Tallyroom
Bank reconciliation for small accounting firms. The product table is the hero.
Brief
- Who & when
- Partner at a 3–15 person accounting firm, on a desktop, skeptical, comparing 2–3 tools in tabs.
- Main task
- Understand in under 5 seconds that it matches bank lines to the ledger and flags only exceptions, then start a trial.
- Must not look like
- A purple-gradient SaaS template, a crypto dashboard, a bank ad.
- Success
- Say what it does and what it costs without scrolling more than 2 screens.
Three directions
Ruled Ledger
A clean ledger sheet; horizontal rules organise everything and the live table is the hero.
IBM Plex Sans + Plex Mono (tabular amounts)
Almost no colour: green and amber chips are the only accents.
Night Terminal
A dark, dense power-user console with typed log lines.
JetBrains Mono everywhere
Reads as a developer tool to non-technical partners.
Big Number
One giant figure, “312 of 318 lines matched”, carries the message.
Bricolage Grotesque 800 + Source Sans 3
Buyers don’t see the actual tool before trusting it.
Why this one: The buyer’s real doubt is “does it actually match my lines?”. Direction A answers it by showing the table first.
Design system (DESIGN.md)
IBM Plex Sans 400/500/600 · IBM Plex Mono 400/500 (tnum)
- paper
#F4F5F2 - surface
#FFFFFF - ink
#14171A - muted
#555B62 - rule
#D3D8D2 - match
#0E7A4E - flag
#9A5B00
Result
What the review caught
Self-review against screenshots at 1440 px and 390 px. Each round lists the issue and the fix.
- 390 px: hero text touched the screen edge (padding override) → fixed.
- 390 px: table header items fought for one line → stacked.
- 390 px: two CTAs of different widths → full width on mobile.