How KeyShot Automated Global Finance with Light and Avalara
The Danish SaaS company KeyShot unifies its global finance operations with an AI-driven platform and automated tax compliance, achieving real-time consolidation, a leaner team, and scalable growth.
Martin Strid
on
October 1, 2025
Customer Snapshot
Company: KeyShot (3D rendering SaaS)
Industry: Software (Product Visualization)
Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR): $30M+
Entities: 3 (2 in Denmark, 1 in USA)
Finance Team: 12 people
The Challenge
KeyShot, a 150-employee SaaS company, had outgrown its fragmented finance setup. The team relied on E-conomic, Dinero, Excel, and a handful of point solutions for expenses, payroll, and approvals. Consolidating across Denmark and the U.S. required hours of manual work, and the lack of integration left finance with no single source of truth.
CFO Jeppe Bygholm saw the problem clearly: “The finance team has used all the various tools… and then heavily depending on Excel like everybody else - old school finance.” Multi-entity consolidation was slow and error-prone, and compliance across jurisdictions added more overhead.
The logical next step, adopting a major ERP, didn’t make sense. “You can either go really small on the E-conomic side, or you have to go to NetSuite, SAP, Microsoft… there’s really nothing in between,” Bygholm explains. ERPs were “too complicated… too big, too slow… rigid, non-compliant in Europe without a lot of workarounds.” For a fast-scaling SaaS company, ERPs were the wrong fit.
The Solution
KeyShot turned to Light, an AI-native all-in-one finance platform, with Avalara’s tax engine built into Light. Together, they gave KeyShot exactly what it needed: a single platform for AP, AR, GL, expenses, subscription management, reporting, US sales tax and real-time multi-entity consolidation, without the bloat of an ERP.
With Light, all upstream systems feed into one ledger: Salesforce (CRM), Chargebee (subscriptions), HiBob (HRIS), and Synergy (payroll). Finance no longer needed to stitch together multiple tools.
“We don’t use anything else… we’re doing all day-to-day finance in Light,” says Bygholm.
Avalara solved one of KeyShot’s biggest headaches: multi-jurisdiction tax compliance. With entities in Denmark and the U.S. and customers worldwide, tax rates and rules were constantly shifting. Avalara automatically updates VAT, U.S. sales tax, and compliance workflows inside Light. Every invoice is accurate, every jurisdiction covered; no manual updates, no chasing changes.
Implementation was collaborative. As one of Light’s earliest wall-to-wall customers, KeyShot co-developed features with Light’s team. “We come with a lot of hands-on experience on what you need from a modern finance system, and Light can enhance that with modern tooling and AI,” Bygholm says.
The Results
Instant Consolidation
What once took days in Excel now happens instantly. Denmark and U.S. entities are consolidated in real time, giving the CFO live visibility into global finances. “Now we have a robust solid fundament which can take us really, really a long way,” says Bygholm.
Scalability Without Headcount
Light and Avalara automate the heavy lifting of bookkeeping, reconciliations, and tax compliance. Bygholm estimates the setup can handle up to 5x growth with minimal new hires: “I bet we can get to $100 million in ARR without adding many more resources to it.”Lean, Higher-Value Team
Automation has eliminated repetitive accounting work. “All the manual work, all the repetitive work has gone away with Light,” says Bygholm. KeyShot has already shifted one role from bookkeeping to financial controlling; a shift toward more skilled, strategic finance work. “We have already changed one person from a traditional accountant/bookkeeper role into a financial controller with more bandwidth,” says Bygholm.Better Employee Experience
Employees interact with Light in Slack, Teams, or the Light app to check invoice status, submit expenses, or query policies. “It takes a lot of pressure away from finance and speeds up service to the organization,” says Bygholm. The result is finance that feels instantly available to the entire company.
Looking Ahead
KeyShot’s finance foundation is now built for scale. The company plans to layer in more proactive AI, approvals, compliance checks, predictive cash flow, and eventually add FP&A, confident that Light’s clean, consolidated data will feed it seamlessly.
“The ambition is to change how we do finance… we can automate this, or we can put AI on top of this. That is what I really find exciting,” Bygholm concludes.
Read the full story about when KeyShot got Light here: https://light.inc/keyshot
About KeyShot
KeyShot is a Danish SaaS company and the global leader in 3D rendering and visualization software. Its platform is used by brands like Apple, Porsche, and Nike to bring products to market with photorealistic speed and accuracy. With 150 employees and $30M+ ARR, KeyShot helps companies shorten design cycles and innovate faster.
About Light
Light is an AI-native finance platform that unifies AP, AR, GL, expenses, and reporting in a single automated ledger. Built for multi-entity, high-growth companies, Light replaces legacy ERPs and fragmented stacks with a faster, more scalable system.
About Avalara
Avalara offers the world's most advanced tax and compliance platform powered by AI. For more than two decades, Avalara has developed one of the most expansive libraries of tax content and integrations in the industry, supporting over 43,000 businesses and government entities across more than 75 countries. The company's purpose-built AI agents automate end-to-end compliance processes with greater precision, from tax calculations and return filings to exemption certificate management and beyond.