Lightspeed Retail

Avantages

The support from Lightspeed is unsurpassed, and we've been in this industry since the early 80's.

Inconvénients

The reports aren't as easy to customize as I'd like to see, and you can't "drill down" on the reports to see the detail that supports the numbers presented.

Avantages

Looks nice if you spend the time to set it up

Inconvénients

Lightspeed has been a horror for us since the start. What we were presented at during the sales meeting made us very excited and happy, but the second the contract was signed, for our 3 locations everything went down hill. I had to pull teeth and send multiple messages and to get our installation done on time. And even at that they finished doing it opening day, and were debugging while we had to serve clients. And that is a whole other story.

The product itself looks good but really does not work for a restaurant. Little things like having a single client pay without closing the full table is not possible. Servers need to figure out all these ways/trick to speed up service without being slowed down by Lightspeed. Items cannot be sent to multiple locations at ones (if something come from both the kitchen and bar like a Caeser with bacon)

The reports are terrible. Items are split up in ways were the they are split if clients have payed 1/2 or 1/3 of the amount. So items like Natchos that are group type items, to no how many have been sold you need to add the full one, the 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/6, .... amounts. So extracting any information takes a long time. Many of the reports have numerical errors in them, and as such they cannot be trusted. Also, tyring to export hourly sales or receipts all have wrong times on them (our restaurant closes at 1am, yet it still show receipts until 5am)

It is not possible to use the inventory option in bar because they can only have units, it

Avantages

It does the work for you. Lightspeed allows you to organize products by brand type really great product.

Inconvénients

It updated last a lot. Whenever apple updates it follows their updates/

Avantages

There isn't much that I like about Lightspeed. I feel that if we didn't have MAJOR problems with the credit card reader it would be easier to think of some of the good aspects of it

Inconvénients

it would be the "customer service" Hands down the most useless customer service I have ever encountered.I wouldn't need the customer service if Lightspeed worked as it should

Avantages

Integration with external services, ease of use

Inconvénients

User interface / experience could be improved

Avantages

It was much easier to learn to use than the previous Onsite. The Retail POS is much less intimidating. User friendly and of course you have access to the worlds greatest (in my opinion) customer service.

Inconvénients

I wish I knew what is possible. I am sure that there are more uses then we are currently using. I need to further learn the system.

Avantages

Onboarding and setup was a breeze - After signing on, we were tasked with a tutorial and onboarding process which, at times, was drawn out, but VERY helpful. It was a great learning tool and incredibly useful. They offered additional resources, but given my stubborn nature I set out on my own. The onboarding process was fairly easy. Painstaking, but simple. There were a few tasks that more difficult than necessary though. Like building the floor plan. I am very meticulous and there were not many options for the design, but I was able to figure it out with assistance from the help desk.

Very customizable layout and very versatile - The overall operation of the system is very easy, but not basic. Ease of use is key to me, especially when training new employees or adding/changing features. Need a new menu item on a certain screen? 30 seconds. Need to reorganize the layout? Just drag and drop. Color code menu items? Sure why not. We change our menu daily/weekly, so this was an important feature to me and my FOH manager. GThe back end and reporting is excellent as well. I was able to show the owner how to access the dashboard and view sales and sales vs goals. I can see how many of (X) item I sold when I ran it as a special, or how much of a certain item I sell week to week. We use it as our time clock, and even my BOH with ZERO knowledge of the system figured it out in seconds.

Inconvénients

The only major complaint I have is that there aren't enough credit card processors integrated in to the system, which is crucial to me.

Avantages

Customer service is available 24 hours. During the pandemic obviously the wait time for help took longer but most of the time it was efficient and easy to implement. I am a technological dinosaur and the learning curve was an uphill battle but customer service always came through for me.
So happy that the payment options finally were added.

Inconvénients

It has taken me longer than I had expected to integrate my existing business with Lightspeed but that could be because of the pandemic and the wait time involved to get help. I am having difficulties getting my website finished so I can integrate with e-commerce.
I wish the billing and administrative department was open on weekends.

Avantages

The system allows vision into your business clearly and quite simply. From the day to day sales to the back office reports, the system is easy to use. In ALL cases where something is not exactly as you envision it, the customer support team is there to help; they are PHENOMENAL and coming from retail, I do use those words quite carefully. We launched our business with Light Speed Onsite and have since upgraded to Retail. Each and every step of the way, the support team has helped with and gone and above and beyond getting me operating thru, from the simplest to the complex. We have no other point of reference of other POS providers, but many times other they are present at tradeshows. From a personal perspective, hearing the sales pitch (what we assume is the best of the best), LightSpeed provides services and abilities well above the others.

Inconvénients

Unfortunately, price does come in to play. The cost, now knowing the system, is well worth it. However, there are other features that we feel should be included (as commonly seen elsewhere) that must be a "add-on" application from outside providers. Interpretation: add on = added costs. Being a small business, the cost of the POS system is significant enough, add on's are almost impossible to also incur.

Alternatives envisagées 

QuickBooks Enterprise

Pourquoi passer à Lightspeed Retail

Services provided. Easiness of use. Clean appearance.

Avantages

I moved from Lightspeed to Clover and it's night and day. I had to piecemeal the Clover system on the back end to be useful and Lightspeed hands you so much. I've since added more and more of the Lightspeed system like loyalty because their tools are amazing. One of the best parts is their customer service. You get quick answers and they go above and beyond. Whether it's something as simple as why isn't my shipping working on ecom or how can I verify my website with the different social media platforms, their FAQs and customer service team never disappoint. If you are thinking about switching, do it. You won't regret it. It's made me more efficient all around. Thanks Lightspeed!

Inconvénients

Lots of different options so it takes a bit to determine what you need to use.

Avantages

I liked the idea of all the integrations

Inconvénients

Terrible customer support. There was no way for me to really evaluate the functionality of the software bc of this

Avantages

We most liked the back of house features it offered. The inventory piece, reporting and ease of use was instrumental in our decision to switch to LightSpeed. We loved the cloud based feature and it allows our staff to work from anywhere on reports, watch sales, reorder inventory, etc.

Inconvénients

There really hasn't been anything about the software that we've found was difficult or wished was different.

Avantages

It's easy to use, It's easy to check on the store activity when I'm not there through my iPhone. It gives detailed reports on categories, vendors and daily sales. I love it because it manages the inventory on my website as well as my retail front. If I have 12 pieces listed on my web store and sell 4 in the store, it will deduct accordingly.

Inconvénients

Nothing really. I wish some of the paid upgraded features were free.

Avantages

Cloud access.
POS scanning.
24/7 tech support.

Inconvénients

The shipping module within eCom is causing my online business to fail. This is an art gallery. We have one of everything. The shipping module expects meta data from your suppliers - non existent in my world. I need to assign a unique shipping amount to each item, and still have the flexibility to offer free shipping on small jewelry and free curbside or gallery pickup. Can't be done. The only workable solution, from a software point of view, is free shipping - which isn't viable for a 150 lb sculpture. The eCom website's ongoing maintenance is very high. Cannot duplicate html pages of similar products. Every item's webpage must be built from scratch. Other than vendor, product and quantity, there is no transfer of metadata from Retail to eCom - dual entry is the only way to run the two systems - expensive solution.

Avantages

We have used Lightspeed Retail for over 2 years now for our seasonal retail business as well as a small wholesale operations that includes manufacturing/production. While small scale compared with many POS users, we have unique and demanding needs and have struggled to find a good software interface. Lightspeed has been a solid performer and worked well for us.

We have a wide range of part time employees with various levels of tech savvy and expertise. Lightspeed is intuitive and user-friendly in basic procedure – checkout, returns, applying discounts, holding or suspending sales and adding customers. Lightspeed was on time with EMV-certified terminal support by the October 2015 deadline and has worked well with Cayan.

Adding products is straightforward. We only use the most basic features of purchase orders and inventory management – we do not rely on Lightspeed to generate orders based on stock but those look like useful features for larger operations.

Reporting is comprehensive and makes it easy to track sales and trends and reports are easily exported to Excel.

Customer service has been prompt and when there are long wait times, you have the option to leave your number and receive a return call. Follow through on issues has been good and while there have been challenges, problems are resolved in a timely manner.

For the products we produce, the “build” function works well to create the pieces from parts in inventory.

Inconvénients

The main unresolved issue I have had with Lightspeed is that it rounds the cost of items to two decimal places. We deal in 100s of pieces that are fractions of a cent and therefore simply cannot track costs. All of these items show as have no cost which is extremely problematic and exponentially so when a piece is created from several “no cost” items. I was told almost two years ago that a fix had been requested by many customers and indeed it was listed several times in the “Lightspeed Ideas” but to my knowledge nothing has been done. If this could be fixed, Lightspeed would be an almost perfect POS solution for us!

Also it is spendy. But I guess you get what you pay for.

Avantages

When it works, it's fantastic. The program is great, but the last year they have had lot's of glitches. The system stalls out everyday. I called and I was told to clean my cache. My computer was 2 days old. Nothing to clean. The did something to my login and now a week later, I have the same issue.

Inconvénients

System Stalls out daily. Thought it was my computer and bought a new one. Turns out, it was Lightspeed.

Avantages

Being able to always be connected to our point of sale via my phone or computer, no matter where I am has been crucial. With Lightspeed being cloud based, I can work from anywhere I want. I am able to ring up customers on my phone if needed, create purchase orders from trade shows, and stay connected to customers at all times.

Inconvénients

There aren't any real issues that we have had with Lightspeed. They are continuing to improve the workflow with Lightspeed eCom which will only make the overall package even better.

Alternatives envisagées 

Shopify

Pourquoi choisir Lightspeed Retail 

We needed something easy to use, something cloud based, and the ability to completely integrate with our website. Lightspeed made this possible for us overnight.

Pourquoi passer à Lightspeed Retail

Shopify seems to be build for a website instead of a retail brick and mortar shop with a website. Lightspeed is perfect for a retailer who wants to take their business online and grow.

Avantages

Integration with my other software, such as Xero, Shopify and payment processor. Use Lightspeed correctly as the record of truth and your life will be so much easier.

Inconvénients

Cannot think of any missing features and Lightspeed is always adding new features and lets you know about these via a Monthly email.

Avantages

I like the ease of minimal buttons and options when running through a transaction. It makes it really simple to train new employees on how to use the system. In the same way, if something is going wrong (whether user or software error) I can easily find an answer for myself.

Inconvénients

Until recently, I had no issues. However, we have been having a lot of issues with a glitch in barcode scanning. Recently, some barcodes will say one item, but scan into the transaction as another. It makes it really difficult to trust a transaction and has caused a few issues with customers. Also, I really wish that there was a way to truly cancel a transaction without it being in the list of active transactions.

Avantages

Decent features, though e-commerce is really weak, as is inventory management (you have to export to excel, do counts, and re-import. None of our staff can figure this out--it is complex and error prone).

Inconvénients

Horrible continuity of product.
Multiple software products are thrown away with customers left hanging with no transition plan.

Avantages

The integration of their POS and e-commerce is awesome.

Inconvénients

Transition of data from Shopkeep to Lightspeed (at Lightspeed’s suggestion) was an absolute HORROR.

Avantages

Intuitive POS system
Employee Management System
Inventory management
Purchase orders

Inconvénients

DO NOT TRUST LIGHTSPEED! I can NOT stress that enough! Buyer beware!
After shopping around for a while, I found Lightspeed and really liked the look of their system. They look like a solid POS, they manage employees and PO's, they even have a solid inventory management system. The main and only concern I had was that it would not integrate with our eCommerce platform MIVA. The Lightspeed sales rep I spoke with several times believed it connected to our e-commerce platform. To finalize the deal, the sales rep gave us till the end of the month (4 days) to sign up for a 20% discount. Since my company was already strongly considering Lightspeed, and he suggested we could work something out if there were problems, we signed a 3-year contract. One week later I received our integrations call to help us get up and running. Its at this time they tell me there is no support for our e-commerce platform. The system is completely useless to us without the connection to our eCommerce platform. Upon learning this, I try contacting my sales rep with no response for nearly a week.
Finally, I receive an email from a "Customer Success Manager" saying he wanted to talk about what had happened. The call was short, he said he will investigate the problem and see if we can break contract.

Avantages

I can change the background? There isn't much to love about this system.

Inconvénients

THe fact that they told me they specialize in using the Ipad, but everytime I call with an issue or question, customer service is surprised im using an ipad.
Also, customer charges and accounts are extremely confusing and difficult to use. You have to acces them through the "Manager mode" which is the least user friendly program I have ever encountered.
The worst part is customer service. When I need to speak to someone I am on hold for at least 15 minutes. Then to speak to a manager is 24-48 hours for a call back, if they even call back at all.

Avantages

Nothing. Maybe the fancy logo. But this not a functioning product for the real world.

Inconvénients

From start to finish. We already used square and was wanting something that integrated into the inventory management from our store so to showcase inventory in live view. They have zero ability to implement all the new technology they promised. They will send you a link to their website (which is public) And let you figure it out. There is zero customer support. We built our entire site exactly in the technology they said to. And that was it. No support. Our web development team had a few simple questions and it was two weeks of non stop calls and emails, and finally we got a sales rep who then said they are sending us to someone else.

Avantages

It is easy to use as you can search for the individual items and put items in categories. It also enable us to put in modifier on each item with additional price too

Inconvénients

Very expensive compared to other POS. Only if the report format can be modified to be a little bit more simpler

Avantages

We use Lightspeed on both the restaurant and bar sides of our business, moreover, the Lightspeed Retail feeds directly to our eCom site. I especially like that there are a lot of inventory management and reporting features on the retail side, and in a perfect world it should be a perfect tool for managing the physical and financial aspects of inventory. There are lots of different ways to handle customer payments, including credit accounts. We do have a few thousand SKUs, but still, Lightspeed POS still seems to work for us.

Inconvénients

I do not like that the interfaces for retail/restaurant/eCom are not the same. Reporting is relatively intuitive within each branch of the software, but it seems like if you're selling a comprehensive package then you would make them similarly intuitive so that going between different parts of one business is seamless. The Lightspeed Restaurant POS reporting seems a bit flawed to me - it does not offer any sort of till reconciliation information, despite the fact that it asks you to count in and count out your till every day.

Avantages

Being able to track profit margins and sales. Knowing what products to keep around and which ones to remove from inventory.

Inconvénients

There are 2 different sales screens and each has their pros and cons…. but this is probably the most confusing thing in the system.

Alternatives envisagées 

Clover

Pourquoi passer à Lightspeed Retail

The setup and Cloudbase of inventory. I can check sells, products, etc. from anywhere.

Avantages

It's incredibly versatile and intuitive; many of our staff were highly adept with it within the first few weeks of implementation. The program opened up a lot of doors for us in terms of what we were able to do with our products, and granted much higher data recovery and trend evaluation than our previous solution. Product creation is smooth and intuitive and the link between Retail and eCom has cut our time in half when it comes to creating new product listings for our web store.

Lightspeed has a few solutions that I haven't come across in any other software in my experience. The capabiltity of creating product matrixes; the ability to easily perform layaways and special orders for customers; the customization options for work flow process are all wonderful additions that have greated increased our business' efficiency.

Inconvénients

There are a few issues with the software when it comes to feature implementation. The program is obviously not designed to be used with a business of our scope and those weaknesses can at times feel nonsensical.

There are many ways in which the Retail and eCom sides seem to be at a disconnect. These are very obviously two separate programs which have been bridged after the fact, but the fact remains that there are still places where those bridges are more cobbled together, or even nonexistent, than they should be.

Avantages

Is very flexible, can be made pretty (if you can figure out the documentation), and does interface with other modules

Inconvénients

The company, the company attitude, and the support it provides to paying customers. The experience during the "Sale" was filled with promises of support and help to move from a new account to a finished "Go-Live" product. Unfortunately, the Lightspeed platform is highly proprietary and therefore, success for most is dependent upon satisfactory support from the company. Here, they fall short of success and short of the promises made. When attempting to work with the company, they fall short again, lacking any of tier 2 or 3 technicians needed to satisfy anything more than a basic question. This leaves so many of the customers without any real ability to make use of what they were sold. This is a company predicated on "Sales", "Sales Pitches" and "Promises", but fails to deliver on what was promised and paid for.

Avantages

I barely used this product. What sold me on it initially were the demos in being able to have a simple interface for my employees on both the retail and restaurant side and a much more detailed backend than square that supposedly integrates nicely with Quickbooks.

Inconvénients

I was very specific about my operating needs. I am also very busy with small children and multiple businesses. The onboarding was described as very simple, and it was not. I needed three systems, and was told that was what I was paying for. They shot me an invoice which I did not read thoroughly enough. They put in fine print on the invoice that the invoice and payment is acceptance or their sales terms which you have to then go to their website to read. Once I asked for the hardware items that they did not send me, they also charged me for a bunch of extra software that were not part of the original sales discussion or even the second sales discussion. They never refunded me for two years of unused software when I decided that I was not interested in doing business with such a shady company. No class.

Avantages

I liked the design of the software and support was very helpful in temporarily solving issues.

Inconvénients

The software. Inventory management tools were non existent. No permanent fixes for the software crashing every day.

Avantages

The customer profile and Inventory Item modules are fairly simple to maneuver. Creating a sales transaction is also fairly simple. The POS system itself integrates nicely with Kangaroo for loyalty rewards.

Inconvénients

The Inventory Asset module is severely lacking in accurate financial reporting and auditing. Historical values change in a daily basis making internal and external auditing impossible. Inventory adjustments do not transfer to the accounting system. System is unable to provide total shrinkage or excess in any given period (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual). As inventory & COGS are an essential part of financial reporting, the lack of system capabilities does not make any sense for retail businesses.

Avantages

We love how easy this was to set up. It does not require buying $20,000 worth of equipment like our first POS system did back in 2008. In fact it can easily be used with just an iPad! We are not computer savvy at all and this system has never confused us or new employees. We love everything about this system! So much that if we ever strike up a conversation with a fellow business owner that mentions they are thinking about a new system you better believe they are going to hear all about this one! You can read all about the features and I could tell you everything that we love or you can just be smart like we were and just try it. If you do want to talk to an actual person that is using the system you can certainly get in touch with one by calling one of the helpful reps at Lightspeed. They will connect you with a business owner that will tell you everything you want to know about their daily experience. It helped us make the decision to pull the trigger and get the ball rolling!

Inconvénients

The only aggravation that I can think of right now happens on the iPad. If I am searching for a specific vendor’s PO. I can’t quickly type the vendor name in. You choose the first letter of the vendor and then you have to arrow down. Pretty dumb to complain about this, I know. It takes seconds really. It also could be me not knowing how to use my computer - I did mention how bad I am.

Avantages

We have been using the old version of Lightspeed (Onsite) for over 10 years, which worked well for our business but had to change over to Lightspeed Retail when the older version was archived . The only pro of the new version, Lightspeed Retail, is that it can be accessed from any computer.

Inconvénients

This POS system is terrible for retail shops doing anything more than a standard sale. It's unintuitive, confusing, easy to make errors and very frustrating. From the way it creates a sale and an order (confusing and vague with order and 'special order' in little tabs), to the way it handles payments for order (money goes on the customer account, not on a specific order), to creating a PO for the order which is overly complex, doesn't link with the order or bring the customer information over, to basic things like needing to email a customer after the sale is finished (TIP - it's not possible!). It’s extremely frustrating and not user friendly at all. In fact, I think the whole system is deeply flawed and unworkable.

After signing up for one year (there wasn't the option to sign up for a shorter period) and trying to persevere for a month, we decided to find a new POS system. (Lightspeed won't refund our balance and kept me waiting for 6 weeks and numerous emails before telling me this.) We are now using Shopify POS and it's brilliant - it's not perfect but it's about three million times better than Lightspeed Retail. No exaggeration :-)

Avantages

Lightspeed is very user friendly and easy to teach employees how to use it. The reporting is top-notch and they even can help you create custom reports which was very important to us. Customer service is excellent and always very responsive.

Inconvénients

It would be great if it came with a built in CRM or integrated with one like Salesforce. It's great for franchisees, as a small business, but for the franchisor it may not have all the functionality needed to roll it out to the entire corporate system.

Alternatives envisagées 

Odoo, Clover et QuickBooks Enterprise

Pourquoi choisir Lightspeed Retail 

Opsuite is not very user friendly, reporting was very lacking and clunky, and for what you get it's very expensive.

Pourquoi passer à Lightspeed Retail

Had all the features we needed at a great value.

Avantages

We have been using Lightspeed for our retail firearm business and this has been very helpful for us in monitoring our sales and inventory. This is great for small businesses like us and priced reasonably.

Inconvénients

None that i can think of. Lightspeed has been great for our business.

Avantages

We have been using Lightspeed POS systems since 2008. As we made our transition from Onsite to the Cloud based server in the Summer of 2018, Lightspeed has gone the extra mile to make sure that their product worked with our relatively unique business. Although not without its stumbles along the way, The reps have gone out of their way to make sure that we are well prepared for whatever may come our way. Both the reps follow-through, attention to detail, and never-ending patience have been exemplary.

Inconvénients

There were some aspects of Retail that were told to us as if they were included, but we soon realized many of the benefits of Retail are add-ons (aka cost extra money) and needed to be heavily jerry rigged to work for our specific business. A lot of small yet important issues, like record keeping of outgoing emails with receipts, or the ability to change a purchase after it has been completed. We used to be able to edit invoices on Onsite, and now even an owner, admin or manager does not have that option. Furthermore, if a customer decides to ship their purchase after it has completed, there is no way to alter the invoice to make it so. Or that we cannot use any of the same labels or gift cards that we once used with Onsite. There are just many small things that were not made clear that we would be losing when we moved over

Avantages

They have 24/7 customer support, their e-commerce platform is integrated with their retail platform.

Inconvénients

They trap customers in a 1 year contract with no way out. Not designed for the furniture industry but they'll force you to keep using it if you're signed up with them no matter what.

Avantages

The frontline customer service agents who answer the phones. I would have to say that 98% of the agents that answered my call were fabulous. Anyone past that frontline defense is a joke.

Inconvénients

Honestly, there isn't enough time in my day to go through the four years of hassle and issues they caused for my business. I know for a fact that Lightspeed is the entire reason why I ended up closing my storefront business. There were so many problems and issues that they were aware of, but because it was only happening to a small few, they wouldn't work on fixing the problems, but were very happy to give me a 'work-around' that usually ended up not working either.

You also can tell the company by the ability to talk to management...anyone past the initial agents who answer the phone. With Lightspeed, they won't let you call and talk to a supervisor. Agents are not allowed to transfer an existing customer to a supervisor or manager, only allows the management to call you. There are no emails available, list of names for various departments, and definitely no phone extensions to get further help. They do not stand by their product, therefore, there is no reason to stand by them.

Avantages

The staff can pull up customer and process sales and returns with ease

Inconvénients

The inventory management is really lacking.
Retailers are not able to bulk update any inventory qty or pricing changes.
The only way to update inventory is scanning one by one or manually entering it into LS.
Doing year end is going to be a big problem, we just came on board and Im asking how we can bulk update and they said we can not.
I ask if we can send the file to them and they said no they can not update in bulk...WHAT??? LOL that is crazy to think we can not do that. So that means we can not have more than one person doing inventory unless we all manually update it into LS.

Avantages

This is my first restaurant ipad based POS system and we love it! It is very intuitive and easy to navigate. Employees training period is very short compared to other "old school" pos systems. Lots of great features!

Inconvénients

The reporting could be more thorough. There are some missed opportunities for lightspeed to be a "one stop shop" software.

Avantages

Initially we had problems getting support because they were very short-staffed. However they have done a lot to improve this aspect and I am confident that every time we call our support person will respond quickly and be able to solve our problem.

Inconvénients

It was a little more difficult to implement than some other systems, so more of a learning curve for users. Also there are some product features that have some limitations at the moment but I think they will be resolved.

Avantages

Really easy to get your hands on the product, tech savvy or not Lightspeed will help you organize and monitor your business. Products creation is quite fast

Inconvénients

Lack of quality apps but once Lightspeed grow big enough I think their will be a good selection

Avantages

Lightspeed has a lot of options and is pretty well integrated. The connection between retail and ecom and loyalty in particular is great. Easy to use, easy to train staff on. Support is geared towards shopkeepers that aren't tech savvy. Look and feel of the software is good. The Retail POS has good reporting, good inventory featrures. The Loyalty add on is a great, easy to use program (with some challenges, so make sure you clarify your needs) and well priced.

Inconvénients

The strategy seems to be "offer a little of everything" - but we have found that means broad functionality, but not deep functionality. In the Retail package, several basic retail store based point of sale features are missing, and according to their customer ideas forum are "Not Planned". Lack of fractional items means you can't use it to sell bulk items or anything where you need to enter a fractional quantity like '1.25'. Promotions and discounts are so limited as to be almost non-existent. While you can take simple % or $ discounts, you can't do item quantity discounts (no BOGO, no case discount), no promotional coupons, very limited automated discounting. Support says "let employees manually add discounts or change prices" which is crazy - a great way to increase shrink and sweethearting at the cash wrap. While you can create custom fields, they don't do anything - can't report on them, can't search on them, can't see them in the transaction. After being impressed with the initial demo (the broad functionality led us to believe it was deep as well) and the friendly sales team, we were super surprised during implementation that we couldn't do 50% of the things we needed to do during the actual cash register sales transaction. The ecom side seems to be more complete - it actually does have item/quantity discounts. The only challenge we have had there is lack of support (without paying extra for a third party add-on) for local delivery.

Avantages

Good looking, can be used easily. The software itself isnt horrible it is the service and the fact that they dont care about you or your business and they will not fix major issues within the software

Inconvénients

Customer service is horrible, your employees can down load all items with costs, profit, margin, and your entire customer base and there is no fix and they don't care.

Avantages

There are some good features for discounting when buying multiple items (2 for $xx)

Inconvénients

Extremely poor design of software.
Not intuitive.
Funcationality we needed was not available. Some work arounds available but very clunky. Support is very slow. Typically 20 min wait for phone support. Customers will not wait that long to make a purchase.
No app available.
I could go on..

Avantages

The customer service is excellent and available 24/7, which is critical in our business. The reports Lightspeed generates helps us better gauge sales and thus make better buys more cost effectively.

Inconvénients

None that I can think of or have seen in competitors.

Alternatives envisagées 

PayPal, QuickBooks Online Advanced et Clover

Pourquoi passer à Lightspeed Retail

They had very competitive rates for the same products and service and in most cases, better.

Avantages

Ease of use (given how flexible and intricate the program is). Browser based for legacy PCs - with multiple browser tabs allowed to easily switch between POS modules. iPad based app for portability to remote sales locations. Even works on smartphones for quick updates and status checks. Cloud based - therefore, access your business information anywhere you are Internet connected. Great support staff - knowledgeable, friendly and insightful. eCom module (additional fee) plugs in seamlessly allows you to sync retail SKUs so that they are public facing via your Lightspeed hosted website. Item sold on-line via eCom is immediately updated to the cloud and reflected in POS (and vice versa).

Inconvénients

While the POS and eCom integration is wonderful, you still must manage inventory on both platforms in order to get the desired results. For example, when new inventory arrives you receive the items through your POS based purchase order. This boosts your inventory and handles new/updated cost, retail pricing, etc., and passes all of this on to eCom. However, you then need to access eCom to update public facing product narratives, SEO related fields, related products, additional category related references, etc.. So, while both programs are great and work together - it will be even better when FULL integration of the two programs is achieved.

Avantages

Lightspeed Retail works on a variety of hardware platforms, including desktop/laptop computers, tablets, and, in a pinch, our mobile devices. It makes tracking inventory between multiple locations easy, as well as receiving and tracking orders. Most importantly, it is intuitive and easy to train staff to use, something that saves our business valuable time and focus. Great reporting that continues to get better.

Inconvénients

I wish the eCom platform could track inventory from multiple locations and that it had seamless accounting integration (specifically with Quickbooks). But with the advances the company makes every year, I believe those may be on the horizon!

Avantages

-cloud based, can access it anywhere
-all of my inventory and prices integrate with my online store
-their loyalty program is modern and very customizable
-their inventory management is detailed and able to hold a large number of skus (i have over 3000 skus)

Inconvénients

They are still working out some technical kinks with their loyalty program. Also, since it is cloud-based, it is run in a browser, which means the speed of the program depends on the speed of your internet. The receipts are a little slow to print once I prompt them, since it is running in a browser.

Alternatives envisagées 

Shopify