Setup in one sitting

Kestrel Ledger helps small companies run payroll and pay their bills from one account. People signed up happily, then stopped. Fewer than half finished setup in their first session, and most of the rest never came back.

The problem

Setup had nine steps, in the order the database needed them: company details, tax IDs, bank linking, payroll schedule, team invites and four more. Step three asked people to link a bank account before they'd seen anything the product could do for them.

I watched recordings of 40 signups and called 12 people who'd stopped. The same sentence came up five times: "I didn't have the bank login with me."

What I did

We rebuilt setup around one rule: every step has to be finishable in one sitting, with what people have at hand. That gave us four steps instead of nine.

• Company basics first. Name, address and one tax ID. Two minutes.
• A first useful thing. Add one bill and see when it'll be paid.
• Invite one person. Most companies have a second person who handles money.
• Bank linking at the first payment, when there's a reason to do it.

I wrote every label, hint and error before drawing the screens. The checklist stays visible until it's done, and each step says how long it takes.

What changed

Eight weeks after launch, 68% of new accounts finished setup in their first session, up from 41%. Support tickets about setup fell by about 40%, and the bank linking step, now at the first payment, is finished 9 times out of 10.

Measure	Before	After
Setup finished in first session	41%	68%
Steps	9	4
Median time to finish	23 min	8 min

What I'd do differently

I'd test the invite step sooner. We assumed a second person was always there; in companies under five people, often there isn't. We added a "Just me for now" option in week seven. It should have been there from day one.