Shipped 2020
Saltwork Ledger
Client
Saltwork
Year
2020
Role
Senior product designer
Duration
6 months
Team
1 designer, 3 engineers
Platform
Web app and iOS
Ledger home. Money in, money out and what is still owed.
01
Context
Saltwork Ledger started as an internal tool at Saltwork Studio for paying freelancers. The freelancers who used it asked for a version of their own, to send invoices and track expenses.
Most accounting apps were built for accountants. Ledger had to work for a designer who opens it twice a month, wants to send an invoice in a minute and never wants to see a ledger.
02
My role
I designed Ledger with three engineers, from the first sketches to the public launch.
01
Interviewed 15 freelancers about the week before their taxes were due.
02
Designed a single home screen: money in, money out and what is still owed.
03
Wrote the copy for every screen, without accounting terms wherever possible.
04
Ran a waitlist beta with 200 freelancers and read every support ticket.
03
Process
Six months, from internal tool to public product. We cut a feature every month.
Fig. 01 · Invoices collected during the interviews.
Fig. 02 · The home screen, money in and money out.
04
Results
58 sec
Median time to send an invoice
4,000
Paying freelancers in the first year
4.8/5
App Store rating after launch
Ledger launched publicly in November 2020 and reached 4,000 paying freelancers within a year. The median invoice takes under a minute to send. In 2022 Ledger was spun out of the studio as its own company.
Noa designed Ledger like a product people would pay for, and they did. It outgrew the studio within two years.
Peter Lindqvist
Founder, Saltwork Studio
05
Reflection
We launched without bank connections to ship sooner. Freelancers forgave the missing feature, but not the manual typing it caused. Next time I would cut a different feature and keep the one that removes the most typing.
Fig. 03 · Invoice editor with a live preview.
Fig. 04 · Expense capture on iOS.
(Next) Project 08
Commerce,
2019
Ostra Checkout
A one-page checkout for a Stockholm furniture retailer
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