NEW FEATURE
Compound Tax: Expanding Tax Filing
The Compound Tax filing experience was fragmented and manual, creating friction for both clients and advisors. The redesign streamlined the process and improved transparency, by surfacing clear filing statuses and guiding clients to the right filing option for their needs.
Role
UX/UI Design, part of 2-person team
Timeline
7 weeks
Tools
Figma
Methods
User Research, Wireframing, Prototyping, Usability Testing, Stakeholder Management
Background
Balancing speed and scalability in a 7-week timeline
With tax season approaching, the team had 7 weeks to quickly design and launch an MVP experience that integrated a new filing partner, April. April offers automated and CPA-supported tiers, enabling Compound to expand its service offerings and let clients file directly in the dashboard.
Challenge
Two users, one broken experience
In the year prior, Compound outsourced its tax filing experience to an external partner. This created major friction for both clients and advisors, as the process lived entirely outside the Compound dashboard.
Clients had no visibility into who was managing their return or where it stood, while advisors spent hours manually tracking filings across spreadsheets, Salesforce, and email threads.
Since filing data wasn’t integrated into Compound’s system, advisors also lost valuable financial insights about their clients.
"Who is handling my filing?"
"Has my return been submitted?"
Research
Understanding the root causes of friction
Although we had a strong understanding of the main challenges, we conducted additional research to inform the design strategy and validate our assumptions.
I reviewed past client support tickets and identified recurring communication gaps between clients, advisors, and the tax team, most often occurring after a client filed their return and was anxiously awaiting an update.
We also conducted interviews with financial advisors and the Head of Tax to uncover operational pain points. These discussions revealed that advisors lacked visibility into client progress and spent significant time manually emailing the tax team while waiting for responses, and would find tax filing information helpful for future financial planning.
Finally, I analyzed competitor tax platforms and CPA firm websites to understand how other companies structured their tax filing flows, communicated progress, and designed their dashboards. This helped identify common UX patterns such as tiered service options that could inform Compound’s redesign.
Design Strategy
Prioritize transparency, support decision-making
With a new tax partner, and two different user segments, the design team had multiple surface areas to cover:
Clients needed:
Visibility into available tax services
Clear entry and exit points in the filing flow
Transparency around their current status and next steps
Advisors needed:
Visibility into their clients’ filing status
Actionable tax insights to guide financial decisions
Tools to match their clients with the right filing partner based on complexity
How might we present available tax options without overwhelming the user, and aid appropriate selection?
Design Strategy
Transparency post-filing
Through shared transparency, clients and advisors could reference the same source of truth, cutting down redundant back-and-forth.
On the Client dashboard: Add a “Received” timestamp, and dedicated status page once a return was filed.
On the Advisor dashboard: Support all client filings in one place, with visibility into status, firm assignment, and payment/refund details.
Outcome
Visibility, routing, and scalability
By offering transparency early on and at each stage, clients felt reassured knowing which firm was handling their return, and support ticket decreased. Advisors were also able to proactively monitor progress and escalate issues when needed.
Final Thoughts
Clear pathways and transparency are critical
When introducing multiple service options, client education and subtle guardrails are essential to reduce decision fatigue and avoid costly errors.
Future iterations will focus on smarter advisor alerts, expanded filing analytics, and deeper client education at the discovery stage.