CoachArt is a nonprofit that provides in-classroom experience to children with chronic illnesses by pairing them with over 450 volunteer teachers.

To support these volunteers in providing arts and enrichment classes, the organization funds classroom supplies and reimburses teachers for out-of-pocket expenses.

Internal roadblocks in CoachArt

The reimbursement system was disjointed and full of friction, creating bottlenecks for administrators and confusion for volunteers. This led to:

frustrated volunteers
delayed reimbursements
wasted staff time

Objective

Design an expense management system that simplifies teacher submissions and reduces manual effort for administrators.

Research

Current Landscape

2 ways to request a reimbursement

Reimbursement request

(15-20/month)

Supply request

(50-60/month)

CoachArt volunteers can submit financial requests in two ways. They can file a reimbursement request after purchasing teaching supplies out of pocket by uploading physical receipts for CoachArt to generate a bill, or submit a supply request by sharing e-commerce links so a manager can purchase and ship the supplies directly to the volunteer.

On the other end, administrators had to manage reimbursement and supply requests through disjointed systems, juggling emails, Google Forms, and Bill.com.

While we understood the steps of the process, we didn’t yet understand the frustrations and emotional friction users felt at each stage, so that became our focus as we dived into user research over the first 2 weeks.

User interviews

Frustration found on both front and back end

To understand the pain points behind CoachArt’s reimbursement process, we conducted interviews with volunteers and CoachArt staff alike as well as a heuristic evaluations of the existing 20-page Google Form. This helped us uncover not just the procedural steps but also the emotional friction users felt at each stage.

Volunteer

“I want to have a simpler and clear way to request supplies and submit reimbursements.”

Operations Specialist

“I want to create bills within Bill.com with minimal manual effort.”

Volunteer Manager

“I want to better organize Amazon purchases to easily reconcile with business statements.”

User Personas

Introducing the key players

Mark (32)

A CoachArt volunteer, Mark spends his weekends teaching art to children at the local hospital.

Wants

Intuitive forms with easy navigation
Clear updates on his reimbursement

Ann (57)

Ann manages CoachArt's accounts, tracking the ins and outs of the organization's finances.

Wants

Efficient request review and approval

Reduced redundancy in workflows

User Journeys

Requesting a reimbursement

After purchasing supplies from his local art store, Mark opens CoachArt's reimbursement form to get reimbursed for his purchases.

START

Mark felt it was frustrating to navigate through multiple pages to edit entries or calculate totals.

Processing a reimbursement

On the other end, Ann sees Mark's incoming request and opens it up for approval.

START

For Ann, the biggest challenge was sending feedback to correct form errors and copying data manually into Bill.com.

Ideate

User needs

Translating the objective into user needs

Build a reimbursement hub that consolidates volunteer submissions and reduces manual effort for administrators.

Digital forms

Automatic invoice generation

Transparent communication

Approach

Centering ideation around user needs

For each idea, we weighed its impact against its feasibility and tradeoffs.

Need: digital forms

Database of user accounts and saved profiles

We initially thought of creating a database of user accounts and saved profiles which would allow us to store volunteer info like their address and monthly budget.

Benefits

Store volunteer info and reduce redundant form filling

Track volunteer monthly budget

Tradeoffs

Added complexity and workspaces

Breaching project scope

Ultimately, we didn't continue with this proposal because it shifted the project away from a reimbursement hub and towards client management. We decided that digital forms were a simple yet effective solution.

Final solution

Digital forms with file upload support

Need: Transparent Communication

Automated messaging with pre-written emails

We explored automated messaging using pre-written email templates to keep volunteers informed of status changes without requiring administrators to manually draft responses for each request.

Benefits

Fosters transparency

Friction-less, no need to navigate away from workspace

Tradeoffs

Inflexible communication

Admin is unable to send personalized feedback

With the tradeoffs in mind, we moved away from fully templated communication and instead designed a system that balanced automation with human input, allowing admins to send targeted feedback directly within each request while still maintaining clear status updates for volunteers.

Final solution

Semi-automated messaging system

Need: Automatic invoice generation

Chrome extension for Bill.com

We considered a Chrome extension for Bill.com which would save data from a reimbursement request and then autofill the invoice fields in Bill.com.

Benefits

Automatically input invoice data into Bill.com

Tradeoffs

Bill.com seems to be incompatible with Chrome

Deployment limitations

Yet, we ultimately dropped this idea due to deployment limitations and compatibility issues with Bill.com’s Chrome support. Additionally, this solution still did not resolve the account creation roadblock.

Stumped by Bill.com until…

After researching Bill.com’s APIs, we discovered its automatic PDF parsing feature, which could extract and autofill invoice fields directly from a PDF and also automatically generate new user accounts based on that data.

This feature parses PDFs with optical character recognition (OCR)

By building a PDF generation system on our end, we would be able to integrate seamlessly with Bill.com’s process, thus resolving administrator frustration and redundancy.

Final solution

PDF invoice generator

Synthesis

Solution

A 2-way ecosystem

Teacher-facing web forms to submit reimbursement requests.

Internal dashboard for reviewing, approving, and generating invoices.

Teacher-facing web forms to submit reimbursement requests.

Internal dashboard for reviewing, approving, and generating invoices.

Our ultimate solution was a two-way ecosystem with a customer-facing end and a matching admin portal.

User flow

Mapping both sides of the workflow

We also mapped the user and data flow within the system, from a volunteer’s form submission, through admin review, to final integration with Bill.com. This visual helped all teams align on data consistency and traceability

Design

Wireframes

Low-fidelity designs

We began by building low-fidelity prototypes for three key workflows: the volunteer-facing reimbursement and supply request forms and the admin approval process

While designing the lofis, I focused on maintaining consistency and parallelism in volunteer flows to resolve the disconnection volunteers mentioned, ensuring our information architecture aligned with CoachArt’s existing processes, and documenting the user flow clearly to facilitate developer handoff.

iteration: Reimbursement Form

From rows to tabbed interface

User feedback revealed that volunteers often made edits to previous entries so to better facilitate this, I suggested a tabbed interface, that allowed for easy editing and switching, but still maintained a clear overview of the user’s progress.

Old

New

iteration: Supply Request

Aligning with familiar layouts

Our early supply request designs focused on modularity and visuals. However, we realized users naturally compared this process to online shopping.

Old

New

So we to align with those mental models, we pivoted to an e-commerce like design that emphasized product cards, quantities, and pricing for quick scanning and easier decision-making.

iteration: Admin Portal

Shifting workflows to prevent biases

Initially, our product automatically generated a PDF from submitted reimbursement requests for admin review in order to streamline the reimbursement to bill process.

However, we found this limited approval flexibility and most likely caused a framing effect that conditioned admins to be more likely to approve request

Old

New

Thus we moved PDF generation to occur after admin approval, allowing admins to interact with and validate information before finalizing invoices. This adjustment ensured proper practice and extra security which we felt was worth the minimal decrease in workflow efficiency.