The five-step exit of one employee, designed so that money, property and goodwill all land correctly — and so the last thing the company does to someone isn't sloppy.
Onboarding is a flow everyone designs. Offboarding is the one everyone leaves as a mail thread — and it is the higher-stakes half. Money moves, company property is out in the world, and someone is having one of the worst weeks of their working life while an HR manager chases four departments for sign-off.
The structural difficulty is that the middle of the flow isn't sequential. Accounts, IT, Admin and the Project Manager clear in parallel, on their own timelines, and the settlement cannot be computed until all four are done. A linear wizard models that badly; a free-form checklist loses the gate.
So the design problem was a sequential spine with one parallel stage inside it — and a tone that stays procedural without being cold.
A single case moves through five stages — Initiation, Clearance, Settlement, Dispatch, Completed. The stepper carrying them sits in the same position with the same three states (done, active, upcoming) on every screen that handles a case, so it doubles as the honest answer to “how far along is this”.
The stages are not the same thing as the screens. The portal has five of those too, but the first is a Dashboard — a queue of every open case, with no stepper on it, because it belongs to no single case. Dispatch has no screen of its own: the four exit documents are generated inside the settlement screen once the payout is approved.
Exit type, last day, notice, handover-to. One form, and the only place a human types.
Four departments, 15 items, independent timelines. The stage that isn't a step.
F&F with every line shown as a calculation, not a total. Locked until all four departments clear.
Four documents from templates, variables highlighted for review. Lives inside the settlement screen, not its own.
The completion audit log — eight events, no actions. A closed case with no button to press.
There is no partial credit. Progress reads 3 of 4 departments, not 13 of 15 items — because “87% cleared” tells an HR manager nothing actionable, while “Accounts is not cleared” tells them exactly who to call. Each department carries its own colour, so a glance down the tab bar identifies the blocker without reading a word.
This is the state the tracker opens in — one department short, and the case study says so rather than showing a tidier finished grid. Accounts clears on May 5 in the audit log, which is when the settlement unlocks.
Marking an item cleared opens a modal that requires a date and a person — the confirm button stays disabled until “cleared by” has a value. An unattributed clearance is how a laptop goes missing with nobody responsible.
A clearance dated after the last working day shows a warning but still submits. Late clearances are real; refusing to record them just means someone backdates instead.
Step 3 does not open until all four departments are cleared. The gate is the whole reason the parallel stage can stay parallel without losing control.
The real prototype. Use the Flow panel at the bottom-right to move between the five screens, or open the Clearance Tracker and mark an item cleared to see the attribution modal.
A final settlement that shows only totals is a document someone will dispute. Every line carries its calculation in a middle column — 31 days × ₹5,000, 12 days encashed, 4y 2m of gratuity — so the person receiving it can check the maths themselves. Zero rows stay visible and greyed rather than being hidden, because an absent line reads as an oversight.
Approving the settlement requires typing the word CONFIRM. It is deliberately annoying: this action pays out ₹2.79 lakh and terminates an employment record, and it should not be one misplaced click away from a dispute.
The four exit documents work the same way — generated from templates with every substituted variable visually highlighted, so an HR manager reviews the values rather than skimming a finished-looking letter.
The whole flow is designed for the HR manager. The person actually leaving never sees a screen — they receive four documents by email and otherwise experience this as silence. A candidate-facing view showing where their clearance and settlement stand would cost little and remove most of the anxiety of an exit. I didn't build it because nobody asked, which isn't a good reason.
Friction is a design material. Almost every instinct in product design says remove steps — but a required name, a typed CONFIRM and a screen with no buttons are all deliberate friction, each placed where the cost of being wrong is highest. Knowing where to add resistance is the same skill as knowing where to remove it.
Back to the start of the list — the sales command centre.