Abacum Integration

What is this page about: How Light shares your ledger data with Abacum, the financial planning and analysis platform, through a dedicated Amazon S3 bucket. This page covers how the connection is set up, what Light exports, how often it refreshes, and how to read the CSV files you receive. Light's team sets up the Light side, and you connect from Abacum.

For the wider list of systems Light connects to, see Integrations Overview.

At a glance


Platform	Abacum, financial planning and analysis
Kind of connection	One-way file export over Amazon S3
Direction	Light writes to the bucket, Abacum reads from it
Set up yourself	Light's team provisions the Light side. You enter the credentials in Abacum
Refresh	Once a day, overnight
Data covered	Ledger actuals

How the connection works

Light writes CSV files to an Amazon S3 bucket that belongs to your company alone, and Abacum reads from that bucket. Light provisions both the bucket and the credentials that go with it, so the Light side of this connection is arranged through your Light representative rather than in your own settings.

Your credentials are unique to your company and reach your bucket only. If a key is exposed, contact Light support to have it rotated.

Setting up the connection

Contact your Light representative to request data sharing with Abacum.
Light's team provisions a dedicated S3 bucket for your company and configures which data exports to it. Both steps are manual, so allow time.
Light gives you three values: Access key ID, Secret access key, and S3 bucket name.
In Abacum, open Integrations.
Select Light via S3 and click Connect.
Enter the Access key ID, Secret access key, and S3 bucket name Light gave you.
Click Connect to Amazon S3.

Steps 4 to 7 happen in Abacum's own interface, so Abacum's documentation is the reference for those screens.

Your first files arrive within a day of setup. An empty bucket a day later means the export configuration on Light's side is incomplete. Contact Light support to finish it.

What Light exports

Light writes two kinds of CSV file into your bucket.

Ledger reports. One file per configured report, per posting month. Light supports Balance Sheet, Trial Balance, Income Statement, Cash Flow, General Ledger and VAT reports.
Ledger transaction lines. Your GL transaction lines by posting month, enriched with entity names and your custom properties.

Which reports arrive in your bucket depends on the set Light configured for your company, so the number of files varies. Ask your Light representative which reports you are set up for, or to change the set.

The export covers actuals. Your budgets and your chart of accounts stay in Light.

How often the data refreshes

Light exports once a day, overnight, currently at 02:00 UTC. Each run re-exports the last 12 posting months and writes one file per posting month per dataset, so a correction to any month in that window reaches Abacum the following night.

Reports run from the current date, which puts a given month's report in your bucket on the 1st of the following month.
Transaction lines run from the previous day.

Which postings Light leaves out

The transaction-line files cover your day-to-day postings. Two kinds of entry sit outside them:

Year-closing entries, the entries that close a financial year.
Elimination offsets, the counter-postings Light generates to cancel out inter-company transactions. The original transactions stay in the file.

Your reports include both.

Reading the CSV files

Files are UTF-8 encoded and comma-delimited. Light wraps any value containing a comma, quote or line break in double quotes, and doubles embedded quotes.
Dates use ISO format, YYYY-MM-DD. Currencies use ISO 4217 codes.
Debits carry a positive sign and credits a negative one.
File names end with the posting month, as yyyy_MM.csv. A July 2025 file ends 2025_07.csv. The text before that is a prefix Light sets for your company, so it stays the same from month to month.
Report files open with a date column holding the posting month's closing date, which lets you stack months into one table. Transaction-line files open with id and carry posting_date.

Reconciling against your reports

Your reports are the authoritative figures. Reports are consolidated and include year-closing entries and elimination offsets, and the transaction-line files exclude both, so the two datasets answer different questions and will not always agree.

The gap shows up on accounts those entries touch. Retained earnings is the common example, along with any account involved in inter-company eliminations. Build the parts of your Abacum model that depend on a closing balance from the reports, and use the transaction lines for the detail behind a movement. If you need the two to tie out exactly, contact Light support to check it against your configuration.

FAQ and troubleshooting

My bucket is still empty a day after setup. What now?

The export configuration on Light's side is incomplete. Contact Light support and they will finish it.

Can I set this connection up in Light myself?

Your Light representative arranges the Light side, and you enter the credentials Light gives you in Abacum.

Which reports will I receive?

The set Light configured for your company. Balance Sheet, Trial Balance, Income Statement, Cash Flow, General Ledger and VAT reports are all supported. Ask your Light representative to add or remove one.

Does Abacum receive my budgets?

The export covers actuals. Your budget data stays in Light.

Why don't my transaction lines add up to the report totals?

Reports include year-closing entries and elimination offsets, and the transaction-line files exclude both. Treat the reports as the authoritative figures.

How far back does each export go?

Every run re-exports the last 12 posting months, so a correction to any month in that window reaches Abacum the following night.

One of my access keys has been exposed. What should I do?

Contact Light support to have the key rotated, then enter the new values in Abacum. Each set of credentials reaches one bucket only.

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# On this page

# At a glance

# How the connection works

# Setting up the connection

# What Light exports

# How often the data refreshes

# Which postings Light leaves out

# Reading the CSV files

# Reconciling against your reports

# FAQ and troubleshooting

# Related articles

On this page