Case study · EDITAGE · 2022

Advance VAT Issuance

A self‑serve flow that lets customers pre‑pay and generate a compliant VAT invoice in minutes, cutting issuance time by 88% and clearing a manual finance backlog.

Role: Product Designer
Team: Me · 1 PM · 1 Engineer
Platform: Editage Website

Context

Editage provides academic editing and publication support to researchers worldwide. In China and Japan, two of its largest markets, researchers typically pay from institutional budgets or grants, and many pre‑pay before the fiscal year closes to lock in funds. To get it reimbursed, every one of them needs a formal, compliant VAT invoice.

Problem

VAT invoice was issued manually by customer support team. A customer emailed a request, a finance associate validated the company details, generated the document, and mailed it back, which took 2–4 business days. At fiscal year‑end the queue exploded, and became a business bottleneck.

Customers missed deadlines. Slow invoices meant reimbursement requests slipped past fiscal‑year cut‑offs.
Pre‑payment stalled. Without an instant invoice, customers hesitated to commit to the budget at all.

Solution

I owned the end‑to‑end flow, talked to the PM and engineer to understand the existing flow and constraints. Customers wanted to know the invoice was correct, reliable ETA, and not just fill it out faster. I explored single‑page and stepped layouts; single‑page flow tested better for a high‑stakes financial task as context was maintained.

A single page, different sections. Amount → reward type → invoice type → VAT details.
Single vs. split invoices. A clear toggle to issue one invoice or split the amount across people.
Validation. Tax registration field validates in real time, and gets saved for future invoice requests.
Trust at payment. Pre‑payment is high‑stakes, highlighting total amount and reassuring reward amount kept customers certain about what they were committing to.

Advance invoice application entry point: a Pre-Payment tab showing a Special Bonus Offer table with deposit-amount slabs mapped to bonus cashback or JD gift-card rewards, plus New Customer Registration and Login to Claim Offer actions and an Apply for Advance VAT Invoice banner. — Entry point: the pre-payment bonus offer that surfaces the advance VAT-invoice flow, with reward slabs shown upfront.

Single invoice flow: a pre-payment form with amount entered, a gift type selected, Single Invoice chosen, and Fapiao information fields (title, email, contact, description, use type, tax registration number) leading to a Pay Now action. — Single invoice flow: amount, reward, and invoice type on one focused screen, with Fapiao details validated inline.

Split invoice flow: the same pre-payment form with Split Invoice selected, splitting the amount across Person 1 and Person 2, each with their own Fapiao details and an Add another person option. — Split invoice flow: the amount is divided across people, each with their own billing details — a request finance used to handle over email.

The legacy Editage payment page: a Make a payment screen with total amount and bonus note, offering WeChat (recommended, with QR code), AliPay, and UnionPay options. — The legacy payment page the flow handed off to: a separate WeChat / AliPay / UnionPay step.

The legacy Editage payment confirmation page: a Thank you screen confirming successful payment and that the Fapiao invoice will be emailed, with an Editage WeChat Service follow banner. — The legacy confirmation page, with the Fapiao invoice promised by email after payment.

Impact

Online VAT application flow reduced advance VAT invoice issuance time by roughly 88%. Pre‑payment conversion rose and invoice‑related support tickets fell as the experience became instant and self‑explanatory.

Reflection

What I'd do differently: I under‑invested early in the finance team's side of the system. Automating the customer experience surfaced edge cases that used to be fixed manually, we built for those paths reactively.

Go deeper

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