About Lightyear

Lightyear is a cloud-based accounts payable solution designed to help businesses automate data entry by extracting details from invoices, credit notes, bank statements and receipts, streamline approvals through customizable workflows and maintain a record of outstanding amounts. Features include messaging, audit trail, statement reconciliation, multi-currency and duplicate auto-flagging. The application's rules automation feature enables accountants to automatically assign line items with general ledger (GL) codes, tax rates, categories or departments. Finance professionals can check product prices against the verified supplier pricing and route bills to relevant approvers. The dashboard lets supervisors view the number of bills processed, signed off, reviewed or awaiting approval. Lightyear offers integration with various third-party applications such as Abcom, MYOB, Xero, Sage 50, Fuelsoft and more. It comes with mobile applications for iOS and Android. It is available on monthly subscriptions and support is provided via documentation, live chat and phone.
Lightyear Software - Lightyear receipt upload
Lightyear Software - Lightyear user management
Lightyear Software - Lightyear signed off bills
Lightyear Software - Lightyear dashboard
Lightyear Software - Lightyear receipt upload - thumbnail
Lightyear Software - Lightyear user management - thumbnail
Lightyear Software - Lightyear signed off bills - thumbnail
Lightyear Software - Lightyear dashboard - thumbnail

Lightyear pricing

Lightyear does not have a free version but does offer a free trial. Lightyear paid version starts at US$79.00/month.

Starting Price:
US$79.00/month
Pricing Details:
Lightyear is available across 3 pricing tiers: Starter, Business, Enterprise. Pricing starts at $79/per month and scales with each tier, outlined below: Starter - $79/month - Unlimited Users - Unlimited Sub-entities Business - $179/month - Unlimited Users - Unlimited Sub-entities - Purchase Orders - Good Receivable Notes - Inventory Management Enterprise - $1,099/month - Unlimited Users - Unlimited Sub-entities - Purchase Orders - Good Receivable Notes - Inventory Management - Dedicated Account Manager - White Labelling Capabilities
Free Version:
No
Free trial:
Yes

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Lightyear Reviews

Overall rating

4.9
( 108 reviews )
Write a Review!

Feature rating

Value for Money
4.8
Functionality
4.8
Ease of Use
4.9
Customer Support
4.9
5 reviews of 108 View all reviews
Megan R.
  • Industry: Accounting
  • Company size: 11-50 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
0
Features
5
Ease of Use
5
Customer Support
5
5
Reviewed on 16/06/2020

Time Saver

Using Lightyear eliminates the overhead of a staff member and risk of manual data entry errors. Saves time and money for the business

Pros

- Ease of access for different managers to approve their own departments invoices
- ability to bring up old invoices as a click of a button
- quick turn around from customer service team
- Data interpretation to avoid data entry errors
- Access 24/7 anywhere in the world

Cons

Phone app does not have all the same capabilities as the website, waiting for further updates.

Verified Reviewer
  • Industry: Accounting
  • Company size: 2-10 Employees
  • Used Daily for 1+ year
  • Review Source
Value for Money
5
Features
4
Ease of Use
5
Customer Support
5
5
Reviewed on 12/06/2020

Game changer

Fantastic, over the couple of years I have been using the program I have had nothing less than outstanding service from the support team and after initially only using it for my larger clients, it has been an easy decision to bring all my clients across to the platform. The program is intuitive to use and easy to implement and scale up or down depending on the client and approvals process needed.

Pros

The invoice approval function was the reason for initially coming across to Lightyear but the statement reconciliation process was a hidden surprise that has enabled my last remaining paper based clients to take the leap to being completely paperless. The integrity of the data being exported to the accounting software is much better than other programs.

Cons

My clients who use purchase orders are currently needing to batch together the PO pdf & supplier invoice images before sending to Lightyear which would be amazing if we could either match them up within the app, or issue PO's direct from the app which are then able to be viewed with the supplier invoice.

Alternatives Considered

Dext Prepare

Reasons for Choosing Lightyear

My clients needed a program which offered a layered approvals process

Switched From

Dext Prepare

Reasons for Switching to Lightyear

It was some time ago now and I can't recall all the other programs we looked at, but Lightyear really came out as the only contender due to the price point and the approvals process.
Michael C.
  • Industry: Hospitality
  • Company size: 51-200 Employees
  • Used Daily for 1-5 months
  • Review Source
Value for Money
1
Features
1
Ease of Use
1
Customer Support
1
1
Reviewed on 9/01/2019

Failure

Terrible is all i can say to be honest

Pros

Nothing to like about light year it is doesn’t work simple

Cons

Slow, Unstable, inaccurate ocr of invoices causing excessive manual re-entry of invoices, customer support non existent as they can’t do anything as it is a terrible system I have waited for improvements over the last 3 months they haven’t happened stay from lightyear find something else

Response from Lightyear

Hi Michael, Thank you for the feedback. I've reviewed your history on our system and I believe you were using our system in the early days whilst it was still in Beta and were also having some connection issues with internet speeds. I'm sorry you didn't have a great experience with the product, certainly not what we strive for at Lightyear.

Lightyear is now in full release and has been receiving great reviews all round with a much improved user experience and speed. Our team would be very happy to spend some time with you and show you the product now if you like. Just drop the team a line if so.. Many thanks, Chris.

Replied 8/01/2020
Leigh D.
  • Industry: Accounting
  • Company size: 2-10 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
5
Features
5
Ease of Use
5
Customer Support
5
5
Reviewed on 4/09/2020

Excellent Accounts Payable System

Our clients can see where their AP invoices are at any point in time as well as the value of AP "in progress". The fact that the system picks up duplicates is the game changer for us. Reconciling & "filing" statements is an absolute breeze.

Pros

We love how this product enables our clients to check & approve their invoices before the invoices land in Xero. We know that anything in Xero is checked & ready to be paid. Easy for multiple people to have access & sign off. All AP is in one place & finding historical invoices is a breeze.

Cons

Reading OCR receipts has been a bit behind other competitors but improvement is coming through really quickly.

Christine S.
  • Industry: Hospitality
  • Company size: 51-200 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
5
Features
5
Ease of Use
5
Customer Support
5
5
Reviewed on 27/05/2020

Love it!

I've used the software for years and have always found it to be reliable and the support start are fantastic if ever I need help with something.

Pros

There are so many things I love about Lightyear. The new statement reconciliation feature though is a game changer! Lightyear tells you what invoices are missing and allows you to contact the supplier to request missing invoices direct from the software. Amazing!!!

Cons

There's not much I don't like about the software, and the things that I would like are already in the works.

Alternatives Considered

Dext Prepare

Reasons for Choosing Lightyear

Invitbox was been owned by Reckon and had not supported or upgraded for some time. The original developers for Invitbox took it back and rebuilt it from the ground up. Invitbox, even unsupported and without upgrades, was an awesome piece of software and superseded the functionality of it's competitors such as ReceiptBank. Since the original team was coming back on board, it was a no-brainer.

Reasons for Switching to Lightyear

With Lightyear, you can delegate approvals into groups, so if you have multiple cost centres like the hotels that we do the bookkeeping for, the Chef isn't seeing bills which need to be approved by the Cellarman. Also, you can have suppliers that you don't want everyone to see, so you can select that only certain people see them. As well as multi-level approvals so the General Manager can check off and I as the bookkeeper can check the data is accurate before bringing it into the accounting software. In conjunction with the integration with Xero happens within seconds so you're not waiting for your bills to come across from one software into another.
View all reviews

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