Statutory reporting is the one deliverable a finance team cannot negotiate. The filing is due, the format is prescribed, and the numbers have to tie.
At most multi-entity companies it also runs on a parallel track. The management accounts get produced one way, the statutory accounts another, and somewhere between them sits a bridge that exists purely because the 2 outputs were derived from different arrangements of the same transactions. Reporting and visibility come up in 87% of Light's discovery calls, and this is usually the shape of it.
of Light's discovery calls that raise reporting and visibility as a problem
countries supported out of the box, from US GAAP to UK MTD VAT
currencies Tillo revalues and reports across, inside a 5 day close
Why the bridge exists
Trace it back and it is nearly always the chart of accounts.
A structure built for the company that existed 4 years ago encodes things in account numbers that should have been dimensions. Department reporting runs on dedicated GL accounts, so marketing spend needs its own account rather than a tag. Country is implied by which entity's ledger the transaction sits in. Product line lives nowhere, so it gets reconstructed in a spreadsheet each quarter.
Every report that cuts across those axes then has to be assembled rather than queried, and 2 people assembling the same thing 2 different ways is how a company ends up with a bridge.
All Gravy is a clean example, and its fix is the instructive part. Its old chart of accounts predated the company becoming a SaaS business. During migration the team rebuilt it from the ground up, with custom dimensions for department and country in place from day 1. That decision does more for reporting than any tool layered on top, because it makes the cut the business actually wants a query rather than a project.
Multiple standards from the same transactions
A group reporting under IFRS with a US subsidiary on US GAAP has 2 legitimate answers to some questions. Depreciation, revenue timing, lease treatment.
The traditional resolution is a second set of books, or a set of adjusting entries maintained by hand at each period end. Both work and both create a reconciliation nobody enjoys, because the adjustments live outside the transactions they adjust.
The alternative is treating the standard as a view over the same underlying records, so a transaction is recorded once and reported under whichever basis is being asked for. Light supports 19 countries out of the box on that model, from US GAAP through to UK MTD VAT filing. Tillo reports across 4 trading entities in 23 countries and 23 currencies from a single ledger, with FX revaluation running as part of the ledger rather than as a period-end exercise.
Old model
Two tracks and a bridge
Management and statutory reporting derive separately, and a reconciliation exists to explain why they differ.
Light's model
One record, several views
Entity, department, country and standard are dimensions of the same transaction. Each report is a query, not an assembly.
What changes
Filing stops being a project
The statutory pack derives from the ledger that produced the management accounts, so there is nothing to reconcile between them.
The audit consequence
Statutory reporting and audit are the same conversation, because the auditor is testing the path from transaction to filed number.
On an immutable ledger that path is short. Corrections are new entries referencing the original rather than edits in place, so a figure reconciles to the entries as they were posted rather than as somebody later remembered them. The auditor extracts 100% of the journal population through the API instead of sampling, and 3 years later the evidence is identical because it was structured and attributable from the moment of the transaction. Customers at $500M ARR have completed audits on exactly this basis.
The practical difference shows up in what the request list contains. Most of a traditional list is artefacts generated for the audit: exports as at a date nobody can reproduce, spreadsheets named final, screenshots proving a number existed at the moment of the screenshot. Every item exists because the system of record could not speak for itself.
Timeliness is a reporting feature
A statutory pack is late by design and that is fine. Management reporting is not, and the 2 are connected, because both wait on the same close.
Tillo went from 12 days to 5. All Gravy closes 4 countries in 5. Oper Credits stopped consolidating at month-end because it posts as transactions happen. Each of those is a reporting improvement before it is an accounting one: it moves the moment the group can see itself closer to the moment things happened.
At Alva Labs the effect is visible at the other end. A board report that took days now assembles in seconds, because an agent with read access to the ledger and the CRM builds it on request, across the Swedish, Norwegian and UK entities.
"Group entity management has saved every member of the team hours and hours."
Harriet Stewart, Head of Business Systems, Tillo
What to check
Can a report cut by entity, department, country and product without anybody assembling it? If the answer needs a spreadsheet, the chart of accounts is the problem and no reporting tool will fix it.
Can the group report under 2 standards from 1 set of transactions? If it needs a second ledger or a manual adjustment pack, there is a reconciliation embedded in every period end forever.
Does the number in the board pack trace to the number in the filing, in the same system? If it needs a bridge, the company is carrying 2 stories about itself and paying somebody to explain the difference.
See how reporting works in Light, read about the board pack that builds itself, or book a demo.