Lightspeed Retail

Great integrated system

Comments: 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.

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.

The Point of Sale solution

Comments: Overall, the software does a great job in helping Accountants, managers and front liners in the Retail industry. What's great is that it integrates with ECommerce to be more efficient in selling your products out there, not just from the brick and mortar setup, but in the online as well.

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.

Solid system for retail

Comments: It is capable software system can handle your small retail shop with ease. inventory management, barcoding, point of sale, price tracking, reports etc all work well. It is bit hard to reach for customer service and lots of training required.

Pros:

Software is intact, does not give random errors. you can count on

Cons:

it is a bit hard to settle if you have an inventory at some other software. it would be better to have more sync options.

Not compatible with existing WooCommerce / Terrible Customer Service

Comments: A true business interruption costing us significant time and money!

Pros:

It was so dumbed down that anyone could use it, sadly this also makes it vulnerable to security breaches and theft

Cons:

Almost everything, from being totally mislead in the sales process, squeezed into their processing, ignored and dismissed on support tickets. Terrible service overall.

Alternatives Considered: Square Point of Sale, Clover, KORONA POS and Hike

Reasons for Choosing Lightspeed Retail: QB POS End of life

Reasons for Switching to Lightspeed Retail: The salesman was relentless and lied to me about it's capabilities even with detail Q&A. I was mislead by their white papers and sales process only to be dropped like a hot potato and bounced from department to department with no resolution or solutions. They refuse to escalate anything to a management member.

Bs money grab don't use this system.

Comments: Terrible

Pros:

This was an amazing system until they showed their true colors by forcing me (and others) to pay them $400 more a month if you don't use their payment system. After comparing their prices to my current rates it is cheaper to pay them $400.

Cons:

This company has no ethics. They forced their user base to switch to them to do payment processing. They said it made it easier to do it that way. Complete lie. I pull my sales from them to quick ooms them pull my banking from eleven I to quick books. At no time.e does their system need me to use their payment system but they still are foing to charge an extra $400/month if I don't move to their higher rates. One way or another they decided that they needed more of money.