# Product design for FP&A and finance software > Product design for FP&A and finance software: models, versions, dense grids and approvals. We redesigned Drivetrain. - URL: https://www.turinglabs.in/blog/b2b-fpa-software-design - Author: turingLabs, Product design studio (https://www.turinglabs.in/) - Published: 2026-10-28 - Category: Product design - Tags: Guide, finance software, B2B SaaS - Publisher: turingLabs, a product design studio for complex B2B SaaS (https://www.turinglabs.in/) ## The short answer [turingLabs](/) designs the interfaces of FP&A and finance software: the model builder, scenarios and versions, dense grids, variance views and approvals. We redesigned Drivetrain, a planning platform that competes with Pigment and Anaplan. ## Where FP&A products get hard Finance software fails in ways most B2B products do not. The problems below decide whether a finance team adopts a tool, and most of them are design problems before they are engineering problems. ### Model building A model needs drivers, formulas and dependencies that are powerful enough for a finance team to build a real plan, and readable enough for the CFO who signs it off. Most tools design for one of those people and leave the other to cope. The interface has to let an analyst work quickly in the detail while a reviewer can still see how the numbers connect. ### Versions and scenarios Budget, forecast, reforecast, best case, worst case. A user needs to know which version they are looking at, what changed since the last one and who changed it. When versions are hard to tell apart, people stop trusting the screen and check the numbers somewhere else, which is the outcome the product exists to prevent. ### Dense grids The core screen is often a grid with thousands of cells. Spacing, frozen headers, grouping, inline editing and keyboard support decide whether people work in the product or export to Excel. Density is not the problem; density that is hard to read is. The job is to make a large grid calm: a clear hierarchy in the rows, one place for the eye to land, and nothing decorative competing with the numbers. ### Actuals against plan A variance only matters if it is easy to see and easy to explain. Drilling from a number to the transactions behind it should take one click, not five. Every step of that path has to keep the period, the version and the filters the user chose, or the drill-down quietly shows a different number from the one they started with. ### Trust in the data When numbers come from an ERP, a CRM and an HRIS, users need to see where each figure came from and when it last synced. One unexplained number is enough to send a finance team back to its spreadsheets, and it tends to stay there. ### Approvals and permissions Department heads submit, FP&A reviews and the CFO approves. Each role sees a different slice of the same model. The interface has to make clear what a person can change, what is locked and who is waiting on them, without turning every screen into a permissions dialog. ### Spreadsheet-native users Finance teams think in rows, columns and formulas. A design that fights that habit loses, and one that borrows from it wins. Copy and paste that behaves the way they expect, formulas that read like formulas and keyboard moves that match a spreadsheet are the cheapest ways to earn the trust of people who have spent years in Excel. ## What we did at Drivetrain Drivetrain is an AI-native financial planning and analysis platform for mid-market and enterprise finance teams, and it competes with Pigment and Anaplan. Its founders wanted the product to look and feel world class, in interaction quality and visual design alike, as they went after larger enterprise customers. [turingLabs](https://www.turinglabs.in/) handled the end-to-end redesign: scoping, planning, the design system and execution. The work ran for about a year, in two phases of around six months each. Ankit and Teja were the core team and worked directly with all three of Drivetrain's founders throughout. The hardest problems were in the data. Charts had to show up to 40 data series at once, each one distinguishable within a limited color palette. The product also leaned heavily on pivot tables and dense grids, which pull data richness and visual calm in opposite directions. The aim was an interface that felt modern and polished without losing the seriousness that enterprise finance users expect. Both problems come down to the same rule: in a finance product, every pixel competes with a number. A chart with 40 series fails if two lines can be confused, because the reader then trusts the wrong one. A grid fails if the eye has nowhere to rest, because the user then exports it. So the work was less about adding polish than about deciding what each element had to carry and removing the rest. Drivetrain could not stop shipping for a redesign, so there was no big-bang launch. The work was sequenced: shared components such as navigation and headers first, then the product page by page. The product grew more coherent with each release, even while parts of it still looked like the old version, and the team kept shipping throughout. G2 named Drivetrain Best Usability in 2025, a ranking built from real user reviews, in a category that includes Pigment and Anaplan. That is the only measure here we did not set ourselves. Alok Goel, the company's CEO, wrote about the work: > "He very quickly went into the deep ends of our product, built strong context and then redesigned the product with amazing insights. While doing all this, he was loved by our internal team. Existing designers loved learning from him, engineers loved the clarity and comprehensiveness of the output." > > Alok Goel, CEO, Drivetrain, Inc :::tiles - [Drivetrain case study](https://www.turinglabs.in/work/drivetrain) A full revamp of an FP&A platform, against Pigment and Anaplan ::: ## How an engagement runs Every engagement starts with a 30-minute call with turingLabs, where we work out the problem and say plainly whether we are the right fit. Most engagements start small and grow. A fixed-price sprint takes one core workflow, such as model building or variance analysis, and shows how we work together. If it fits, the next step is an embedded designer working alongside your team, or fractional design leadership while you build or hire a team of your own. | Engagement | Best for | Length | Starting price | |---|---|---|---| | Sprint | One core workflow, such as model building or variance analysis | 4 to 6 weeks | From $5,000, fixed price | | Embedded | A full revamp, or design capacity alongside your roadmap | 3 to 12 months | From $4,000 a month | | Fractional | Design leadership while you build or hire a team | Ongoing | From $10,000 a month | Sprints are fixed price. Embedded and fractional work runs on a retainer and is scoped to the problem. An embedded engagement makes us an extended design team: a senior design leader and a dedicated designer, aligned with your team day to day, with our founder working in the work itself rather than only overseeing it. Design handoff happens in Figma, and we work in your tools and standups rather than imposing an agency process. For a wider view of how studios compare, see our [shortlist of product design agencies in India](https://www.turinglabs.in/blog/b2b-saas-product-design-agencies-india). ## FAQs ### Do you need finance experience to design FP&A software? It helps a lot. Designers who do not understand drivers, versions and variance tend to simplify the wrong things. Ankit headed design for ClearTax's B2B business, and turingLabs later designed ClearTax's mobile business suite for small and medium businesses. Ankit also led the design of Jupiter Edge, a single card that combines credit and debit, at Jupiter Money. The Drivetrain redesign added about a year inside a planning product. The team starts with the vocabulary. ### Do you only design FP&A software? No. We work across financial planning, spend management, fintech, fraud and risk, and AI-native products. The common thread is product complexity, not one industry. ### Can we start small and expand? Yes. A sprint is often a good starting point for teams that want to see how we work before committing to anything longer. Many of our longest client relationships started as focused sprints. ### Can you help with one specific thing? Yes. A sprint is designed for exactly that, whether it is a design system, a UX audit or a single flow. Come in with a clear, scoped problem and we will solve it well. ### Can you work with our existing design system? Yes. We extend what you have rather than starting over, and add the dense-data components most systems lack, such as grids, pivot controls and scenario pickers. ### Can you work alongside our in-house designers? Yes, and it is common in fractional engagements. Our design lead effectively runs the design function, which includes your internal team, so your designers become part of a broader function rather than being displaced. ### Do you build the front end? No. We hand engineers complete specs and components, and stay involved during the build to answer questions and review what ships. ### How fast can you start? Work typically begins within one to two weeks of signing, depending on current capacity. ## Working on a finance product? Tell us which workflow your users struggle with most. [Book a call](https://www.turinglabs.in/#book) and we will go through it together. --- Cite as: "Product design for FP&A and finance software", turingLabs, 2026-10-28. https://www.turinglabs.in/blog/b2b-fpa-software-design