Product Design: Expense Reporting and Approval Tool for Employees and Finance Teams
Company: Microsoft
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
As a product manager, design a product for managing expenses. Decide who it serves and which problems in the expense process it solves, choose what the first version includes, and explain how you would measure whether it works.
```hint Follow one receipt
An expense passes through several hands: the person who spends, the manager who approves, and the finance team that reimburses, records and audits it. Trace one receipt along that path to see where time and errors pile up before deciding whose problem to solve first.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Is this for companies managing employees' business spending, or for individuals and households tracking personal spending?
- If it is for companies, which size: small businesses without a finance team, or large enterprises with strict policies and an existing finance system?
- Should it stand alone, or be built into Microsoft's existing products such as Microsoft 365, Teams, Outlook and Dynamics 365?
- Does the scope include corporate cards and travel booking, or only reimbursing out-of-pocket spending?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A scoped choice of customer and segment, with a reason, and a goal for the product.
- The different people in the expense flow (spender, approver, finance and audit) and their distinct pain points across the lifecycle from purchase to the books.
- Solutions prioritized into a focused first version, with a clear reason a customer would switch from spreadsheets or an existing tool.
- Success metrics for employees, approvers and finance, with guardrails on accuracy, policy compliance and fraud.
- Risks such as extraction errors, fraudulent claims, privacy, tax and record-keeping rules across countries, and integration with accounting systems.
### Follow-up Questions
- How would you use AI to fill in expense reports automatically without letting errors or fraud slip through?
- Finance wants strict policy checks while employees want fewer steps. How would you balance the two?
- How would you persuade a company already using an established expense tool to switch?
Overview: A product design question asking you to design an expense management product. It tests scoping the customer and segment, mapping the needs of employees, approvers and finance teams across the expense lifecycle, prioritizing a focused first version, and choosing success metrics with guardrails for accuracy and fraud.