STA WorkPapers
STA WorkPapers
CHARONNE MOSE
01
OVERVIEW
The Tax Software initiative will help the Tax team gain validated learning from customers to ensure that the product team designs a software that will be useful for tax professionals. The Product, SME and UX teams have created high level concepts, gained initial interest from customers and have created the first iterations of a prototype that will be tested.
02
CHALLENGE
Updating the Excel formulas each year based on changes to state tax rules is a cumbersome process in which a tax professional must research each states methods, determine if there is a change, and then update Excel work papers. Additionally, collecting data from various source systems, aggregating received data, reconciling to the financial records, and summarizing by legal entity and jurisdiction is a manual formatting experience prone to mistakes.
03
SOLUTION
We need to offer work paper templates that can be with built in calculations that reflect current state tax laws that are automatically updated when tax laws change. Automation can decrease the amount of time a tax professional needs to prepare the work papers. We should be able to offer Tax professionals automation so that they are able to input data once and have it mapped to the appropriate work papers.
Tax Work Papers
Archetypes
The archetypes below are representations of a the target users who use work papers within the State Tax Analyzer Software.
Customer Insights to Increase the Effectiveness of the Product:
During our discovery phase, human behaviors and feedback was gathered from interviews with Bloomberg Tax Software customers. This allowed us to define our problem statement.
Transform Data
Customers struggle to transform source data into the format needed for my work papers
Update Tax Laws
Customers struggle to keep my state tax calculation logic up to date with current tax law
Validation
Customers struggle to validate and get comfort over state tax calculation logic
Calculations
Customers struggle to perform calculations that correctly reflect the latest tax law
Journey Map
As we collaborated with product owners and tax SME's we created a journey map to document the entire workflow that defines the tax professional's actions, touch points and pain points throughout their workflow
Uses Cases
Use cases were defined to explain the process of creating work paper templates and using templates, they also helped to provide a list of goals to establish the cost and complexity of building the MVP.
1.
Create Master Template
1.
Create Master Template
As a SME I’d like to create a Master template with tax calculations.
2.
Update Master Template
2.
Update Master Template
As a SME, I’d like to input and update the tax rules for Master template that is in use by a customer.
3.
Select a pre-built master template
3.
Select a pre-built master template
As a Tax professional, I would like to select a pre-built work paper from a library of templates
4.
Get State Calculations
4.
Get State Calculations
As a Tax professional, I’d like to get the calculations for each state.
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5.
Tax Research
5.
Tax Research
As a Tax professional, I’d like to identify changed tax laws and or verify tax laws in the Tax Research tool.
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6.
Data Tracing
6.
Data Tracing
As a Tax professional, I’d like to be able to trace data.
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7.
Compare Factors
7.
Compare Factors
As a Tax professional, I’d like to compare and contrast certain work papers YoY.
8.
Copy Content
8.
Copy Content
As a tax professional I want to roll forward prior years ending to current year beginning.
User Flows
As we collaborated with product owners and tax SME's we created a user flow to show the steps
the user would take to finish a task.
