Product Updates: Q4 2019 Roundup

We’re approaching the end of another year and decade, but most importantly we’re approaching the end of another exciting quarter for Lightyear. We thought this would be a great time to give you a quick reminder of some of the fantastic updates we’ve released over the past few months (hopefully you haven’t missed them) and a sneak peak into the near future.

Dashboards

Technically we released this in Q3, but we're so pleased with it that we'd like to show you again. We released a new 'Dashboard' feature in September that gives our users a a great visual representation of their companies and workflow. This allows for an immediate overview of any work that needs attention.

Mobile App Updates

This quarter saw the release of some huge updates to our mobile app. We added a new Tasks section, allowing users to approve bill tasks on the go. We have also released a mobile approvals tab, so our users can approve and dispute bills from their mobile. Since the release of our mobile app in May, these were our most requested features, and at Lightyear we listen to our users. Don’t have the mobile app yet? Download it here and get started today!

More customisation

We want to ensure that your Lightyear experience is defined by your business needs, and this means customisation. We’ve added two new columns to Panel 1 and Panel 2. A 'Due date' and a 'Line tax amount' column. We’ve also given our users the ability to add or remove columns as necessary to create their own optimal user experience. And we’ve made it easy too. Just a few quick clicks and your interface is changed.

E-mail suppliers

Found an anomaly in one of your bills? We’ve made raising concerns with your suppliers even easier by giving our users the ability to email their suppliers directly from Lightyear. We’ll even move the bill in question straight to the 'Disputed tab' so you can keep track of its status.

Multi-site ID

Users can now set accounting rules based on unique key words found in the documents they receive in Lightyear. For example, a user may be managing multiple sites under one Lightyear account and receiving invoices from one supplier for a number of these sites. These invoices may need different GL codes or tracking categories. In this instance, the user can set a keyword unique to each site (usually an address) and when detected on an invoice by Lightyear, the set GL codes or tracking categories will be applied automatically.

Other updates and improvements

Data extraction enhancements
Bill/credit note date is now optional - We have removed the requirement for a bill date on our data extraction engine, meaning we can now pull out the rest of the Document data and the user can enter the bill date manually in approvals if there is no bill date available on the document.
Users of cloud software partners (Xero, QBO, MYOB, Netsuite) can now export a list of their GL codes from Accountancy software settings.
In App product update notifications now pop up on screen so you'll never miss a key product update.
Any time a new supplier is created, Lightyear will now automatically populate the bill fields 'Supplier name' and 'ABN' from the Extracted data. Users can still edit the supplier name if they wish to have a more personalised supplier name.
Users can now select their existing companies to transfer bills from within 'Bill transfer'.

Coming Soon

2019 was a huge year for us and we have our sights sets on 2020 being even bigger and better, which means a bigger and better product and more efficiencies for your business. Here are just a few exciting features that are set for release in Q1.

Purchase Order Matching

We have received tons of requests for users to be able to manage their Purchase Order process with Lightyear. We hear consistently that the current options in the market are expensive and unintuitive. So, we are going to build it, and combine our world class data extraction to offer 3 way PO matching! We are aiming to release our Purchase Order module for Lightyear by Q2 2020. Watch this space...

Software Partnerships

Lightyear are pleased to announce some exciting new partnerships that are set to make our user experience even more streamlined. Lightyear will soon be integrating Accountancy softwares Inerva, Fuelsoft and the cloud version of Sage 50. We are also partnering with Inventory softwares Fedelta POS and Impos POS which will allow our users to export their line items from Lightyear to their inventory software of choice to help manage their stock more easily.

Password Authentication

At Lightyear we understand that security is paramount to our users. We will be introducing multi-factor password authentication to increase the level of security and help you to keep your documents safe in our system.

On top of all of this, we have some more mobile app updates for you, including push notifications.

Data Extraction

And, as always, we are still continually improving our data extraction technology.

Refer-a-Friend

With all of the exciting updates we've released, and the ones we have scheduled, the Lightyear experience is continuing to improve for our users. If you're enjoying the benefits of using our software please recommend it to a friend. As the Lightyear family grows, our service will only get better. We have recently added a new 'Refer-a-friend' option to the top ribbon with incentives for successful referrals. Find out more about that here.