Lightspeed Retail Reviews

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.

Alternatives Considered

Clover, Shopify POS and Vend

Reasons for Choosing Lightspeed Retail

I wanted a cloud based integrated system

Switched From

Clover, Shopify POS and Vend

Reasons for Switching to Lightspeed Retail

I looked at a couple of others too that I can't remember. A lot of them had great features, but none of them had all of the features to have a fully integrated system for our customers to shop online or in person. And, none of them had the analytics tools that Lightspeed has.

Pros

Creating items and managing retail is very easy through Lightspeed Retail. The reporting features allow you to make great decisions for your business based on accurate data. Anytime I need help with something or am unsure as to how to do something regarding any feature of Lightspeed Retail, support is only a click away through the helpful chat feature. They are almost always immediate to respond and always kind and patient with any question.

Cons

Understanding how retail communicates with eCom is a little intimidating at first and simply took a minute to wrap my head around how it links together. Discounting could be a little more straight forward too but overall ok.

Alternatives Considered

GolfNow

Reasons for Choosing Lightspeed Retail

There was nothing straight forward or easy about Club Prophet and their retail system. Everything was antiquated and reporting was challenging.

Reasons for Switching to Lightspeed Retail

Lightspeed offered everything we need as a whole for our golf operation including tee sheet management, retail, website, marketing, and more.

Pros

No positive features! Back office not easy to navigate need to be a computer genius, their txt msg instruction is disgraceful.

Cons

Quick to sign you up, their after sales service is disgraceful !! No prioritise when urgent! Have lost sales due to incompetence. Whole system shut down after an upgrade no apologies! Never get emails or response back from management.

Pros

The capabilities of combined and matrix products in which a product can have multiple variants and still be grouped under one parent product

Cons

The tax settings can be hard to understand at a glance

Pros

The fully integrated credit card payments has been wonderful, not having to use two separate systems to complete the sale has been great. Also the integrated inventory between retail and ecom has been great. Sell it in one place and inventory get adjusted across all platforms. Also the ability to use multiple registers at once and complete payments at the same time has been a life saver.

Cons

The additional cost for some of the features in the ecom, such as different layouts for the website that would incorporate things such as reviews on other websites. The limited analytical information you have at your disposal without having to pay for lightspeed analytics.

Alternatives Considered

The Edge and MicroBiz Cloud POS

Reasons for Choosing Lightspeed Retail

Lack of options, no website integration. Multiple registers and credit card terminals.

Reasons for Switching to Lightspeed Retail

Features that were part of the standard cost. No crazy one time fees to import inventory, customers, and vendors. Built in website designer and integrated inventory and payments.

Pros

I tinkered with this software and got ot know this from the inside and out. I like the functionalities as it allows you to break free from the spreadsheet and manual entry. Gone are the days of tallying and doing adjustments on a piece of paper. It has filter functions for reporting, it auto calculates taxes by assigning it in the initial setup, browser printing integration, you can conveniently import inventory from a csv file to your POS system and export those reports in a csv format. The hardware associated to it works seamlessly like the tablets, scanners, and printers. Although , it endorses Apple products, it works perfectly fine with Windows operating systems. It also has a companion product which is called Lightspeed Accounting that is comparable to Quickbooks

Cons

A few bugs are slowly being fixed as each maintenance and update is released, just like any other software. Although workarounds can be done to remedy it, but you'd have to seek assistance from Tech Support.

Alternatives Considered

QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise

Reasons for Switching to Lightspeed Retail

We were after functionalities that Lightspeed can provide. Although both of them are similar, the interface is more user-friendly compared to Quickbooks. And that is important for us, since learning a new tool can be taxing with the time you need to spend navigating and learning it from the inside and out.

Pros

nothing at all, i do not like this software

Cons

Loyalty program, discounts are hard long and aggravating to set up, customer service takes a long time to respond,

Alternatives Considered

Square Point of Sale

Reasons for Choosing Lightspeed Retail

I wanted a more user friendly POS, smaller, more easily accessible

Switched From

QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise

Reasons for Switching to Lightspeed Retail

Because the other ones would not take CBD sales

Pros

The POS itself works great. Easy to add payment options and has optional fields for many aspects of the system.

Cons

Cannot use it for delivery management. The "Service" option seems like it was designed for car dealership maintenance services and requires workarounds to be created for delivery services. It is mainly a retail "Take With" system.

Pros

Simplicity and very user friendly! Best product for 1 store or mulit store operation!

