Revamping and Testing a Tax Refund Solution

Client

EU-based large financial services company

Industry

Financial services

Services

Staff augmentation

Tech

TypeScript, Angular 4, Angular 12, SCSS, C#, Swagger, Fiddler, TestRail

Project description

A large player in the financial sector, with operations in over 50 countries, owns a tax refund solution that enables buyers to get a refund on taxes they paid on purchased items. This is how it works: 1. People buy items from partner shops located in different countries 2. The buyers fill in a refund request form, either through a mobile app, the company’s website, or a dedicated terminal, depending on the tax regulations of the store’s country. 3. The app processes the form and generates the documents that buyers can submit to the customs office This tax refund solution should integrate seamlessly with all the devices used in partner stores, such as terminals, barcode and QR code scanners, etc. It should also support a wide range of stores at different geographical locations while complying with country-specific regulations. The company reached out to ITRex to migrate this solution to a newer platform, complement it with new features, and perform a comprehensive quality assurance auditing of the entire system. We composed a dedicated team of a front-end developer and a QA engineer who would work with the client full time following their business flow and assist in financial software development and testing.

Here is what made this project particularly challenging:

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The variety of platforms on which the solution had to be deployed and tested. The client wanted it to integrate flawlessly with a variety of physical devices, including store terminals, barcode and QR code scanners, check printers, and more. Each device has its own settings and workflow.

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Stores in countries within Europe, Asia, and the Middle East were using this solution. Each country has its regulations, resulting in unique shop settings, tax form parameters, and data handling processes.

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The system, despite its large size, lacked detailed documentation. So it was challenging to access technical information during the development and auditing process

Solution

Development: Our front-end developer worked on the client side of the tax refund solution (i.e., apps used by the buyers and shop employees to fill in tax forms), fixing existing bugs and implementing new features. Here is what he did:

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Migrated the old version of the tax refund web app from Angular 4 to Angular 12

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Implemented new features associated with the tax refund forms used in different countries, such as adding new data fields and adjusting the data processing logic

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Ensured that every filled tax refund form was correctly validated using automated custom validations of the corresponding country where the store is located

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Supported the web client on different devices, such as smartphones, desktop computers, in-store terminals, and more

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Fixed security vulnerabilities

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Revamped the web client software to enable document scanning using a smartphone or tablet camera, data parsing, and seamless transmission to the server side for subsequent processing

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Managed purchase and taxation history. This feature allows store managers to keep track of purchases, tax refund calculations, and official documents issued for the customs office based on a national template. Managers could view and modify those documents if needed.

Quality assurance:

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Our QA engineer took on the responsibility of deploying different solution versions in a virtual environment for testing. This was due to the team not having a DevOps professional who could assist with the deployment.

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Tested all the new features that have been added by the development team

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Investigated how the system will interact with each partner shop by creating a virtual environment imitating a real shop and configuring it with all the corresponding settings.

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Validated that the tax refund solution works seamlessly in different browsers. It was particularly challenging to test Internet Explorer because the QA engineer had to use a VMware with an older Windows version.

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Identified hidden bugs and errors and prepared the newly implemented features for release

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Thoroughly documented the entire system and the testing process

Impact

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With the new features that our team incorporated into the tax refund solution, the client could finally enter the Japanese market

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Our QA engineer helped create a comprehensive system documentation that was later used to onboard new staff members who were joining the tax refund system team

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Improved user experience by allowing the web client to scan documents, handle their data, and pass it on for further processing. In contrast to previous versions of the app, which required buyers and store owners to use dedicated terminals for scanning, they can now conveniently use their smartphone’s cameras for the same task.

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With the changes made to the system, we’ve guaranteed the solution’s seamless operation across different geographical locations, integration with hardware devices, and compliance with local regulations