Executive Summary
I designed a customizable CSV export builder for a B2B spend management platform, solving a long-standing gap in how the platform supported companies with non-integrated or uncommon accounting systems.
The existing setup required users to connect a supported accounting system before they could use the export page at all, leaving companies with offline, manual, or less common ERPs underserved.
As the sole product designer, I partnered with the PM and a technical accounting manager to deeply understand the domain, then designed a solution that lets users define their own export structure, save templates, and reuse them.
I used AI tools to build a working coded prototype in hours to validate the concept early. We shipped in eight weeks. Accounting feature adoption grew by 30%, the number of companies actively exporting increased by 20%, and feedback was overwhelmingly positive.
Project Overview
The platform had solid integrations with major accounting systems, but the reality was that supporting every ERP on the market wasn't scalable. Some companies used uncommon systems, some worked offline, and some still did their books manually. For all of these users, the accounting export page was essentially gated: you had to connect a supported integration to use it, and if your system wasn't on the list, your only option was a generic CSV download that didn't match your actual accounting format. It worked in the narrowest sense, but it wasn't serving anyone well.
I came into this project knowing very little about accounting workflows, so a significant part of the early work was domain immersion. I spent time understanding how different accounting systems handle data, how our existing integrations worked, what syncing and exporting actually looked like for our customers, and how our own internal accounting setup functioned. That meant research through documentation, conversations with the technical accounting manager, stakeholders, and direct customer input. All of that context shaped the direction.
The core insight was that flexibility was the unlock: instead of trying to build more integrations, let users build the export they need. I explored several ideas and used Replit to build a working coded prototype in hours, which gave us something tangible to put in front of stakeholders and validate the concept quickly. The final solution was a CSV export builder where users can define custom column structures, save templates, create multiple templates for different needs, and download on demand.
We also reworked the architecture of the export page itself, opening it up by default with a starter template instead of gating it behind an integration connection. The impact was clear: 30% more adoption of the platform's accounting features, a 20% increase in companies actively exporting, and consistently positive feedback that signaled we'd removed real friction from a critical workflow.