Cons

No Comment. Its the best! I would recommend to anyone in Retail business!

Pros

Easy to access information from sales to margins to reports that really help us optimize our business

Cons

Some of the upload of inventory and how it is titled. Not having a trade in function.

Pros

- ecom and retail link seamlessly
-open and close cashes easy for staff
-each staff has own login to track sales progress and customers
- can limit staffs access to certain tabs that are irrelevant
-painlessly easy to submit orders, and create new product
-can easily provide quotes for potential customers
-easy to do inventory checks from your cell phone, great for purchasing at trade shows or counting stock in warehouse.

Cons

Cons: -Limited integrated payments
-Limited ways to get content linked to other selling platforms
-Blog
-doesn't do penny rounding for cash sales (canada doesn't use pennies)
- creating a work order- we cannot add or remove tabs that show on work orders
-system crashes during work hours, (bugs in system) approx every 3 months, which means we have to use manual receipts and cash only.

Alternatives Considered

Shopify POS

Reasons for Choosing Lightspeed Retail

We were looking at a way of integrating our online inventory to our retail, so our inventory can be managed.

Switched From

Shopify POS

Reasons for Switching to Lightspeed Retail

lightspeed was easier to operate and was primarily pos based, shopify was primarily online based

Pros

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.

Cons

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 Considered

Epos Now, Odoo, PHP Point of Sale, Clover, QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise, ERPLY and Revel Systems

Reasons for Choosing Lightspeed Retail

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

Reasons for Switching to Lightspeed Retail

Had all the features we needed at a great value.

Pros

Nothing, I really have no positive things to say about Lightspeed Retail.

Cons

Apart from the fact that it is cloud based which caused so many connectivity problems (constantly unable to even connect to make sales) it also apparently means that Lightspeed owns all of your data once you no longer have a good standing account with them. What I mean by that is that once you no longer have lightspeed service, you can no longer look at your sales data without paying a $50 a month per location fee to access sales info. If a report didn't completely transfer when trying to download a csv file of a report, to bad. You don't get access to it any more.

Pros

The start up process was easy to follow along. Great tutorial videos and resources to answer the basic questions. Was easy to set up the codes, pricing and inventory organization.

Cons

There was some frustration using matrix's and understanding assemblies. Each business is different obviously... the use of matrix was great at the start but becomes limiting later on for integration to the webstore. Assemblies are cumbersome for automatic ordering.

Alternatives Considered

Square Point of Sale and Shopify POS

Switched From

Square Point of Sale and Shopify POS

Reasons for Switching to Lightspeed Retail

The free trial helped me make up my mind. I had two colleagues using Lightspeed and in speaking to them both are very happy with the product.

Pros

Lightspeed is easy and efficient to operate. From training new employees to hectic busy days, Lightspeed reduces human errors and allows our staff and business to achieve their fullest potential.

Cons

As a relatively small business, it would be nice to have different register modes for convenience without purchasing an add on register.

Pros

*Ability to build system at any location
*Ease of use
*Well produced self help videos
*Ability to delete mistakes
*Helpful technical support team
*Integration with Cloudbeds

Cons

The end of day closing process is not as clear as it could be

Alternatives Considered

Revel Systems

Reasons for Choosing Lightspeed Retail

The switch was not within this company, but in my recommendation to use Lightspeed over Revel. Overall easier to build and train others to allow turnkey management of the system once built. I consult with businesses here to build their POS systems and recommend LS every time

Switched From

Revel Systems

Reasons for Switching to Lightspeed Retail

as above

Pros

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

Cons

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.

Pros

Really like the cloud based flexibility. Also love the syncing ability with most of my main vendors for importing purchase orders.

Cons

Only con is the fear of web being down or my local internet service not working and if that is the case not being able to run my store. This is has never been and actual issue though.

Alternatives Considered

Quickbooks Point of Sale

Reasons for Choosing Lightspeed Retail

We were growing and needed more stations in our store. The cost and clunkiness to do that with Quickbooks wasn't going to work. Lightspeed has made it really easy and seamless.

Switched From

Quickbooks Point of Sale

Reasons for Switching to Lightspeed Retail

Cost and the syncing capabilities with vendors in our industry.

Pros

- The retail POS side works fine
- e-Commerce side works fine

Cons

- Very complicated to customize any forms or reports for your business or not able to customize at all
- Lack of customer support
- Sales person overpromised on what system was capable of regarding our small business needs that were explained beforehand

Pros

The system ties together items, sales, customers, and sales staff seamlessly. This allows us to dig in and review product performances like never before. Using the matrix feature makes creating items with multiple sizes, colors, and fits easy.

Cons

The system crashes. These past few months have been especially stressful with our busy season approaching. The following list is made up of days in which we were not able to take payment from customers anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours.
Monday March 16, 2020
Wednesday Feb 26, 2020
Saturday Feb 15, 2020
Saturday Feb 1, 2020
Thursday Jan 30, 2020
Saturday Dec 14, 2020
Friday Dec 13, 2020
Friday Dec 6, 2020
Sunday Nov 3, 2019
Monday Sep 30, 2019
Thursday July 18, 2019
Saturday July 13, 2019

We've had an email in, with several followups, to our Lightspeed rep for the reassurance these outages will slow/stop. Unfortunately every email has gone unanswered for over a month now. This lack of communication is very frustrating. We're just waiting for an outage on a weekend during our busy season. Being we are locked into a contract we have no way out but are actively searching for an alternative as to not live in the fear of an outage at any moment.

Lightspeed Payments is another spot to touch on. All told, the switch to Lightspeed Payments would cost our company roughly an extra $7,000/year on top of our current processing costs with Vantiv.

Pros

Great reporting, easy to use simplicity. Constantly improving the software, interface, features, etc. It is superb for inventory management. Gift Cards are easy to use, re-use, re-charge, etc. Customer loyalty programs are being integrated, once more are integrated, this platform will be far above the competition.
This platform is great for starting small, or large. It has all the features you didn't know you would need. With constant feedback from customers like myself, they are constantly listening and improving the retail POS systems.
I know I list quite a few things I don't like, but the software's great qualities far exceed the negatives, which may be phased out sooner or later with updates.

Cons

Cloud based, when it has issues, you are stuck with just an iPad or Computer. Nothing can be done with the systems. No sales, no reports, nothing. The Technology division reports that they are working to improve infrastructure, so I hope that happens before the 2015 holiday season. They are a very popular POS system and are growing very fast.

Credit Card readers are subpar with Element Payments, but improving. Plus the EMV card readers are due in a couple of months. I've used both the headphone & lightning connector styles for the iPad. Each have positives and negatives. The headphone card reader wears out if you swipe alot, I swipe approx 25-50/day and its lasted about 8 months and is constant on reading cards. Lightning connector card reader isn't designed to be used while charging your iPad. So if you run 50+ transactions in a day on the iPad, you will need to remove the card reader to charge the iPad mid day, because charging the iPad through the card reader takes so long that the iPad uses power faster than its recharged, so removing the card reader to keep the iPad charged is a nuisance. Also the micro usb charging port on the Lightning Card reader looses its connection like all micro USB connectors typically do with wear. The iPad uses Wifi & Bluetooth all day for the internet and barcode reader, so it drains the power quickly. I may switch to the computer versions for holidays when we are busy and cant be recharging the iPad all the time.

When you create your account, be ready to be charged for each employee after you have more than 7 in the system. If you don't keep track of employee sales, times, etc using the system, then a single pin for each sale will work, but if you want to use all the employee tracking features for sales, time, you have to pay for each employee you add to the system after 7 I believe. I use 9-12 employees off and on, so I have to pay for each one for the full year after #7. The employee's should be included in the package price, up to 15, then have a price structure for the next 5, not each one. It becomes more expensive as you grow as a business and want to keep track of employee data.

It has no commissions structure. So if you want to give commissions, you have to do that manually with your reporting data.

Pros

Looks nice if you spend the time to set it up

Cons

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

Pros

The ease of use for my staff is great. We also love the ability to add purchase orders and receive them with ease. Our old system did not have this. I also like that it has great inventory management. We just did a recent inventory count and that went so much easier than in years past. Also, the reporting is overall very good. It gives you a good insight into your data.

Cons

The Ecom side could use a lot of work. I would love to see a better way to do discounts and markdowns. The way it is set up now is very complicated and makes it a lot harder for us retailers to use. For the retail side, I would love to see a green light button on both the email receipt and email purchase order side. Sometimes I click send email but I can't remember if I actually hit send. A Green/red light would be helpful. Lastly, I would love to see a feature that incorporates a discount on items when receiving a purchase order. Currently, there is a box to input the % discount of $ off but it does not get incorporated into the product cost.

Alternatives Considered

Shopify POS, Vend and Heartland Retail

Switched From

Shopify POS, Vend and Heartland Retail

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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