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Lightspeed

Last Updated: December 2024

Lightspeed logo

Our Summary

Lightspeed offers point-of-sale services to businesses in the retail and restaurant industries. Its heavier focus is on the retail side, while also establishing a division dedicated to ecommerce retail. Lightspeed was founded in 2012, and as of 2021, the company has burgeoned to over 900 employees and has significantly added to its service offerings. They operate in over 100 countries around the world and have 14 offices, globally. Their leadership is a diverse mix of men and women who work from locations worldwide.

Ease of Use

Lightspeed is incredibly easy to use, according to many of its past and current clients. Their software has been designed to be very user-friendly, so that business employees don’t need to go through extensive training to be able to use it.

Lightspeed’s restaurant application lets business owners design their own restaurant seating layouts, create an online menu and control access and permissions among staff members. Orders can be printed anywhere, which enables orders to be seamlessly sent from the bar or front desk straight to the kitchen. In addition, there’s integration for bar tabs and bill splitting among patrons.

Benefits and Features

Depending upon which type of business you run, you will be using either Lightspeed Restaurant or Lightspeed Retail. Each one comes with its own set of benefits and features, as outlined below:

Lightspeed Restaurant Benefits and Features

  • Build customizable menus with images and descriptions
  • Create floor plans visible by entire staff
  • Create kitchen plans visible by entire staff
  • Build individual employee profiles
  • Process delivery and take-out orders
  • Mobile-ready: Access menu, data and complete ordering system via Android or iOS devices
  • Real-time reporting function to track order progress
  • Customizable employee report building for tracking efficiency and hours worked
  • Daily report function to track sales and cash drawer activity

Lightspeed Retail Benefits and Features

  • Import stock data to the online Lightspeed platform
  • Create discount codes
  • Spreadsheets for updating and editing product data
  • High-def product display
  • Customizable ecommerce templates  
  • Create points-based rewards for customers
  • Customers can build their own wish lists 
  • Manage shipments
  • Integration with shipping apps
  • Built-in SEO tools
  • Create newsletters
  • