Clover · Fiserv · Fintech · Payments

Clover Estimates

Lead My Role
Ongoing Duration
Oct '25 MVP Shipped
Live Status

Overview

Clover's professional services merchants were losing business to competitors. Without a native estimates feature, they stitched together third-party tools for the front half of every job then returned to Clover to collect payment. The workflow was fragmented, the experience broken, and Clover was losing merchants to platforms that owned the full loop. I was brought in as sole design lead to close that gap, from research through to launch.

Merchant base served

20%

Of Clover's professional services merchant base now using Estimates natively.

Conversion growth

87%

Growth in estimate-to-invoice conversion since the feature launched.

VAS revenue mix

27%

Of Clover's total revenue mix now attributed to value-added services.

01

Closed a critical workflow gap. Professional services merchants can now create estimates, get client approval, and convert to invoice without ever leaving Clover, collapsing a 3-platform workflow into one.

02

Designed for the full ecosystem. Built in close collaboration with Clover's Invoicing team so estimates and invoices feel like two parts of the same product, not two separate features bolted together.

03

Advocated for the right solution, not the convenient one. When engineering constraints pushed toward repurposing an existing pattern, I proposed a net-new approach that preserved merchant mental models and reduced long-term friction.

My Role

Sole product designer across the full estimates feature. Led competitive research and user interviews, designed end-to-end merchant and customer flows, built and tested prototypes with real users, collaborated with the Invoicing team on cross-feature coherence, and partnered with engineering through design QA and build. Currently leading advanced payment terms and scalability design.

Workflow comparison — Before and After

3 platforms reduced to 1

Before Estimates
01Merchant calculates job cost manually outside Clover. No native estimate creation.
02Switches to QuickBooks or HoneyBook to build and send the estimate. Data re-entered manually.
03Client approves via email or phone with no formal record. Merchant relies on manual follow-up.
04Returns to third-party tool to convert to invoice. Line items entered again — error-prone.
05Switches back to Clover to collect payment. Client has received documents from two different platforms.
After Estimates
01Merchant creates estimate natively in Clover. Line items, service details, and client info in one view.
02Estimate sent to client via branded email and web view — professional from day one.
03Client approves via OTP-authenticated web view. Merchant has a clear, formal approval record.
04Approved estimate converts to invoice in a single action. All details carry forward automatically.
05Payment collected in Clover. One platform, zero re-entry, one client experience.

Key Signal

No competitor owns the full estimate-to-payment loop natively within a POS ecosystem. That is Clover's advantage, and the foundation this feature was built on.

Research and analysis — persona creation, user interviews, and competitive analysis
Feature prioritization strategy across MVP, Q2, and Q3 phases
Estimate creation merchant view — the full scope of screens across the estimates feature

Six merchant interviews. Five competitors mapped. One clear MVP focus: create, send, convert.

Client email view — OTP verification flow
Client web approval view — estimate details with accept and decline actions

The client side. OTP-authenticated approval gave merchants a formal sign-off record and removed the ambiguity of email threads and phone calls.

Engineering wanted to repurpose Custom Fields. It would have shipped faster. It also would have broken a pattern merchants already relied on. I pushed back.

On proposing Reference Details

The call that mattered.

When the team needed a way for merchants to add project-specific data to estimates, the path of least resistance was to repurpose Clover's existing Custom Fields feature. The problem: Custom Fields was built to collect information from customers. Reference Details needed to provide information to them. Same surface, opposite direction. Conflating the two would have created confusion about when to use which, and risked breaking an existing merchant workflow without warning.

I proposed a net-new feature scoped specifically to estimates. Single purpose, clean mental model, searchable by reference field. The proposal was approved and is in merchant testing.

Existing Custom Fields — collects information from customers
New Reference Details — provides project information to clients

What I learned.

01

Show it, don't argue for it.

The ideas that moved forward weren't the ones argued for loudest. They were mocked up, validated with real merchants, and presented within Clover's existing framework. A working prototype in the right person's hands is worth ten slides of rationale.

02

Engineering should be in the room earlier.

Linear process — research, design, engineering — creates a blind spot. Constraints that surface late force redesigns that could have been avoided. Pulling engineering in early, even informally, means less rework and more creative problem-solving before a direction is locked.

03

Test more than feels necessary.

Flows that felt obvious internally consistently confused merchants in practice. The more frequently we tested, the less we shipped wrong. It's not a luxury — it's the fastest path to a feature that actually works.

Convert to invoice — accepted estimate through invoice review and delivery

Impact

Merchants aren't going anywhere.

31

Platforms Required

Collapsed a fragmented 3-platform workflow into a single native Clover experience.

55%

Estimate-to-Invoice Conversion

Of merchants who created an estimate converted it to an invoice within their first 30 days.

4.2

Avg. Estimates per Merchant

Average estimates created per merchant in their first 30 days, showing repeat usage rather than a one-time trial.

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