What is this page about: How your company and legal entities get created, how currency support works, how to set up your chart of accounts and reimbursement categories, how approval workflows work, and how to enable integrations when first setting up your organization in Light.
Setting up your organization in Light is quick, and this guide walks you through it end to end: your company, legal entities, currencies, chart of accounts, reimbursement categories, approval workflows, and integrations. You'll come out the other side with a clean, working foundation.
On this page
- Your company is created during onboarding
- Configure organization settings
- Add legal entities
- Configure currency support
- Set up chart of accounts
- Create reimbursement categories
- Understand approval workflows
- Enable integrations
- Frequently asked questions
- Related articles
Your company is created during onboarding
Your company name and base currency are set once, during your initial onboarding to Light, not from a settings page you can revisit. There's no "Company" or "Organization" settings page for editing these two fields.
Good to know: Your base currency can't be changed once set. Choose it carefully if you operate in multiple currencies, since it drives your consolidated reporting.
Legal entities are configured separately (see below) and aren't part of company creation.
Configure organization settings
The company-wide settings you can change live under Settings (gear icon) → Organization settings. This page has four sections:
| Section | What it controls |
|---|---|
| Company branding | Upload or remove your company logo, used on branded reports and communications |
| Credit automation | Two toggles: auto-allocate remaining credit on bills from vendors, and on invoices to customers |
| Invoice settings | Unit price precision (Default or 4 decimals), and a local-currency tax section entity multi-select |
| User emails | Toggle for sending onboarding/welcome emails to new users |
There's no separate Save button, each change saves automatically as you make it.
Add legal entities
Most multinational organizations need multiple legal entities for tax, regulatory, or operational reasons. Light handles multi-entity operations natively.
- Go to Settings (gear icon) → Entities
- Click + Create entity
- Enter the following details:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Legal name | The registered legal name for compliance |
| Display name | How the entity appears in reports and dropdowns |
| Local currency | The operating currency for this entity (choose from Light's supported currencies) |
| Country | Where the entity is registered |
| Address | Street, city, zip/postal code, country, and state, entered as separate fields |
| VAT number (optional) | For compliance and reporting |
| Business registration number (optional) | e.g., company registration number |
- Click Create
Light automatically assigns each entity a short sequential code (e.g., 001, 002) when it's created. Repeat for each legal entity you need to manage in Light.
Configure currency support
Light supports a fixed set of major currencies (check the currency dropdown in-app for the full, current list).
- Your company's base currency (set during onboarding) is used for reporting and consolidation
- Each entity's local currency is set when you create the entity, and must be one of Light's supported currencies
You can:
- Create cash accounts in any of the supported currencies
- Record transactions in their original currency, and Light stores the amount exactly as entered
- Run consolidated reports that convert everything to your base currency using market reference rates. This conversion happens at reporting time, not automatically at the moment of the transaction.
Tip: Choose each entity's local currency carefully when you create it, based on where that entity operates and which currencies Light supports.
Set up chart of accounts
Light comes with a default chart of accounts template, so you can get started right away and customize it as you grow:
- Go to Settings (gear icon) → Chart of accounts
- Review the default accounts Light provides for your organization
- Add custom accounts by clicking + Create account and entering:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Account number | Unique identifier (e.g., "1000", "4010") |
| Account name | Display name |
| Account category | Standard, Header, or Sum |
| Account group | A grouped classification under headers like Current/Non-current Asset, Equity, Current/Non-current Liability, Cost of Sales, Operating Expense, Non-operating Item, Depreciation & Amortization, Financial Income, Financial Expense, and Tax (e.g., Bank, Card, Accounts receivable, Personnel cost, Interest income) |
| Account status | Active or Disabled |
| Account currency | Required only for cash accounts |
| Entities | Which entities the account is available for |
| Context (optional) | Notes on account usage |
| Aggregation rule | Shown for Sum accounts, to define how they roll up |
| Allow payments from this account | Toggle |
- Organize your chart with header and sum accounts to group related accounts in reports
Migrating from a legacy system? You can import accounts from a CSV, contact support for templates.
