, the deadline had already passed.

Sales team

• No visibility of subscription status or billing issues
• Upsell opportunities missed because there was no system to flag them
• Service configuration done over email and phone, with no audit trail

Accountants team

• Compliance deadlines tracked in a spreadsheet with no alerts
• Payroll input status checked manually for every client each week
• No shared view of client status between the two teams

Research and discovery

• We approached the problem using first principles. Rather than assuming we knew what each team needed, we started by asking what good looked like for them in their day-to-day work.
• I ran interviews with both the Sales team and the Accountants team. The sessions were structured around a simple prompt: describe what a good Monday morning looks like. This helped us understand what information each person needed at the start of their week, where that information currently lived, and what got in the way of finding it quickly.

Mapping the current workflow

From those conversations, we mapped the existing workflow for each team using a service design approach. We documented where information was created, where it was stored, where it was duplicated across tools, and where it was lost entirely. This gave us a clear picture of the gaps before we started designing anything.

Design thinking process

We followed a design thinking methodology: Empathise, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test. Once we had a solid understanding of both teams' problems, we ran ideation workshops to generate solution concepts. We created low-fidelity wireframes and tested early ideas with both teams before committing to the detailed design.

What we found

• Both teams started every week by manually pulling information from different places before they could begin actual work
• The Sales team had no way to see which clients had billing issues or were approaching a renewal conversation
• The Accountants team had to check across four separate spreadsheets to get a complete picture of a single client
• Neither team had visibility into what the other team was working on, which led to duplicated effort and missed handoffs
• There was no single record of a client's full picture across services, compliance and billing

Key insights

The research pointed to a clear split in what each team needed day-to-day, but both teams shared the same underlying need: one place where a client's full picture was always up to date and visible without switching tools.

Accountants needed

• Compliance deadlines shown by proximity, not buried in an alphabetical list
• Payroll input status visible per client without opening each record separately
• A single client record that brought together payroll, VAT, filing and services

Sales needed

• A clear view of subscription status and billing issues across all clients
• Visibility of service gaps so they could start upsell conversations at the right time
• A way to configure client services without going back and forth over email

Shared need

• One central client record both teams could trust and act on
• Consistent component patterns so that learning one module immediately transferred to the others

The solution

We designed five interconnected modules, each addressing a specific workflow for one or both teams. Rather than designing each module in isolation, we established shared component patterns early: sortable data tables, status badges and expandable rows. This meant that learning one module immediately transferred to the next, and the platform felt like a single product rather than a collection of separate tools.

1. Company Overview

Image Alt: Company Overview: the unified client hub

The Company Overview is the central client record. It brings together everything that previously lived across four spreadsheets: payroll details, VAT registration, filing deadlines, active services and general account information. Both teams can now start and end their client review in one place without switching between tools. It also shows the engagement letter status so there is always a clear record of where a client sits in the setup process.

2. Accounting

Image Alt: Accounting module: compliance deadline tracking

The Accounting module gives the Accountants team a sortable view of all clients with their compliance deadlines visible at a glance. Columns for next accounts date, period end and next confirmation statement mean the team can prioritise work by deadline proximity rather than working through an alphabetical list. Additional columns flag clients with non-syncing bank accounts, non-standard VAT rates, director loans and R&D tax considerations, so the team can spot compliance risks without opening individual records.

3. Payroll clients

Image Alt: Payroll clients: expandable rows with input status

Tracking payroll input status was one of the most time-consuming parts of the Accountants team's weekly workflow. The Payroll module introduces expandable client rows so the team can see the input status for each employee without leaving the list view. PENDING and RECEIVED status badges replace a manual check-in process, and a "Show input pending" filter at the top of the page lets the team jump straight to the clients who still need chasing.

4. Subscribers

Image Alt: Subscribers: billing status and upsell signals for Sales

The Subscribers module gives the Sales team a clear view of each client's billing status across the portfolio. Four status badges (Subscription Active, Payment Pending, No Active Mandate and No Current Subscription) replace the manual process of cross-referencing billing records in a spreadsheet. The Sales team can now see at a glance which clients have billing issues to resolve and which clients without a current subscription are candidates for a re-engagement conversation.

5. Novabook services

Image Alt: Novabook services: self-serve configuration for Sales

Previously, configuring a client's service package required a back-and-forth between the Sales team and the client over email or phone. The Services module lets Sales configure and update a client's services directly within the platform. A live pricing summary updates as services are added or removed, giving both the Sales team and the client a transparent view of what is included and what it costs. This removed the reliance on manual configuration calls for the majority of service changes.

Impact

Value: 2.5x

Increase in daily active usage

Value: 0

Missed compliance deadlines post-launch

Value: 68%

Service changes now self-serve

Value: 55%

Drop in 'where do I find X?' support tickets

Accountants

Compliance deadlines became visible and manageable. The Monday morning client review dropped from an ad hoc spreadsheet hunt to a structured workflow inside the platform.

Sales

The Subscribers module gave Sales a live view of billing status. Upsell conversations started happening proactively rather than only when a client called in.

Both teams

Both teams moved from spreadsheets into the product within the first two weeks of launch. The Company Overview became the shared starting point for any client conversation.

Reflections

What worked well

• Starting from first principles rather than jumping to solutions helped us find problems we had not anticipated going in
• Designing shared component patterns across all five modules meant both teams could pick up the platform quickly without separate onboarding for each module
• The Company Overview acted as a north star throughout the design process. Every module had to contribute something useful to it
• Running ideation workshops with both teams together helped find cross-team dependencies early rather than late

What I would do differently

• Involve both teams in usability testing earlier, before the designs were finalised rather than after
• Build usage analytics into the platform from the start so we could measure adoption by module and identify where the design was still causing friction
• Explore how the two teams could communicate within the platform, leaving notes or flagging issues for each other against a client record