an open letter to ipayroll redux

Dear iPayroll,

Here are the first five things I’d do to immediately make your web application cooler. Simple, easy tweaks that don’t involve a design or code rewrite, just make things friendlier for everyone! I thought I’d put it here rather than in a private email because I’m interested in what other people will have to say about my suggestions.

1. 1 user numbers are, like, so 1995

   When I signed up for my free trial, I was given a number, to be used as my “Org ID”, a.k.a login. A five-digit number with absolutely no bearing on either me personally or my business. Why? My business has a perfectly good alphanumeric name, and heck, I even have an email address that I’m guaranteed to remember! Seems like it would be an easy thing to change (I hear reports that for payrolls with multiple logins, you get an ID number with a couple of characters on the front, so it certainly seems possible!).

   My Suggestion: Use my email address. After all, if it’s good enough for my accounts and my business plan it’s certainly good enough for my payroll.

2. 2 why is my login funny?

   

   This is iPayroll’s login window. It’s an HTTP Authentication dialog. I know that, and Cary knows that, but what about people without an intimate understanding of web transfer protocols?

   In fact, that’s just what the box looks on my particular combination of web browser and platform (Firefox on Mac OS X). It’d look completely different on, say, Windows Vista, or any one of a million Linux flavours. If I log into my payroll on a computer using a different operating system (or even operating system version) to the one I’m used to, everything will suddenly look different.

   

   Even worse, look what happens if I get my password wrong! (Thankfully iPayroll have taken the time to style their default “401 - Unauthorized” page so that it’s not the default giant black text on a white background look). I’m not “Unauthorized”! I just typed my password wrong! Where do I type it again? Oh! It’s got that error icon that always pops up when something’s wrong on my computer! I’d better call..

   My Suggestion: What’s wrong with the ol’ login/password box, “I’ve forgotten my password” link, all on an HTTPS page? I know it’s boring and standard, and I risk sounding like a broken record here, but: Accounting, Business Plan. I’d also have the boxes reappear on the page after I get my password wrong - heck, it happens to the best of us, and we could all use a second chance.

3. 3 one of these things is not like the others….

   Cool, tabs! I know how these work - they’re all over my operating system, even TradeMe uses tabs. These ones are subtabs that take me to different places when I’m “Enter”-ing my payroll. Or do they? If I click “Audit Trail”, I get taken across the “Reports” main tab. This had me stumped for a second - I was completely lost, and it wasn’t until I glanced up at the top of the screen that I realised what had happened.

   My Suggestion: I know how tabs are meant to work, so you should probably avoid breaking that expectation. Maybe a link to anything that’s going to change my main tab should look like the other links, not like another tab.

4. 4 ummm, “enter”?

iPayroll has a cool process for running through your pay each period. First you “open” a payroll, then you “enter” the time, then you “print” your payroll, and last, but certainly not least, you “confirm” it all and make sure everyone gets paid.

Aside from the print step being largely unnecessary for me (I think “confirm” serves that purpose, and if you drop print that makes it a “1..2..3…” process. Humans like threes.), it works well.

“Enter” however, has me stumped. Somehow I muddled my way through it (I clicked things until the gross pay amount under “confirm” looked right), but it doesn’t make sense to me. An extremely friendly support rep called me and got us all set up with the same number of hours every week, but now I don’t understand what that means.

My Suggestion: I guess I was expecting something to just appear with all my default settings, then a little “edit” link in case I wanted to add or subtract an hour or two here and there. I’d expect the “standard payroll” to be in “Setup” somewhere, but seeing as someone else set it up, the only way I know how to change it is to give her a phone call.

5. 5 a little alignment goes a long way

   This confused me for a little. I skimmed it (Users don’t read, they scan) and wondered why the heck iPayroll thought I lived in “Emp Cres” not “Macdonald Cres”. Then I realised that was actually the previous column (which inexplicably says “New Emp” instead of “New Employee” - there’s a ton of space) squished up against this one. Unfortunately, this isn’t a lone example - there seems to be a few whitespace-starved tables throughout iPayroll.

   My Suggestion: White pixels might use up more power, but they help me understand things, especially since I’m in a hurry. You could “zebra stripe” the tables, but that’s of questionable efficacy.

So there you go. Five simple suggestions that would improve my experience with iPayroll, and help you guys let the server run the business. Your phone support and salespeople are all awesome (Thanks Giles!) but why not let the application take some of the load off them - they deserve a holiday.

Your friend (as long as you keep reading my blog),

Nik

Disclaimer:
I want to make a couple of things clear. First of all, this isn’t about ribbing on iPayroll. They’ve been around for yonks (companies office says 1993) and they’ve built an awesome service, and, I’m assuming, made a ton of cash doing so. I don’t want this misconstrued as “friendly fire” or anything of the sort - just some constructive criticism to make an awesome service even better.