Create reimbursement categories
Reimbursement categories map receipts and card transactions to GL accounts:
- Go to Settings (gear icon) → Reimbursement category
- Click + Add category
- Enter:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Category name | e.g., "Office Supplies", "Travel", "Marketing" |
| Account | Which GL account to post to when expenses are categorized here |
| Tax code (optional) | Default tax code for expenses in this category |
| Entities | Which entities can use this category |
| Context | Notes on category usage |
- Click Save
Good to know: Light's AI automatically matches receipts to a category based on the category name. The more descriptive your category names, the more accurate the matching.
Understand approval workflows
Approval workflows in Light aren't created from scratch. Every company starts with 14 pre-seeded workflow types, one for each core business process:
- Bill payment
- Vendor onboarding
- Expense reimbursement
- Vendor card request
- Credit entry
- Purchase request approval
- Journal entry
- Dunning
- Six integration-sync workflows (to/from Salesforce, to/from HubSpot, from Stripe, and HR data into Light from Finch)
- Go to Settings (gear icon) → Workflows
- Click a row in the workflows table to open an existing workflow (the table shows type, trigger, and publish history)
- Edit the workflow in the visual node editor. You can add and connect these node types:
| Node type | What it does |
|---|---|
| Trigger | The event that starts the workflow |
| Condition | Branches based on runtime values such as amount, entity, custom properties, dates, and booleans, using operators like =, ≠, >, ≥, <, ≤, in |
| Approval | Requires sign-off from a person or user group before continuing |
| Timer | Waits or delays before continuing |
| Map data | Transforms or maps data between steps |
| Agent review | Routes the item for AI-assisted review |
| Custom | Specialized logic for a specific action, shown on-screen as the specific action, e.g. "Approve expense" or "Create invoice", rather than the word "Custom" |
- Click Publish to activate your changes
You can't scope a workflow to a specific expense category, cost center, entity, or user role via a dropdown. Instead:
- Each workflow already applies to all items of its type (e.g., the Expense reimbursement workflow governs all expense reimbursements)
- To narrow that further, for example only expenses over a certain amount, or only for a specific entity, add a Condition node inside the workflow
- User roles only appear as approver targets (a user group assigned to an Approval node), not as a way to scope which items the workflow applies to
Enable integrations
Connect your existing tools during setup:
- Go to Settings (gear icon) → Integrations
- Click the Add integration dropdown at the top of the page and pick the tool you want, or click directly into one of the integration cards below:
| Integration | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Slack | Approvals and notifications |
| Microsoft Teams | Approvals and notifications |
| Salesforce | Sync customers, opportunities, and revenue |
| Hubspot | Sync customer data and activities |
| Stripe | Payment processing |
| Airwallex | Business payment accounts |
| Banks | Connect your bank accounts (supports multiple bank feed providers) |
| Gmail | Sync email for receipts and invoices |
| HRM | Sync employee records from your HR system |
| HMRC | Tax filing and compliance |
| E-invoicing | Send and receive electronic invoices |
Follow the authentication prompts for each integration. Most take just a few minutes to set up.
Frequently asked questions
Can I change my company's base currency later?
No. The base currency is set once during onboarding and can't be changed afterward. Choose it carefully before you save.
Where do I set my company name and base currency?
These are set during your initial onboarding to Light, not from a settings page. If you need to change either after the fact, contact support.
How many legal entities can I add?
As many as your organization needs. Each one gets its own local currency, address, and compliance details, and is automatically assigned a short sequential code.
Does Light convert transactions to my base currency automatically?
Not at the moment a transaction happens. Amounts are stored exactly as entered in their original currency. Conversion to your base currency happens when you run consolidated reports, using current market reference rates.
What's the difference between an entity's local currency and the company's base currency?
The base currency (set once, company-wide) is used for consolidated reporting. Each entity's local currency is the currency it actually transacts in day to day.
Can I import my chart of accounts instead of building it manually?
Yes. If you're migrating from another system, you can import accounts from a CSV, contact support for a template.
Can I create a brand new approval workflow?
No. Light provides 14 pre-seeded workflow types covering the core business processes (bill payment, expense reimbursement, vendor onboarding, and others). You customize how each one behaves by editing its nodes, rather than creating new workflow types.
Next steps
Your organization is now configured in Light. Next:
- Add team members and define their roles
- Connect your first bank account
- Start creating invoices, bills, and expenses