Payroll System

Payroll is read by people who add up columns for a living. A register whose totals do not reconcile is the first thing they notice, and it discredits everything around it. The exercise was an interface that survives that reading at full size.

1. 1

   Designed around the three screens a payroll run passes through — the register, the people it pays, and the slip each person receives.

2. 2

   Computed every figure rather than writing it in, so gross, each deduction and net derive from the rates shown on screen, and the column totals are sums of their own columns.

3. 3

   Put the approval step in front of release, holding the run at ‘awaiting approval’ and excluding it from the year-to-date figures until it is released.

4. 4

   Built it light, on paper rather than as a dark dashboard, because payroll is a document-shaped job and the desktop CRM demo already occupies the dark end.