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Project · HR, payroll and fintech

Taxmaro

A dual-audience dashboard for 4,000+ German companies and tax consultancies, where payroll, time tracking and DATEV meet in one interface.

One interfaceSchematic
Three disconnected tools brought into one interface Spreadsheets, email and DATEV, which do not talk to each other, feed one Taxmaro interface holding payroll, time tracking and DATEV. The same interface serves both the tax consultant and the company owner. Spreadsheets Email DATEV none of them talk Taxmaro Payroll Time DATEV Consultant Owner

Two audiences, one product, DATEV built in.

Companies served
4,000+
German companies and consultancies
Personas
2 unified
consultant and owner, one product
DATEV
1 native flow
no export afterthought
Role
UI / UX Designer
Year
2023
Industry
HR · Payroll · Fintech
Deliverables
System · Product · Motion
Mahdi Fazel · @mafazeluxui

The full product on the desk, Taxmaro Personal on a phone

The desktop product: employees, payroll master data and the absence and request calendar, in one flow.

The Taxmaro desktop product: the employee assignments view on a monitor, with payroll master data, the set password screen and the absence and request calendar layered in front, under the line: payroll accounting made appropriate.

Desktop product

The problem

Two professions, one payroll, three disconnected tools

German HR and payroll runs on spreadsheets, email and DATEV, and none of them talk.

Tax consultants and in-house HR teams work on the same data through different tools. Every handoff between them is a chance to lose a figure, and in payroll a lost figure is a compliance problem, not an inconvenience.

The thesis was one platform serving both audiences with zero data loss between them.

Constraints

What made this harder than a dashboard

01

A genuinely dual-audience product: tax consultants as power users, SMB owners and HR staff as non-experts.

02

German payroll and DATEV compliance, which makes the wording of an interface a legal matter.

03

Live-client testing from the start, with no room for public iteration.

04

Both groups expected the product to fit their existing workflow rather than replace it.

Core insight

The cost was not missing features

It was cognitive re-assembly at the handoff, every single time.

My first five minutes with a client's data are the most expensive five minutes of my day.

That is a consultant describing the real unit of waste. Nothing was missing from the product. What was missing was continuity: each person had to rebuild the picture in their head before they could do any work.

So the design question stopped being what should this screen show and became what should each person already be looking at when they arrive.

Role-aware state view2 defaults, 1 product
Tax consultant lands on multi-client triage power user, many companies In-house owner lands on single-team status non-expert, one company persona defaults Same components, same data one product, not two apps, so both sides can work on one record shared flow Personnel file Time tracking Payroll DATEV export zero data loss from first entry to filing

The components do not change between roles. Only the default view does, which is why a consultant and an owner can look at the same record and each feel the product was built for them.

Who it serves

Same screen, opposite starting points

One optimises for throughput across clients. The other wants to know their own house is in order.

The tax consultant

Power user
Multi-client triage

Moves between many companies in a day and is measured on how quickly a client's month can be closed. Needs to see, on arrival, which clients are blocked and why.

Default viewEverything that needs attention, across every client, ranked.

The in-house owner

Non-expert
Single-team status

Runs one company and touches payroll once a month. Does not know the vocabulary and should not have to learn it to confirm that this month is fine.

Default viewOne team, one month, and a plain answer about whether it is ready.
What shipped

Four pieces doing the work

01

HR dashboard

Payroll and absence in one place, per role.

02

Role-aware defaults

Consultant and owner views from one component set.

03

DATEV integration

Native patterns rather than an export afterthought.

04

Contextual empty states

Each one says what to do next, in that role's language.

Personnel file→ Time tracking→ Payroll→ DATEV export
Outcome

One unified flow, two audiences

The platform serves more than 4,000 German companies and tax consultancies through a single path from personnel file to time tracking to payroll to DATEV export. Two personas, unified in one product, with one DATEV-native flow rather than a consultant app and an owner app drifting apart.

Dual-audience products fail when one persona wins. The role-aware pattern let both sides feel like the product was built for them.

Mahdi FazelUI / UX Designer · Taxmaro

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Building one product for two very different users?

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