Paycheck Planning
Increased trial start rate by 39%—a gain of $1.8M in annual revenue.
The web and mobile flows of the app, including walkthrough, setting income, setting expenses, and turning on Safe to Spend.
Designed a budget planning experience for users with irregular income, helping them predict cash flow and avoid overspending.
Impact
+39% increase in trial starts
$1.8M increase in annual revenue
Role
Led research, concept development, and end-to-end design in collaboration with product, data, and engineering
The budget, overview, and schedule screens of paycheck planning in mobile.
Problem
Users with irregular income felt the app didn’t work for their budgeting needs. Without a way to plan around variable income timing and amounts, they couldn’t confidently manage spending—leading to trial drop-off.
Insight
Users needed to know: “Will I run out of money before my next paycheck?”
The app lacked a way to account for income that hadn’t arrived yet, making it difficult to assess risk or adjust behavior throughout the month.
Solution
Introduced a forward-looking cash flow planning experience tailored to irregular income.
Enabled users to:
– Project their spending pace across budget categories
– Account for income based on expected dates (not just received income)
– Add a current balance “buffer” to reflect real cash on hand
Gave users clear visibility into whether they were at risk of overspending—and how to adjust in time to stay on track.
Built using existing UX/UI patterns to ensure consistency across web and mobile while minimizing development lift.
Goal
Increase trial start rates by improving early user confidence and perceived product fit.
Results
+39% increase in trial starts
$1.8M increase in annual revenue
Displaying the projected depletion throughout the month on web.
Deep Dive ↴
Research & Validation
Synthesized past user feedback with product and data teams to identify why users with irregular income were not converting.
Tested multiple feature flows with users to validate usability and clarity of cash flow projections.
Design Decisions
Focused on forward-looking projections rather than historical tracking to help users anticipate risk.
Delayed visibility of income until expected dates to more accurately reflect real cash flow.
Introduced a buffer concept to anchor planning in actual available funds.
Designed for quick adjustments, allowing users to easily recover when at risk of overspending.
Constraints
Solutions needed to leverage existing UX/UI patterns across web and mobile to maintain consistency and reduce development time.
Technical limitations influenced how dynamically income and projections could be modeled in V1.
Outcome
Users quickly understood and responded to the ability to see future cash flow and spending risk.
The feature improved confidence in managing irregular income, leading to increased engagement and significantly higher trial conversion.
Hindsight
Would expand flexibility by allowing custom income frequencies and bulk editing of items and dates to reduce manual effort.
Future iterations could incorporate AI-driven suggestions for income timing and budgeting based on past behavior to further support planning.
Both enhancements were constrained in V1 due to engineering limitations.
A closer view of some of the paycheck planning components.