Light vs Basis

Basis builds AI agents for accountants, mainly accounting firms and also in-house teams: they run the month-end close and tax returns end to end, plus audit work, to each firm's own templates and review standards, staging work for review and posting approved entries to the ERP you keep. Light is the agentic ERP a company's own finance team runs: the agents and the ledger are the same system, with AP, AR, corporate cards, vendor payments on local rails in 80+ countries and consolidation built in.

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  • 4 week implementation
  • KPMG global partnership
  • Remove 4+ tools
  • 700+ apps

The world's most demanding finance teams run on Light.

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Light and Basis, compared

FeatureLightBasis
General ledger and accounting system of record
Agents that close the books inside your controls, every action logged
Consolidation and eliminations in the system of record
Vendor payments executed from the system
Customer invoicing and accounts receivable
Corporate and virtual cards issued from the ledger
Procurement: requests, purchase orders and approvals

Keep the agents inside the ledger

Basis agents post approved entries to a client's ERP. Light's agents code, match and post inside its own ledger, under your finance team's controls.

Choose who the agents work for

Basis is built mainly for accounting firms serving many clients, with a corporate offering that posts to the ERP you keep. Light is the ledger your own finance team runs for the group.

Go beyond the close

Light includes bills, invoicing, corporate cards, procurement and supplier payments on local rails in more than 80 countries, alongside the accounts.

When to choose Light

The ledger is included

Light is the system of record: spend, AP, AR and the general ledger in one platform, with no ERP decision left open.

Agents do the routine work

They code, match and post inside the controls you set, with every action logged.

One product for all of finance

Ledger, cards, bills, billing and consolidation share one data model, so nothing moves between systems.

“We evaluated several vendors. Light won because it covers our full finance stack, revenue, AR, AP, expenses, and consolidation, without stitching together a patchwork of point solutions.”
TanjaDirector of Finance, Omnea

Built for the daily work

Bills through to payment

Capture invoices, route approvals and pay vendors from the same system.

Uploading a bill to Light for AI extraction

Room to grow

One ledger built to handle billions of transactions across your business.

The Light ledger with live transactions

Trace every number

Open a report and drill straight into the transactions behind it.

Real-time reporting in Light with drill-down

Spending, under control

Expenses, vendors and cards connected to your ledger.

Expenses

Collect receipts, approve expenses and track spend as it happens.

Managing expenses on the Light mobile app

Vendors

Keep supplier details, bills and approvals together. Apply your purchasing rules as work moves through.

Vendor and bill management in Light

Cards

Issue cards for employees and vendors. Pay with Apple Pay or Google Pay. Send receipts through Slack, Teams or email.

A Light payment card

Frequently asked questions

Is Basis a general ledger?

No. Its agents work on client ledgers and post approved entries to your ERP.

Do both products have agents?

Yes. The difference is that Light's agents live inside the ledger they post to.

When does Basis fit?

An accounting firm, or an in-house team keeping its ERP, that wants agents running close work on the existing ledger.

See Light at work

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