Step 5: Customise your settings
After you've connected to your Accounting Software, you'll need to visit Company Settings and customise your Lightyear account. Simply select Settings > Company Settings from the options on the left of your Lightyear user interface.
The options that appear on the left may differ slightly depending on what Company Settings you have enabled.
Let's take a look at the Company Settings that are available and what they mean:
General
Redirect Email
If your Lightyear account receives an email that does not contain an invoice, we will forward the email to this address so that you don't lose anything. It's best to set this as an email account that you check regularly, just to make sure you don't miss anything.
Make sure that this email address is something other than your @lightyear.cloud address.
Connect business to accountancy software?
Lightyear directly integrates with many leading accounting applications, and we're always expanding our partnership list. Here you can link your Lightyear account with your supported accounting software to ensure seamless invoice data syncing. Connecting to your chosen Accounting Software is covered in Step 1.
Export before Approvals
This setting defaults to No upon set up. Enabling this will allow you to export to your accounting software before you approve a bill. This is handy for those who need to report on real time data. However, if you strictly require approvals before export. Keep this one disabled.
Allow Lightyear support?
When enabled, this will allow the Lightyear Support Team access to your account so that we can provide help with any issues you may have. This is enabled by default, but can be disabled at any time.
Purchase Orders
Purchase Orders allows for the creation, approval, ordering and completion of Purchase Orders.
For a more in depth look at the functionality of this solution, visit our Purchase Orders section.
Invoice Approval Workflow
This is where you can choose the approval settings for your invoices, which are based on the size of your business and how many approvals you would like on each document:
- Single - Invoices are signed off by a single user. This is the quickest and most simple workflow within Lightyear.
- Double Approval - Invoices are initially approved and then signed off by a secondary user to ensure accuracy. You can set Users up to approve invoices, sign off on them, or both.
- Executive Approval - Invoices are approved, then signed-off by either 1, 2 or 3 Executives. After selecting Executive Approval, ssers must be given the Executive Sign-off privilege to perform sign-off.
A user's approval settings can be set up within the Users section.
Internal Departments
With this enabled, you'll be able to set up groups of users and suppliers, allowing you to decide who in your organisation is able to view and approve invoices from specific suppliers.
Approvals by Value
With this enabled, you'll be setting a requirement that bills over a defined amount will require a particular user to approve. This setting requires the Double Approvals workflow as the most basic structure.
You can opt to have this trigger automatically so that all bills, once approved in the Approvals tab will bre pushed through this flow in the Review tab when they meet your set Approval conditions. Alternatively, by disabling the auto trigger, you can Send for Approval on a case by case basis.
Note, you can have up to 2 approval conditions as per the screenshot below. Setting up the second condition can be set as well as the first approver OR instead of the first approver.
Send Bill Task Customisation
Bill Tasks are approval tasks that you can send to other Lightyear users, or externally via email.
- Auto Approve - With this enabled, bills will automatically move to the next tab in the approvals workflow after a bill task is approved
- Manager Approval - With this enabled, a second Bill Task will automatically be sent to a user's Manager, after the user has approved the task.
Keyword rule automation
Keyword Rules Automation allows you to set custom rules up at a supplier level to determine how bills are coded and route bills to certain approvers based on a keyword, this could be a "site ID" , a Purchase Order reference or any uniquely identifiable string of characters. An in depth look at configuring this can be found here.
Price Checking
Sick of being overcharged? If you upload an agreed price from your supplier, Lightyear will automatically check the prices on each invoice received and alert you to any discrepancies. A full guide on the Price Checker can be found here.
Inventory/POS
If you're using a separate application to keep track of your inventory, Lightyear can export inventory data to help make sure your stock levels are accurate and up to date. Click here for more information.
Supplier Authorised Domain List
To see a list of all Authorised Email Domains for Mapping, or add new Domains, click the + Add Supplier Domain button. Click here for full details about this feature.
Sender Email
If utilising Lightyear's email functionalities i.e. Email Supplier for Disputes, Supplier Statements, or to generate Purchase Orders, you can define both the email address that the Bill/PO is sent from, as well as the default email address the supplier will reply to.
Enabling this setting allows Lightyear to send external emails on behalf of users directly to Suppliers. They will appear to come from the email entered in External Email Address, which is sent through Amazon Web Services (AWS) using the SMTP feature within. Full information on how this works can be found here.
Prior to using this feature, you will be required to verify the email address to ensure it is a valid email and you confirm it is to be used for external emailing. Enter your email address and a link will be sent by AWS for you to click for verification. The status of that verification will then be reflected back here in Lightyear.
Once you've adjusted your settings as needed, click 'Update Settings' to save your changes.
Purchase Orders
The Purchase Orders tab within Company Settings allows you to configure details related to the sending of POs.
PO Transaction Numbers
Tthe PO Prefix and numerical sequence is locked, beginning at PO 0001 and increasing sequentially with each Purchase Order sent. This will be opened up to allow for customisation for users who already have a PO process, or would like to have a unique Prefix.
Delivery Addresses
This setting allows for the input of default delivery addresses, which will be presented in a dropdown box when creating a Purchase Order.
To add an address press "+ Address" and input the delivery details.
Form Customisation
Form Customisation allows an image file to be set, which will appear on POs sent to suppliers.
Supplier Email Settings
The Supplier Email Settings allows for the customisation of the communication with the supplier.
The Subject and Body fields will define the default values in the email sent to the supplier. Don't worry, this can be manually adjusted for each PO if needed!
"Auto send supplier order email" will generate an email to the supplier once a Purchase Order is confirmed. For businesses that primarily use POs for internal reference only, this can be switched off.
"Enable supplier response link" provides a URL to the supplier that they can use to Accept or Decline the PO, and add a response message if needed.
Auto BCC PO
Here you have two settings that can be enabled.
"Sending Users Email" will Auto BCC the user who has Ordered the PO and emailed the supplier.
"Specified Email(s)" will Auto BCC the users who have been entered in the adjacent field. Up to 10 emails can be entered in this field, once you have entered one, click the enter key on your keyboard to enter another one.
PO Bill Match
Enable this setting to complete your Purchase to Payables process with our world class 3 way matching at a line item level.
Here, you can define the requirements that need to be met. i.e. PO Number, Product Code, etc. You must select at least 1 criteria. Your options depending on the related fields are:
- Exact - needs to be exact match to the selected field
- Contains - doesn't need to be exact but contains details from the selected field
- Variance - for any fields with a number value e.g. unit cost, you can also set a variance by percentage
- Variance by Supplier - according to the variance you have set in your Supplier > Product List settings
By activating this setting, you will notice that line items in your bills/purchase orders will be numbered and a checkbox will appear at the line item level to indicate the matched status of your line items.
What's the difference between Matching Criteria vs Suggestion Criteria?
Choose how tight or flexible you want the rules to be.
In the pictured example above,
- With the Matching Criteria, you're essentially saying that a line item needs to have one of these fields to be considered a match e.g. PO Number OR Prod Code OR Unit Cost OR Amount. Therefore these are very flexible rules for PO Matching
- With Suggestion Criteria, you're saying that you want matches that meet ALL criteria, e.g. PO Number AND Prod Code. Therefore these are tightening the results displayed for PO Matching.
You can only select Suggestion Criteria options when the Matching Criteria column is first selected
You can also opt to Auto match full suggestions or Auto completing POs if they're matched to enhance your automation settings by selecting Yes. If you prefer to validate every item, then select No to opt out of these automated actions.
NEXT STEP: Now, you've got Lightyear customised just the way you want, let's download the mobile app next for approvals on the go
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