Light vs Navan
Navan is travel and expense management software: business travel booking, expense reports, corporate cards and reimbursements, synced into the accounting system you already run. Light is the agentic ERP that is the ledger, with expenses, corporate cards, AP, AR, global vendor payments and consolidation in the same system. Switching does not mean reissuing cards: keep your Navan cards and bring their transactions into Light.
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- Remove 4+ tools
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The world's most demanding finance teams run on Light.
Light and Navan, compared
| Feature | Light | Navan |
|---|---|---|
| General ledger and accounting system of record | ||
| Expense capture, reimbursements and policy controls | ||
| Corporate and virtual cards | ||
| Accounts payable and vendor bill pay | ||
| Accounts receivable and customer invoicing | ||
| Multi-entity accounting and consolidation | ||
| Financial statements (P&L, balance sheet) | ||
| One system for spend and the ledger |
Put spend on the ledger
Navan manages travel and employee spend and syncs coded transactions into your ERP. Light's agents capture, code and post expenses inside its own ledger, under your finance team's controls.
Pay every bill from one system
Light handles expenses, supplier bills, customer invoicing and vendor payments on local rails in more than 80 countries. The work stays with the accounts.
Run every entity on one ledger
Light holds every entity on the same ledger, with continuous consolidation and intercompany elimination, so group reporting is current any day of the month.
When to choose Light
Your finance team runs the books
Expenses, bills and payments post straight to the ledger, so current figures are there any day.
Agents do the routine work
They code, match and post inside the controls you set, with every action logged.
One ledger for every entity
Add a company, a country or a currency without adding another system.
“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.
Room to grow
One ledger built to handle billions of transactions across your business.
Trace every number
Open a report and drill straight into the transactions behind it.
Spending, under control
Expenses, vendors and cards connected to your ledger.
Expenses
Collect receipts, approve expenses and track spend as it happens.
Vendors
Keep supplier details, bills and approvals together. Apply your purchasing rules as work moves through.
Cards
Issue cards for employees and vendors. Pay with Apple Pay or Google Pay. Send receipts through Slack, Teams or email.
Frequently asked questions
Is Navan a general ledger?
No. It is travel and expense software that syncs transactions into the accounting system you already use.
Do we have to replace our Navan cards?
No. Add your Navan cards to Light as an external card account and bring the transactions in by CSV upload or a continuous push through the Light API. From there the transactions are handled like Light card spend: cardholders are asked for receipts, AI matches and codes each transaction, and it posts to the ledger. Your cards and your plan stay with Navan. If you later move to Light cards, the card transaction and the ledger entry become one record.
Does Light replace our ERP?
Light becomes the accounting system, with spend built in. It is a different choice from adding a spend tool on top of a ledger you keep.
When does Navan fit?
When business travel booking is the main problem to solve and you want to keep your current accounting system.