Overview
Clover wanted to add payroll functionality to its employee management system, and fast. The business had already selected a third-party payroll provider. My job was to integrate it into Clover’s existing framework in a way that felt native, not bolted on.
What looked like a straightforward integration turned into something more significant. Mid-project, I identified foundational gaps in Clover’s employee management system that would have broken the payroll experience entirely. That discovery reshaped the scope and ultimately produced something more durable than the original ask.
I was the sole designer on the project, working directly with the Product Owner and Lead Engineer in a fast-moving, agile environment.
Clover Payroll Landing
ChallengeS
The Integration Challenge
The core design problem was making an iframed third-party system feel like a seamless part of Clover’s product. That meant more than visual consistency. It meant designing flows that moved users across the boundary between systems without exposing the seam, and making sure the handoffs between Clover-owned and third-party-owned surfaces felt intentional rather than accidental.
The timeline was tight and the flow was evolving constantly. Product, Design, and Engineering were modifying requirements and use cases almost daily as new edge cases surfaced during build. Staying aligned while keeping the design coherent required tight communication and a willingness to make decisions quickly and document them clearly.
The Discovered Problem
Early in the project I identified that Clover’s employee management system lacked features the payroll integration depended on: specifically, the ability for all employees (not just managers) to log in to the business management system, and a place to store employee documents.
These weren’t edge cases. They were blockers. Without them, the payroll flow couldn’t function for the people it was designed to serve.
Rather than flag the gaps and wait, I worked with the product team to define and design the missing employee management features in parallel with the integration work. This turned a potential project risk into an expansion of scope that was already aligned with where Clover was heading as a platform.
What We Built
The final design covered a fully integrated payroll experience for both managers and employees, with flows that handled setup, initiation, and ongoing management across both Clover-owned and third-party surfaces.
The employee-facing experience was net-new for the platform. It established a design foundation that gave Clover the ability to support employee access across other products going forward, not just payroll.
Outcome
The payroll partnership was severed before launch, and the feature did not ship. That context matters, but it doesn’t define what the project produced.
The employee experience framework I designed outlived the partnership. It gave Clover a credible foundation for future integrations and marked a meaningful step in the platform’s evolution from a POS system toward a full business management tool. The design work established patterns and precedents that the team carried forward, regardless of what happened with that specific vendor relationship.
Some of the most durable design work doesn’t ship in the form you designed it. This was one of those projects.
I was the sole designer from kickoff through the end of the engagement, responsible for everything from identifying scope gaps to delivering production-ready flows and UI.
Working directly with the Product Owner and Lead Engineer in a small, fast-moving team meant there was no room for ambiguity in design decisions. I had to make calls quickly, communicate rationale clearly, and keep the work moving even when requirements were shifting underneath it.