<aside> 👀 Building India’s 1st UPI based expense management solution was a different high of its own. This was my 1st time getting a glimpse of how payments work be it Credit/Debit cards, UPI, Prepaid Cards etc.
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CashBook is a finance management application for SMBs that allows you to record your financial transactions as entries (Entry 1, Entry 2, and so on) & creating reports for income & expenses for businesses
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CashBook Home Screen where user can create multiple cashbooks as per their requirement
Book Screen where user can add entries cashbooks as per their requirement
NPCI decided to allow UPI payments from PPI wallets
In 2022, NPCI announced that PPI wallets are now part of UPI eco-system which means that money can be transferred to any bank account from PPI wallet by simply scanning any UPI QR code. Our founders saw an opportunity to solve major pain points of our users via this new capability.
UPI is more accessible & scalable than Expense Cards
Currently many expense management tools exist in market which are mainly designed for large enterprises, corporate companies or startups. These tools rely on Prepaid Expense Cards or Company Credit cards. Since card as a form factor is not acceptable everywhere in small towns, these solutions won’t fit for Small & medium sized enterprises (SMEs) & businesses (SMBs). On the other hand UPI is acceptable everywhere and its most widely used payment method in India.
Opportunity to build 1st UPI based Expense Management tool
In the CashBook app, expenses are currently managed manually as staff record business spending via UPI, cash, or other methods. After a month of user interviews, we realised the potential to automate SMEs' expense management. By creating a UPI-based tool within the app, staff can directly pay for business expense, providing real-time updates to owners, streamlining operations and financial oversight.
To help CashBook’s existing users get aware of CashBook’s new UPI based expense management system for business teams and simplify the process of accounting for business owners, ensuring that managing business expenses became effortless.
After doing research for close to 3 weeks (Research included complete design team & 1 researcher) the issues that were faced by owners surfaced as follows: