$bn+
In bills processed annually
AI-Based Line Item Data Extraction: Faster and more accurate data
Lightyear’s AI-powered automated data extraction pulls real-time line item information from your documents without any manual data entry. Get instant, accurate data every time. Lightyear automatically verifies prices and supplier bank details, and routes documents to the right approver, saving you time and reducing errors.
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Get Your Document Into Lightyear
Your suppliers can directly email invoices to your dedicated Lightyear account. You can also scan and upload documents directly into Lightyear via the desktop application, or snap images of your documents via the Lightyear mobile app. This keeps all your invoices captured in one place.
Automatically Extract Data
Lightyear’s AI-based invoice extraction tool, Smart Extract+, gives you the choice of line item, service or summary data extraction depending on your business needs. It can extract data from all types of documents (including images, handwritten notes, poorly scanned documents, unstructured Microsoft Word files, and standard system-generated PDFs) in less than 10 seconds, reducing manual input and speeding up invoice processing.
Automatically Apply Rule-Based Coding
Automate coding at the supplier, bill, line, or product level - the choice is yours. Set rules based on keywords or product codes so extracted line item information can be automatically coded with nominals, GL codes, or tracking categories to help you dissect and analyse your data more effectively.
Automatically Validate and Send for Approval
Lightyear cross-checks extracted data against the bill total to ensure data accuracy. Pre-defined rules automatically route the invoice to the correct approver, customised based on amount, department, location, or supplier details. Approvers review the invoice, and the approved document is clearly visible in the system — no more lost or untracked requests.
Trusted by Leading Accountants and Businesses
Lightyear integrates with the platforms you already use
Connect your ERP, accounting system, and more with pre-built integrations and powerful APIs, so data entered once flows accurately across your entire finance stack. No duplicate entry.
Find out what Lightyear could save you
Calculate how much you could save with the perfect Lightyear plan for you. Our transparent, flexible pricing adapts based on your business needs. Unlimited users and sub-entities on every plan.
Join 7500+ businesses who use Lightyear for Data Extraction
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Customer satisfaction rating
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Users in 20+ countries
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Faster payables processing
Discover more features in Lightyear
Purchase Order
Take control of spending and visibility by managing who can raise POs, who can approve them, and matching them to invoices.
Automated statement reconciliation
Automatically match and reconcile supplier statements in zero clicks.
Approvals
Approve your bills and purchase orders in a multi-tiered, customised approvals workflow.
Automated bookkeeping
Automate the bookkeeping for all your line items and accurately sync them with your accounting system.
FAQ's
What is automated line item data extraction?
Automated line item data extraction is the technology-driven extraction of line item data from unstructured (handwritten notes) and structured data (PDFs) formats. This helps your finance team improve coding accuracy and significantly reduce manual data entry time.
What are the benefits of automated line item extraction from invoices?
Automated line item data extraction provides you with granular visibility into every invoice. This also allows you to run more insightful reports, so you are empowered to make more data-driven decisions for your business. Your team can easily track specific items, categories, or suppliers. It reduces the need for manual entry on complex invoices, cutting down errors and saving your team hours of repetitive work. With line item details, Lightyear can generate a CSV file, which you can then import into other third-party systems, including for inventory requirements. Finally, this level of detail helps you manage product movement, monitor spend, and optimise stock levels efficiently.
How does Lightyear’s invoice data extraction work?
Unlike traditional OCR, Lightyear’s AI-based invoice data extraction tool, Smart Extract+, understands your document's structure and context. For example, it will recognise ‘Supplier Name’ regardless of the location on the document and extract this each time. This will improve data accuracy, particularly in more complex documents.
How long does it take for Lightyear to extract data from invoices?
With Smart Extract+, it extracts data from your payable documents in near real time, in less than 10 seconds!
What types of documents can Lightyear extract data from?
Smart Extract will be able to extract the following document types:
- Bills
- Receipts
- Credit Notes
- Expenses (these will process through the Expenses feature in Lightyear)
Smart Extract will be able to extract the following document formats:
- Handwritten documents
- Poor-quality scans
Can I choose the level of automatic data extraction?
Absolutely, you can choose the level of automatic data extraction that works best for your business. You can choose between line, service and summary level extraction, each of which will populate the relevant fields. The tax and total will also be extracted.
Can Lightyear extract data from documents with foreign currency?
Lightyear can extract a currency if the currency code is available on the document; e.g., AUD, GBP, and USD are accepted currency codes. If no currency code is found, it will default to USD. If this is the case, you can override this via the ‘Supplier’ settings to set the default for future documents.
Which language data can be extracted with Smart Extract?
Smart Extract can read and extract data in languages with the Latin alphabet (example: English, French, German, Spanish etc).
What happens if the document is missing required data?
If a document is missing any required information, don’t worry! Lightyear will still extract the data from the document. The document will stay in the ‘Processing’ stage until the missing details are added. You can simply fill in the missing information and then move the document along for approvals.