Property Management Accounting

Role: Sr. Product Designer | Company: PURE PM

 

The Challenge

The challenge was to create an accounting system within a property management software solution that could handle complex financial workflows:

  • Tenants paying rent, security deposits, and application fees

  • Companies receiving rent and processing payments

  • Companies paying vendors and managing bills related to property management

  • Running accurate financial reports

The core challenge was ensuring that the accounting sub-domain integrated seamlessly with other platform solutions (leasing, marketing, maintenance, etc.) while supporting the accuracy and timeliness of financial transactions.

 

My Contributions

I led UX/UI design, creating diagrams, wireframes, and prototypes. I worked closely with the product owner and project manager to ensure the designs aligned with stakeholder goals.

  • Conducted discovery research into accounting workflows and property management processes.

  • Mapped out transaction flows across entities (tenant, vendor, owner, lease, applicant).

  • Facilitated stakeholder reviews and usability sessions with accountants and internal users.

  • Collaborated cross-functionally with product, engineering, and accounting SMEs ( to refine solutions.

 

Design Solutions

  • Reusable components: Established consistent UX patterns for any feature involving money flow or initiating transactions, ensuring a unified accounting experience.

  • Visual representation of transactions: Designed clear, repeatable transaction flows (bills, credits, deposits, receipts, charges, payables) for each entity.

  • Reporting system: Designed over 20 report templates using table/grid views to help accountants and property managers analyze transactions, performance, and compliance.

  • Cross-domain consistency: Created patterns that allowed accounting workflows to plug into leasing, maintenance, and marketing without friction.

 

Collaboration

By reviewing initial designs with accountants and other accounting users, I aligned stakeholders on how accounting processes fit into property management. This iterative collaboration ensured designs reflected both industry standards and user needs, while also syncing transactions correctly with banks and financial institutions.

 

The Impact

  • Increased efficiency and accuracy - Streamlined workflows and reduced duplicate design efforts by introducing reusable components ensuring all financial transactions synced properly with banks, reducing costly errors.

  • Cross-team alignment - Helped stakeholders outside accounting understand financial workflows, enabling smoother integration across platform domains.

  • Scalable patterns - Built a foundation of accounting UX patterns that can scale with new transaction types and future features.

  • User empowerment - Delivered clear, usable reports that improved decision-making and compliance tracking for accountants and property managers.

Takeaway

My biggest learning was how to design for highly specialized workflows and translate complex accounting processes into intuitive, efficient UX patterns. Designing for large volumes of transactions, with money going in and out, required both technical understanding and empathy for users’ established practices. Gaining a grounding in accounting fundamentals was key to my success on this project.