Alva Labs builds the AI hiring system for modern companies. The problem most hiring teams know well: assessment data gets collected, then scattered across tools. When it’s time to decide, nothing connects, and hiring becomes inconsistent. Alva brings define, assess, decide, and improve into one science-backed system, so every hire is made on evidence, not noise. 650+ companies worldwide use Alva to hire with confidence.
With 70 people across Sweden, Norway, and the UK, every department, as Thobias puts it, is responsible for adopting the new way of working.
Thobias Cogrell · Finance Manager, Alva Labs
The problem: three countries. Three systems. One very long month-end.
Thobias managed finance across three legal entities, each running its own local accounting system. Every month-end meant the same sequence: export from Sweden, Norway, and the UK, map each file into a common format, reconcile the differences, and produce something that could go to the board.
The goal was to close within five days. Some months that meant working weekends. The frustration was not that the work was hard. It was that it was easy, repetitive, and consuming the time Thobias needed for everything else.
Day-to-day bookkeeping also sat with an external consultant, so Thobias didn't own the transactions and couldn't move at the business's speed
He asked ChatGPT. Light came up first.
Thobias didn't wait for a sales call. He knew what he needed: an AI-native ERP that automated the repetitive work he'd always believed should be automated, and recentralised his tech stack. So he asked ChatGPT which accounting systems were the most AI-native and automated. Light came first on the list. He ran a comparison and made his decision.
The first demo sealed it. Seeing multi-entity consolidation handled inside a single system, no spreadsheet exports, no formula mapping, was the moment he knew. Light also avoided both extremes he'd ruled out: local accounting systems that couldn't scale, and heavyweight legacy ERPs that took months to implement and forced a company to design itself around the software. Light was agile enough to implement fast and powerful enough to replace the whole stack.
Three entities, one view.
What used to mean exporting files from three different accounting systems, running mapping formulas in Excel, and reconciling the differences now happens in Light. "It feels like running finance for one entity, not three," Thobias claimed.
When a payment moves through the UK entity and needs to be tracked against the Swedish parent, the full path is visible in a single system. No delta hunting. No wondering why the balances do not add up.
Once set up, it runs itself
Alva Labs sells 12-month-plus SaaS contracts. Recognising that revenue correctly, month by month over the contract period, is non-negotiable. Before Light, that required manual attention every month. Now, Thobias sets up the templates once during onboarding. When an invoice is created, Light reads the contract period from the invoice line and recognises revenue automatically across the right months.
The two things that matter most in a finance function are accuracy and speed, in that order. Automated revenue recognition removes the human error risk from the most compliance-critical part of the job. It simply does not get missed.
Thobias Cogrell · Finance Manager, Alva Labs
Report-ready in seconds.
Thobias built a cloud agent with read access to both Light and Alva Labs’ CRM. To produce the monthly management report, he presses one button. Done. The agent pulls all the data, consolidates it, and the report is ready in seconds. What used to take the better part of a working week is now a single action.
The same logic applies to budget tracking. The agent knows the budget, has read access to actuals in Light, and can surface where the company is overspending and why, immediately. Thobias can brief management on actions to take the same day, rather than at the next month-end.
This is the shift Thobias cares about most. Finance built around monthly close is reactive by design. You close the books, look back, and wait 30 days to do it again. Up-to-date books, driven by automation, make the function proactive. The intelligence is there every day, every transaction.
Finance is not going to look the same in a year.
Thobias has a specific view on where this goes. It is not just about saving time. It is about rethinking what the finance function is for. The repetitive, manual work that has defined the role for decades — consolidating data, running month-end, chasing receipts, making journal entries — will be done by agents. Not someday. Now.
His advice to peers is direct: stop accepting the current process as fixed. Evaluate what you actually do each month, be honest about which parts require human judgment and which parts just require hours, and start experimenting. The tools are accessible, the agents are easy to work with, and you don't need to be an engineer to use them. Thobias describes himself as a finance builder.
The goal he is working toward is a zero-day close. Not a target for some future quarter. For next month. With the manual work automated, the biggest blocker is gone.
Thobias Cogrell · Finance Manager, Alva Labs
See Light in action
Ready to cut 80% of manual work? Let’s chat about how Light can hand the heavy lifting to AI so your team can focus on what matters.
