How Lightyear Helps Control Spend
Keeping costs under control can feel like a constant battle.
1. Structured approval workflows
In hospitality, invoices come in fast and often. When every invoice needs the same level of approval, teams get stuck chasing sign-offs. When approvals are too loose or unauthorised, it costs time, money, and confidence.
Structured approval workflows give you confidence that every invoice is checked before money leaves the business. Lightyear makes this easy by letting you build approval workflows that reflect how your business really operates. You can set value-based approval thresholds: invoices under $500 go to the department head, and those over $500 go to the CFO. This is especially important in hospitality. It prevents small, recurring purchases from slowing down operations while ensuring that large supplier payments, contract changes, or unexpected costs receive the right level of financial oversight. You can set approvers by cost centre, department or supplier details.
When an invoice comes in, it automatically routes to the right person. Approvals happen in one place, with full visibility over what’s approved, what’s pending and what’s overdue. Every activity is logged automatically, leaving a clear audit trail. That means less chasing, fewer errors, and complete confidence that spend is controlled before payment is released.
2. Price Increase Detection
In hospitality, supplier prices change often, and not always with notice. A small increase in high-frequency items like food, beverages, or cleaning supplies can quietly add up across venues and weeks. Without line-by-line checks, these increases usually go unnoticed until your margins are already impacted.
Lightyear’s automatic price checker scans your invoices, price-checks each line item against your agreed supplier pricing, and instantly alerts you to any inconsistencies. This gives you early visibility of unexpected increases so you can stay on budget. With full historical pricing data at your fingertips, you can renegotiate with confidence and make sure you’re never overpaying for recurring goods or services without management knowing. You also get a clear view of spending patterns across suppliers and locations, helping you plan and stay on top of inflationary or seasonal cost pressures, rather than reacting after the fact. This means less time chasing mistakes, fewer surprises, and total confidence that every dollar leaving the business is the right one.
3. Fraud Prevention
A large number of invoices from the same suppliers, especially for perishable goods like food and beverages, means it’s easier for fraudulent invoices or payment diversion to take place unnoticed, particularly when bank details change, or invoices arrive from unfamiliar email addresses.
Lightyear helps protect your business by putting practical controls around how invoices are processed. It flags supplier bank detail changes, helping you prevent misdirected payments. Lightyear also highlights invoices coming from email addresses outside your approved supplier list, so you’re alerted to potentially fraudulent submissions. It also adds an extra layer of login security, ensuring that only authorised users can access the system and approvals remain protected. You stay in control of who can see, approve and pay invoices through clearly defined user roles and permissions, so not everyone has the same level of access. Lightyear also detects potential duplicate invoices before payment is made, helping you avoid costly errors. The result is reduced exposure to internal and external risk and stronger protection of your margins.
Final Thoughts
Rising costs mean you can’t afford reactive spend control. An AP automation system like Lightyear provides your team with real-time visibility into where money is being spent. It provides structured approvals, price increase detection, and built-in fraud controls. These work together to protect already-tight margins. The result? Stronger cost control, fewer surprises, and more confidence in every payment, even in inflationary conditions.
Explore how Lightyear AP automation can help your hospitality business.
