Abacus Design | Now Boarding Digital

A hero image of the ABACUS web app shown on desktop.

Taking the complexity out of multinational VAT compliance

VAT IT’s Abacus helps businesses with multiple local or international branches remain VAT compliant, while managing everything VAT-related. Also used by financial consultants managing many clients, it gives users a holistic overview and a honed-in view of each jurisdiction and individual entity.

The Challenge

A flat lay of the ABACUS web app on desktop showing the user flow between the individual web app screens

VAT control simplified for everyone

When VAT IT approached us with a simple question, "Can you help us make VAT sexy?", our answer was absolutely "hell yes!"

VAT IT set out to rebuild its existing Web Application, Abacus, with a clear goal: to simplify and streamline VAT compliance management for all users. Our focus was to ensure that users could effortlessly grasp their VAT status, navigate workflows, take necessary actions, manage company settings intuitively, and upload company data seamlessly with accuracy.

The Solution

Intuitive, hierarchical navigation

Navigating Abacus was frustrating for users, requiring a substantial amount of training.

To reduce the burden on their customers, we restructured the app, making features easy to find and navigation between businesses and branches seamless. Most commonly used sections were prioritised in an ‘always available’ sidebar, allowing for quick actions and obvious functions.

The ABACUS web app dashboard on desktop showing the VAT filings that require attention and a filing overview of an individual company.

Most important insights at a glance

With some pivotal feedback from Abacus’s customers, we created a dashboard offering quick, bite-sized business overviews and highlighting areas of attention with the option to view more and fix them immediately.

This empowers quicker decisions and actions and makes it far simpler to remain compliant.

The ABACUS web app modal on desktop showing the different returns that highlight the different statuses and what's outstanding before they can be submitted.

A modal to reduce data errors

Abacus’s platform requires data inputs from various sources. This was not only error-prone and inconsistent, but spotting errors was manual and tedious.

We created a modal allowing users to map their data to specific columns. With data now going into the correct places, we also added restrictions to transform incorrectly formatted data to fit the system, and a way to add custom columns and rules.