Team delivery
Bilnex
DELIVERED PRODUCT WORKFrom a legacy platform to a new product.
Invoicing becomes one connected experience.
I’m Max Jóhann. I helped shape Bilnex from concept to a live invoicing product, connecting product strategy, product ownership and hands-on design. The challenge was to bring invoice creation, receiving, digitisation and integrations into one coherent experience. Working with the team, I connected product priorities with the workflows, interface decisions and infrastructure requirements needed for delivery.
- Businesses across the Baltics
- 2,500+
- Months from 0 → 1 with the small team
- ~8
- Months helping lead the product
- 18+
I named Bilnex and shaped its visual identity. Both grew from the same idea as the product: bringing everyday billing tasks into one coherent workspace.
Context & discovery
From an established system.
To a new product model.
At Finbite, I worked with an established e-invoicing environment: existing customer expectations, accumulated workflows and technical constraints. Bilnex created the opportunity to use that understanding in a new product.
Discovery connected everyday invoicing tasks with operational and business requirements. I worked with engineering and commercial colleagues to define priorities, make the MVP scope explicit and shape the experience across invoice creation, receiving, digitisation and integrations.
Electronic invoicing — e-arved in Estonian — brings different delivery and identity requirements into a familiar business task. The product decisions below show how I worked with the team to make those differences visible in the flow.
My contribution
I helped lead Bilnex across product direction, ownership, prioritisation and hands-on design for more than 18 months. Working with engineering, marketing and commercial colleagues, I connected the customer’s task with the scope and decisions the team needed to deliver a first product.
I helped define the MVP and a shared creation flow for PDF, e-invoice and Peppol, keeping recipient checks, service activation and integration dependencies explicit. My work also covered setup and the logic for AI-assisted digitisation: preserving the original extraction alongside user corrections and defining how those corrections could inform learning at company and user level.
[ 2023 – 2026 ]
The starting point
Start with a useful workspace. Make the next step visible.
The workspace brings invoice creation, sending and receiving into one overview. Setup and activation remain visible alongside the everyday task, so a company can see what it can use and what it needs to complete next.
Visible in the product
Use. Activate. Extend.
The PDF route, e-invoice services and Peppol each have an explicit place. An account checklist keeps company details, service activation and further connections in context.
This historical product view shows the setup model at the time. Dates and availability labels inside the screenshot are part of that view.
The everyday task
Create the invoice. Keep the system in context.
I shaped the creation flow around information the business already has: issuer details, recipient identity and the invoice itself. The interface reuses context while keeping the delivery route visible.
Reuse what is already known.Company data and account details belong in the flow, without asking for the same facts again.Issuer details stay in view while the invoice is being created.
Make the recipient check visible.The company name or registry code gives the recipient step a concrete starting point.The receiving company matters as much as the invoice being created.
Keep the delivery choice explicit.PDF, e-invoice and Peppol share a familiar task while retaining different requirements.This was an MVP compromise that the team could build and users could understand.
The infrastructure boundary
A familiar invoice. A more exact recipient.
For Peppol, the recipient needs more than a company name. I translated the stricter identity requirements into the same invoice-creation structure, making the extra check visible where it matters.
Visible in the product
Identity before delivery.
The Peppol view groups the participant ID, legal company name and country with an explicit recipient check.
The underlying Peppol framework was supplied through Qvalia; my contribution was the Bilnex product flow and interface around that infrastructure, alongside engineering.
AI-based document reading
Read the document. Keep the correction.
Bilnex includes AI-based digitisation of PDF invoices and paper receipts, with at least 99% field-level accuracy. I defined the logic for retaining both the original extraction and the user’s corrections, so a correction could inform future reading without replacing the source record.
My product contribution
Learning with context.
I worked through how corrections should support learning at both company and individual-user level. The product model keeps the original reading, the reviewed values and the context of each change distinct.
The product view uses anonymised sample data. The drawing is an illustrative study of the same workflow.
Self-service
Start working.
Activate more when needed.
I designed setup as a sequence of useful steps. A company could start with the capabilities it needed and add e-invoicing, Peppol or integrations as the business required them.
- [ 01 / Establish ]
Create the workspace.
Identify the user and company. Ask for the information needed to begin.
- [ 02 / Authorise ]
Activate the service.
Make company-level confirmation a clear step where the service requires it.
- [ 03 / Extend ]
Add the next connection.
Keep further capabilities visible without making every integration a prerequisite.
One familiar task.
Different delivery requirements.
Three decisions behind the product
01Define the MVP.Set a coherent first scope a small team could build, with room for what followed.
MY CONTRIBUTIONI helped establish what the first product needed to make possible and what could follow later. The scope connected product priorities to the everyday invoicing tasks the team needed to support.
PRODUCT DIRECTIONInvoice creation, receiving, digitisation and integrations formed the wider product model. Prioritisation helped the team move towards a coherent first release.
02Unify the flow.PDF, e-invoice and Peppol share a familiar task, with their differences kept visible.
MY CONTRIBUTIONI shaped a shared invoice-creation structure across delivery routes. Common information and familiar interactions provided continuity, while route-specific requirements stayed part of the flow.
VISIBLE IN THE PRODUCTIssuer details, recipient information and invoice content belong to the same creation experience. Delivery checks appear where they affect the person’s next choice.
03Define what can proceed.Recipient identity, service activation and integrations determine the available next step.
DELIVERY CONSTRAINTSDelivery depends on more than a completed invoice. Recipient identity, the selected route, service activation and integration dependencies affect what the product can make available.
HOW THEY SHAPE THE FLOWI worked with engineering to make these distinctions visible in the interface and product decisions, clarifying what the person could complete and what depended on service or technical conditions.
What reached use
Concept to product.
Working with the team, I helped take Bilnex from 0 → 1 in approximately eight months. The product is used by 2,500+ businesses across the Baltics.
My contribution
Direction through delivery.
Product strategy, discovery, ownership, design, prioritisation and team leadership — connecting the customer’s task with a product the team could build and bring into use.
Legacy transformation
Understand what exists.
Choose what comes next.
Before Bilnex, I helped modernise Finbite’s established e-invoicing environment. The work meant understanding years of accumulated workflows, customer expectations and technical constraints before changing the experience.
That experience shaped the new product: which conventions deserved to stay, which steps could be simplified, and which infrastructure requirements still needed an explicit place in the flow. Bilnex gave us the opportunity to build from that understanding with a new product model.
- Documents successfully read into the system
- 99%
- User journeys and views redesigned to simplify everyday work
- 84+
