Lightspeed POS is a complete point of sale and inventory management tool that simplifies time-consuming tasks like inventory and employee management, so you can focus on taking care of your customers and growing your business. Access detailed sales reports in minutes and easily identify best-selling items or use the built-in customer profiles to provide personalized service that will increase customer loyalty.
Lightspeed Retail Features:
Inventory management
- Easily create product variations such as size, color and material by using the efficient matrix system.
- Combine purchasing, transferring and multiple vendors into one master order.
- Process special orders, layaways and work orders.
- Create, track, and assign serial numbers to products.
- Bundle individual items to sell them as a package.
Free Onboarding & 24/7 Support
- Benefit from a dedicated team who help you get started in a 1:1 session.
- Get live chat, email and phone support with our support heros located around the world.
Employee management
- Intuitive, easy-to-learn interface for your employees.
- Create a simple and logical workflow that suits your business.
- Customizable user permissions give you full control over employees’ access to your system.
- Track sales by employee and access performance reports for your staff.
- Control employee access to information such as refunds, the ability to edit products and pricing, or view sales data.
Reporting
- Track sales and inventory numbers with reports that make it easy to see sales, profits and changes over time.
- Identify opportunities for growth and business improvement.
- Learn which employees are your top performers.
- Get a clear view of your customers’ needs and habits.
- Pull-up end of day reports to access key data that will help you prepare for peak periods and better understand your customers’ needs.
- Access all this data from your device anytime, from anywhere.
Lightspeed Loyalty:
-Highly targeted rewards program with a branded customer-facing web-app to track points.
-Create automated campaigns via SMS and a drag-and-drop email builder.
Lightspeed Payments:
*only available in the US
-Complete sales and get paid without ever leaving your POS. Game changer.
-Built-in PCI compliance and fraud prevention.
Hardware:
- Integrate your system with hardware such as barcode scanners and cash drawers to reduce checkout times.
- Reduce credit card fraud with EMV.
- Accept all major credit cards and Apple Pay®.
Integrated eCommerce:
- Sell in-store and online with Lightspeed’s fully integrated eCommerce solution, Lightspeed eCom.
- Get a centralized view of your inventory, customers and sales data across in-store and online channels.
Our network of over 250 integration partners allows you to tailor Lightspeed to your business’ needs
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Lightspeed Restaurant features
Menu and floorplan:
- Easily create discounts that automatically apply to customer groups, promotional events or specific items.
- Combining tables or moving them around is as simple as tap and drag.
- Present menu items complete with photos, descriptions and prices.
- Make quick updates to your floorplan.
Ordering and payments:
- Smartphone and tablet-based tableside orders are sent directly to the kitchen or bar.
- Cut down on the time it takes for customers to get their orders.
- Easily split or combine bills.
- Offer flexible payment options.
- Servers can take orders directly from the iPad for quicker service and more accurate orders.
- Process gift cards
Offline mode:
- Internet down? Don't sweat it. Lightspeed Restaurant POS works online or offline with a full feature set
- Your data is kept safe even if your terminal is permanently damaged.
- Look up customer information for take-out or delivery orders.
- Liteserver stays up at all times, so operations go on as usual. Once a connection is reestablished, your data is automatically synced.
Integrations:
- Add the Kitchen Display System module for optimized communication between the kitchen and the front of the house.
- Add the Customer Facing Display module to optimize communication between your staff and customers.
- Add the Self Order Menu module to allow customers to place their own orders.
Our network of over 250 integration partners allows you to tailor Lightspeed to your business’ specific needs such as accounting, delivery or loyalty programs.
Pros
The best feature of LIghtspeed is the analytics package. As a senior manager you can spend a lot of time calculating your performance manually in excel. But the Analytics package takes care of all of that. It's easy to see the performance of your inventory, employees and marketing at any time. There are also a lot of apps that work with Lightspeed that make it the most functional POS system I've used. The fact that the ecommerce is integrated as well makes it a great fully integrated system. You could pay a lot more to piece together all the of the systems you need. Or you could spend a huge amount of money creating a custom system.
Cons
There are some small idiosyncrasies like not adjusting sync times for your local time zone. So, yesterday is never accurate you have to wait for the next days sync to get have accurate information. I would also like to be able to have our time management app sync employee time to Lightspeed so we don't have to enter it manually. I've given up on tracking employee hourly performance for this reason. Or if they offered a better time clock management natively that would help. I'd also like them to include the previous year comparisons in their dashboard. And, I'd like to look at seasonal performance rather than just month to month and week to week.
Lightspeed has literally saved us 20-30 hours per week. It connects and communicates well with all of our other systems; including accounting and loyalty platforms.
