Half a week of consolidation,
down to a data pull.
Cédric Van Heybeeck runs finance across three entities at Oper Credits. That used to mean a week in Excel. Now finance is the company's AI benchmark.
Oper Credits builds AI-driven software that automates mortgage processing for financial institutions across Europe.
The company runs three legal entities — Belgium, Switzerland, and a UK holding — and is now pivoting from a traditional SaaS model into a full AI agent product strategy. Growth is fast, and the complexity that comes with operating across multiple jurisdictions is real: different tax rules, different currencies, different regulatory environments.
Cédric joined as Finance Manager just under a year ago, knowing the finance function had to catch up with the rest of the business.
Cédric Van Heybeeck · Finance Manager, Oper Credits
The problem: Decentralised by default, consolidated by hand.
When Cédric joined, Oper ran three completely separate accounting setups. Bexio in Switzerland. Exact Online in Belgium. In the UK, no accounting system at all, just Excel, books that closed once a year. Each external firm worked independently. Nothing talked to anything else.
By the time the month-end output made sense, investor reporting was already almost a month late. Actuals compared to plan after the fact — in a fast-moving startup, that's barely useful.
Cédric Van Heybeeck · Finance Manager, Oper Credits
The solution: Not Netsuite. Not another heavy ERP.
Cédric knew the category. Netsuite made it to the final two. Every demo sent the same signal: a large system, many screens, process flows built for complexity rather than speed. Being a European product also mattered. American platforms had a reputation, confirmed by references, for falling short on VAT and local compliance. Oper operates in Belgium and Switzerland.
One P&L. Three entities. No spreadsheets.
Before Light, Oper had no real-time visibility into its numbers. Three entities, three external accounting firms, each closing on their own schedule. Cédric had to wait for all three before he could start the manual consolidation in Excel. Every P&L transaction assigned to a cost center by hand.
Light changed both. Consolidation posts automatically as transactions happen. When Cédric posts an entry, Light surfaces GL account suggestions, cost centers, and tax codes based on prior activity.
AP automation
Before Light, Oper used Spendesk for AP. The system worked fine in isolation. The problem was the isolation itself: data had to be migrated into the accounting systems each month, documents lived separately from the GL, and audit trails were a headache. Light's AP flow is built into the GL from the start.
Slack 🤝 Light
Oper's new CTO came from a company running Netsuite. He was, in Cédric's words, extremely enthusiastic from the first time he used the Slack integration. Approving a vendor invoice in the tool he has open all day versus logging into a finance system he'd rarely touch otherwise. The difference landed immediately.
"Our employees only have to go to Slack, send a message with a picture of their receipt, and the system does the rest. They love it. There's a lot less chasing from me involved."
Cédric Van Heybeeck · Finance Manager, Oper Credits
Contracts, invoicing, and deferred revenue
Every Oper client runs a bespoke contract. Before Light, that meant a manual invoicing schedule in Excel, per client, per entity, chased every month. Contract and invoice lived in separate places, connected only by a spreadsheet someone had to keep current.
Because the system knows which period each invoice relates to, it also defers the associated revenue automatically. No manual journal entries, no end-of-month reconciliation between a contract tracker and the GL.
"When it's time for an invoice to be sent out, Light generates it automatically for my review. I simply review and press send."
Cédric Van Heybeeck · Finance Manager, Oper Credits
Finance manager-turned-vibe coder
Cédric's background is purely finance. No technical training, no programming experience. That didn't stop him from building.
Day-to-day, he uses Light's chat function for detailed invoice breakdowns. An invoice split across many line items used to take 10 to 15 minutes. Now he takes a screenshot, opens Light, and asks it to fill in the lines. Under a minute. The finance team now gives internal updates to the rest of the company on how they're using AI. Some of what finance has automated, people didn't even know existed as a task.
"I wrote a Claude skill that uses Light's MCP. At the end of each month I just ask: which accruals do I still need to post? It flags them."
Cédric Van Heybeeck · Finance Manager, Oper Credits
The future of finance. Oper got there first.
Oper's AI agent product is live and going to market. Enterprise client volume is growing, and the complexity that comes with it – bespoke contracts, multiple entities, multi-currency – is handled all through Light. They've even scaled back their use of external support. The finance function that was once the last department running on spreadsheets is now the one the rest of the company looks to as a model for how to work with AI. Cédric and his team are ready for the future, whatever it throws their way.
See Light in action
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