The AP clerk sits on a 1366x768 laptop. The accounts room is noisy. The clerk reviews 30 rows before lunch. Each row: scan crop, extracted fields, reason for failure. The clerk needs to see the scan, read the reason, and decide. The clerk does not need a mouse tour. The clerk needs keyboard shortcuts: next failure, confirm, skip.
PRODUCT.md says this explicitly: clerk-first screens. Buyer walkthroughs may happen; density, keyboard path, and evidence-next-to-the-field outrank impressing a CFO. The CFO buys the product. The clerk uses it every day. Build for the clerk.
One screen. Scan crop on the left. Extracted fields on the right. Reason at the top. Keyboard: Tab to next field, Enter to confirm, Escape to skip. Mouse optional. No scrolling. No modals. No 4K monitor required.
Left side
GSTIN, total, date. The actual page. Not a string.
Right side
Reason at top. Tab, Enter, Escape. No mouse tour.
Why evidence beside the field
If the GSTIN failed checksum, the clerk needs to see the GSTIN crop. Not a table of extracted strings. The actual page. The smudge. The handwritten 4 that looks like an A. The crop is the evidence. Without it, the clerk is guessing. With it, the clerk is confirming.
If the total failed arithmetic, the clerk needs to see the printed total and the extracted lines. Side by side. Not on different screens. Not in a modal. On the same screen, at the same time. The eye should not travel more than a few centimetres.
Why keyboard first
The clerk reviews 30 rows. If each row requires a mouse click, the clerk clicks 30 times. If each row requires a keyboard shortcut, the clerk presses Enter 30 times. The difference is 27 mouse movements. On a small laptop with a trackpad, that is real time. Keyboard-first is not a design fetish. It is a time saving.
The shortcuts are simple: Tab to next field, Enter to confirm, Escape to skip. No complex chords. No mouse-dependent workflows. The clerk learns them in five minutes. The clerk uses them for years.
What we refuse
Naked JSON tables. A table of extracted strings without the scan is how you get silent re-keying. The clerk cannot verify without the crop. That is not a review UI. That is a data dump.
Onboarding tours. The clerk does not need a tour. The clerk needs the scan, the reason, and a confirm button. If the UI needs a tour, the UI is wrong.
Mascots. No onboarding mascot. No empty-state illustration. The clerk is not impressed by a cartoon. The clerk is impressed by a scan that exports cleanly.
4K monitors. The clerk has a 1366x768 laptop. Build for that. If the UI does not fit, the UI is wrong. Do not tell the clerk to buy a bigger screen.
The bake-off question
Ask the vendor: "Can the clerk finish a miss without a mouse safari?" If the answer is "our UI is beautiful on a 4K monitor," they have not met the clerk. If the answer is "Tab, Enter, Escape," they have.
- EntryLedger/how-it-works
Review queue. Evidence beside the field.
- EntryLedger
PRODUCT.mdClerk-first screens. Density and keyboard over buyer walkthrough.
Who is the UI for?+
The AP clerk. 1366x768. Keyboard. No mouse tour.
Keyboard shortcuts?+
Tab, Enter, Escape. Simple. Learn in five minutes.
What does the clerk see?+
Crop, fields, reason. One screen. No scrolling.