Their customer and technical support have been extraordinary and have exceeded our expectations. In fact, I think their technical support is the best not just in the point of sale industry but any industry. I find myself wishing other vendors I work with had the same level of support and professionalism.
Lightspeed also listens to their customers; this is evident by requests made in their support area. They actually respond to every request.
As a small business owner, we worry about many things. Lightspeed is not one of them!
Pros
After two other point of sale systems; and after two years using Lightspeed, it is by far the best in all categories.
We had two previous POS systems that fell short in comparison to Lightspeed. Part of our success with Lightspeed is that after two previous point of sale systems; we knew what we really needed and the right questions to ask during the sales process. We submitted specific questions in writing. All of our questions we answered in detail in less than 24-Hours. The sales team knows their products and knew my industry. In fact, most of our distributors catalogs are already pre-loaded into their system.
The transition from our other popular POS was relatively easy, especially in comparison to our previous transition. The Lightspeed team was always there to help and even anticipated needs before I knew them. The inventory system and purchase order system work well.
Cons
The only limitation we have with Lightspeed in related to the fact that we sell a lot of items by weight. This does not create a significant problem for us; but having bulk items accounted for in inventory would be a nice to have. We would love an integrated scale capability. The Lightspeed team was more than willing to help us set up our system to sell bulk items; it works better than another other POS we looked at.
Pros
The features we wanted and needed in or software and love about Lightspeed are:
100% Cloud based solution
True Omni Channel environment
Streamlined processes
Extremely well written software and Knowledge base
Ability to upload vendor price list, descriptions to Lightspeed All of our vendors information is at our finger tips, before we would have to hunt or go looking for this information now it’s just there.
Growing a retail business today can be done with lightspeed, since they have thought out whole process, and added a robust interface of features
A seamless connection to QuickBooks online.
We went out and reviewed, demoed almost 20 POS vendors some that were more specific to our industry and some that weren't and the boiled it down to 3 for all of our staff to review since they were going to be using the software daily and focused on the employee that has the most stress related to their respective job and targeted it first and secondly everyone else
We had to have 24/7 support
The most important feature we needed was it had to empower our team thru the business model we run and grow the team in all aspects of our business
Cons
It took a lot of time to get the information together from our 30+ year old company to go over to lightspeed platform from our old systems, and it was quite a chore for a small company. And not all of our information could come over in the initial installation lightspeed was somewhat limited, we could not bring our customers history and vendor history either. Reporting could be better and should be included with the base product, you will at some point "have to have the reports add-on" it is however an amazing extension on the base product. You have to have a good internet connection since you will be using a 100% Cloud based product, and you will have to have a backup internet connection, so you are always connected.
We went out and reviewed, demoed almost 20 POS vendors some that were more specific to our industry and some that weren't and the boiled it down to 3 for all of our staff to review. We focused on the employee that gets the most stress with their respective job and targeted it first and secondly everyone else and Lightspeed has done this.
We've been open a little over three years. When we first opened, we explored over a dozen Point of Sale systems including Revel, Shopkeep, Vend, Lightspeed Retail, Square, and several others. We decided on Lightspeed, but discovered they didn't have a clear roadmap for Apple Pay, and so we went with our second choice, Shopkeep.
Shopkeep was fantastic for the first year, but as our inventory grew (we carry over 10,000 unique SKUs), it's inventory management features started to feel sluggish, and receiving orders each week started to take a significant amount of time. During our second year, we started reevaluating all the players again, and setup a trial account with Lightspeed Retail.
Certain things seemed counter intuitive at first - if we mistakenly created an item, we couldn't simply delete it, for example. This is because Lightspeed Retail strives to preserve all financial and transactional data; since an item could contain a sales history, it can't be deleted. Instead, it's archived, and can be restored to visibility with the click of a button. Over time, we've come to appreciate this feature, and the sheer amount of data that is provided through the system.
Inventory Counts can be done quickly - grab an iPad and a bar code scanner, and just start scanning items on your slat wall, shelf, or other display area. When you're done, you can review the counts, reconcile them, and get information on shrinkage, etc.
Acquiring product and receiving it is a breeze. We can build our POs in Lightspeed Retail - using trigger points or by simply adding items to an open PO. We can then email that PO directly to our distributor, who processes it. When the items come in, we can quickly receive them either using a barcode scanner, keying in the item counts line by line, or doing a visual confirmation and clicking the "receive everything and do the right thing" buttons. Printing labels with barcodes is a breeze.
What really sets Lightspeed apart is their service. I can honestly say that I have no idea how to setup the label printer on our Lightspeed system, because whenever we install a new laptop or desktop that needs access, I simply chat with Lightspeed support and they remote into our system and do the right thing. When we set our printer up the first time, the print was a little too far to the left for my liking. They tweaked the templates on the fly, with me offering help like "No, a little more to the right" until it was done. They're insanely helpful.
