Key Features for Construction
Get control of spending with AP Automation
Whether you’re a Project Manager or Contractor, allow your team members to easily raise Purchase Orders. This will keep your projects on track and automatically route them to the appropriate approver.
Gain tighter control over what your team purchases with automated routing based on values, all while keeping every move documented in Lightyear.
Stay in control of your tax obligations
Lightyear automatically applies VAT/GST to your supplier invoices, ensuring accuracy and compliance.
On-the-go approvals
The Lightyear mobile app lets your team approve invoices and Purchase Orders on the go, speeding up the approval process while you're on-site.
Approvers will also be notified on the app when a task/query is raised, or a document is awaiting their approval.
No more manual data entry
Your suppliers can send invoices directly to Lightyear via email. Lightyear's advanced AI extraction tool pulls line item details from the invoice immediately. The data goes straight into your accounting/ERP system, eliminating the need for manual processes.
Stop overpaying for the same products
Lightyear automatically flags discrepancies in pricing between your supplier invoice and the agreed supplier pricing, alerting you before payment. This helps you prevent overcharges, maintain cost control, and ensure supplier compliance.
Don't pay twice
The high influx of supplier invoices for construction projects makes duplicate invoices difficult to identify. Lightyear automatically detects duplicate invoices and flags them in the approval tab so you don't spend twice for the same products and services.
Customisable approval workflows
Customise approval workflows that match your construction project hierarchies. Multi-tiered approval workflows in Lightyear allow you to allocate invoices to specific projects, job sites, cost codes, and work orders automatically, ensuring accurate job costing and budgeting.
Better inventory monitoring
You can automatically cross-check invoices, purchase orders, and goods received notes to confirm that you only pay for goods that arrive at the job.
Accurate reporting for decision-making
The price of construction goods and services inevitably increases. However, you can keep track of these cost rises and make smarter business decisions to help reduce project costs. With Lightyear, you can gain real-time insights & generate detailed reports across materials, subcontractors, project sites, or other cost centres.
With 7 years of historical data, Lightyear helps you analyse spending patterns, track supplier pricing trends, and optimise purchasing. This helps you improve budget accuracy across all phases of construction project management, negotiate better rates with suppliers, and keep your project costs in check.
Purchase Orders
Get control of spending
Allow your team members to easily create Purchase Orders and automatically route them to the appropriate approver. Gaining tighter control on what your team are purchasing reduces the chances of over ordering.
Send Purchase Orders directly to your suppliers and request acceptance notifications all from within Lightyear.
3-Way Matching
Better inventory monitoring
3-way matching enables you to automatically match invoices against the corresponding Purchase Order and Goods Received Note to ensure you only paying for goods that arrive at your venue.
Line Item Extraction
Automated data at a line item level
Supplier invoices can be sent directly into Lightyear via email. Lightyear's advanced AI extraction tool pulls line item detail from the invoice ready for coding and approval.
Automate your coding to enable fast and accurate reporting at a product level. Identify popular produce for reordering and split costs across multiple venues.
Price Matching
Stop overpaying for the same products
The price of goods and services inevitably increases, however you can keep track of these cost rises and make smarter business decisions to help reduce overheads.
Lightyear automatically flags discrepancies in pricing between the supplier invoice and agreed supplier pricing, alerting you to an increase before payment. You can use this to report on price rises throughout the year and negotiate better rates with your supplier.
Duplicate Flagging
Don't pay twice
Duplicate invoices are common and hard to identify. Don't waste money double paying for the same products and services. Lightyear's AP automation automatically detects duplicate invoices and flags these to your team in the approval tab.
Advanced Approvals
Align your approval processes
Multi-tiered approval workflows mean your team can automate the approval process across the organisation. Faster approvals means faster payments for your suppliers and an overall better relationship. Give your team a boost to negotiate better supplier terms or discounts.
Approval automation workflows can be set up by document value, supplier or keyword, for example venue location.
Mobile App
On-the-go approvals
Give your team the freedom to create Purchase Orders, view documents and approve invoices on the go, enabling smoother operations and avoiding payment delays to suppliers.
During busy period, staff may have to travel between multiple venues, so having the ability to work on the go keeps the accounts payable process moving.
Reporting
Accurate reporting for decision-making
Lightyear's line item coding functionality means you can generate detailed reports across products and services, venues or other cost centres.
7 years of historical data means your team are able to forecast seasonal trends or customer purchasing behavior based on previous spending. This information helps make smarter decisions including availing of discounts for bulk purchasing during busy periods or popular produce, or reducing waste during quieter periods.
With Lightyear, we know exactly where every invoice is at any time and who still needs to sign it off. We can click the link in Xero and look at the invoice instead of going through 100 files to actually find the invoice.
Gaylene Underwood, Accountant
With Lightyear, you just need to get the document in, and it picks up everything for you rather than manually entering every single line. We’d probably need someone part-time by now to help me if we hadn’t started using Lightyear.
Amanda Oxendale, Accounts Admin
Automated AP is the best benefit. Invoicing reading and coding plus bill matching and statement checking are all great. Prior to Lightyear, so much of our time was consumed with data entry.. Now we've saved between 13-15 hours per week. We would advise anyone in hospitality to automate! You'll get back so much time.
Kyle Martin, Pirate Life Brewing
The team at Lightyear have been fantastic from the outset, from onboarding to ongoing support. The software itself it very user friendly, makes our processes much more efficient and eliminates our need for paper in the accounts payable process.
Pearse Mulvenna, Andras Hotels
I think the workflow is really well laid out making it super easy for new staff to pick-up. The ability to cross-check statements against invoices also saves us a lot of time each month. Reporting is great because it is so versatile I can pretty much get any information I am looking for with a couple of clicks. We have much better visibility of costs across the team.
Pippa Evans, 3Sheets
Lightyear has been able to reduce bookkeeping time by between 40-50% purely because of data entry. There is no manual entry now, which has allowed my bookkeeper to get the accounts up to virtually a live situation each month, where previously we would have been 3-4 months in arrears. It is huge for us!
Jonathan Poots, The Cardan
Benefits of AP Automation Construction Business
Cut costs, not corners. Automate your accounts payable processes and keep projects on budget with Lightyear's AP automation solution.
Stronger Supplier Relationships
Reduce disputes, pay timely and improve trust with your suppliers and subcontractors through faster approvals.
Improved Cash Flow Management
Get real-time visibility into your outstanding invoices and expenses, which helps you better forecast payments and avoid unexpected cash shortages.
Audit Readiness
Keep a digital record of all your supplier & subcontractor invoices and approvals for regulatory requirements and easy auditing.
Budget Control
Create custom approval workflows for invoices and POs that match construction project hierarchies to prevent unnecessary spending.
Integrate with leading solutions
Lightyear seamlessly integrates with your existing systems. Whether it’s your accounting software or construction-specific solutions, Lightyear keeps your data perfectly connected. Eliminate duplicate work and free up your team for more value-added tasks.
Trusted by 7,500+ businesses globally
Servicing construction businesses is what we do best. We have over a decade of experience working with businesses just like yours. We've helped finance teams reduce invoice processing time by up to 90% and save thousands annually.
Additional resources
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