Your status column is a timeline squeezed into one cell.
Ten statuses, two stacked tables and a Show closed toggle. An importer opens Payables to answer one question — where is my money, and who am I waiting on — and Payables answers with a word in a cell.
I’m Carl, I design fintech products. I rebuilt Payables on your own nav tree and your own status names — no brief, no access. Then drawing it turned up something: in demo data built on your own patterns, 12 of 17 orders repaid less than they borrowed. It’s live below.
The concept, running
It’s live — scroll it, open an order.
Same IA. Fewer things to learn.
Nothing here is a new information architecture. Same nav tree, same statuses, same words. What changed is how much the eye has to hold: two tables became one with four filters, three ink ramps became one, and eight status states carrying three colours became four answers.
Four decisions, and why:
Ten statuses, four answers
Signature required is grey, Signature requested is purple — one step apart in meaning, unrelated in colour. The question she asks is “which of these needs me”, so there are four treatments, and an icon carries each so the colour is not a code to learn.
The fee, written out
Payout and repayment sat in two columns and were never set against each other. Written as a bill the middle term has to exist — and in demo data modelled on yours, it came out negative twelve times.
- OrderYou2025-10-15
- SignatureYou2025-10-17
- Treyd approvalTreyd2025-10-20
- Payout to supplierBank2025-10-22
- InvoiceTreyd2025-10-24
- RepaymentYou2026-01-20
The status column, unfolded
Ten statuses are not ten states, they are positions in one six-step sequence. The table shows the word; the order page shows the word’s place, who she is waiting on, and when each step happened.
The limit lives in the rail
It answers “can I place this order”, and that question is live on every page. In the rail it is always readable, and signing moves it in the same moment the commitment appears.
Any studio can make it prettier. Drawing the surfaces is what found the states your model can express and your business can’t.
A bit about me.
I’m Carl. I run Sunday, a product-design studio for fintech. Before this, Swedbank. I work embedded, like part of the team, from first research to the final interface.
Wired to your real orders instead of demo data modelled on yours, this gets a lot sharper.
“He champions user-centered design without ever losing sight of how it drives real business outcomes. That balance is rare.”
That’s the idea.
Those states are cheap to fix now and expensive once a customer finds one. Grab 30minutes and I’ll walk you through what I found — or a two-week sprint makes this shippable.