Pros
- Excellent Purchase Order Workflow
- Easy tool to do inventory counts quickly
- (Beta) Import Tool makes it easy to bulk load new items, or update existing ones
- Supports custom fields to add additional information to items (Release Dates, for example)
- Phone and online support is fantastic
Cons
- May seem pricey if you aren't leveraging all the features
- Limited barcode scanner compatibly
- Custom fields are not currently searchable
Overall the software is amazing and the good outweighs the bad and a tested about 10 different PoS softwares when I was shopping around and none of them encompass everything I have mentioned so i know my expectations are very high....which is why I state again...if they added in these features it would make them industry leaders and really a phenomenal PoS system. (its 90% of the way there for me...just a few more features and if would be the best)
Pros
The integration with xero accounting has been a true time saver for my business. It transfers all sales data at the end of the day seamlessly so I don't have to. The ability to use the front end off site has been super helpful as well as it doesn't tie me down to the store and I can do a lot of my work on the go. Creating products, invoicing clients, setting up the main screen custom to what I want is extremely simple once you run through it once.
Cons
Theres a few simple features that are missing from the PoS software which I would like to see integrated and would make it hands down the best in the industry for small businesses.
1) Getting an integrated payment terminal that accepts chip, pay pass and swipe options would avoid any mistakes between manually punching in the amounts on the debit/credit machine and would avoid any back end work after the day closes to be able to balance the day
2) Allowing me to enter the details of the invoices (supplier name, invoice number, total amount being paid, gst, pst, etc.) that are being paid out on a daily basis and having that information transferred to xero would alleviate tons of paper work after the close of the day.
3) There is no way to pull out a month end statement for corporate clients that pay their account once a month. Checks have to be cross referenced manually with the bills that have been put on tab. You should be able to at the very least select which tab invoices are being paid from the list of invoices on the clients account. This would show which ones are outstanding at a glance rather than having to refer back to the paper invoices that the system creates.
4) A front facing screen to display pricing of items being charged, advertisements, and other information is something I have been asking for since day 1 (3 years now). And I would love to see this feature incorporated.
5) Having the ability to offer a discount for a bulk purchase is something that should be automatic.
Lightspeed Retail
(Prices are in USD based on an annual plan, on a per store basis.)
Small package $99 / month
(1 register, 5 employees)
Medium package $169 / month
(2 registers, 10 employees)
Large package $289 / month
(4 registers, 20 employees)
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Lightspeed Restaurant
(Prices are in USD based on an annual plan, on a per store basis.)
Small package $69 / month
(1 POS station)
Medium package $129 / month
(Up to 3 POS stations)
Large package $198 / month
(Up to 5 POS stations)
We're dedicated to building not just the best point of sale, but the best business management tools:
- Desktop & iPad: Process payments on the floor and engage your customers by getting away from the counter.
- Inventory Control: Track your stock, submit purchase orders, and even set up automatic re-order points.
- eCommerce: Extend your retail presence by syncing your existing inventory to your integrated web store.
-Loyalty: Highly targeted rewards program with a branded customer-facing web-app to track points.
-Payments: everything you need to process sales and get paid in one place.
-Accounting: A seamless integration between your point of sale and accounting software for a painless day at the office.
Below are some frequently asked questions for Lightspeed POS.
Lightspeed POS offers the following pricing plans:
Starting from: US$69.00/month
Pricing model: One Time License, Subscription
Free Trial: Available
Lightspeed Retail
(Prices are in USD based on an annual plan, on a per store basis.)
Small package $99 / month
(1 register, 5 employees)
Medium package $169 / month
(2 registers, 10 employees)
Large package $289 / month
(4 registers, 20 employees)
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Lightspeed Restaurant
(Prices are in USD based on an annual plan, on a per store basis.)
Small package $69 / month
(1 POS station)
Medium package $129 / month
(Up to 3 POS stations)
Large package $198 / month
(Up to 5 POS stations)
Lightspeed POS offers the following features:
Lightspeed POS has the following typical customers:
Mid Size Business, Small Business
Lightspeed POS supports the following languages:
Dutch, English, French, German, Spanish
Lightspeed POS has the following pricing plans:
One Time License, Subscription
Lightspeed POS supports the following devices:
iPad
Lightspeed POS integrates with the following applications:
Bitium, Deputy, Justuno, Loyalzoo, Lumiary, Mailjet, Marketman Restaurant Inventory, SimpliField, Stitch Labs, Ximble
Lightspeed POS offers the following support options:
FAQs, Forum, Knowledge Base, Online Support, Phone Support, Video Tutorials
Lightspeed has been great. We have been using it for over a year and it has met my expectations. Whenever I request help, which isn't that often anymore they are quick to respond.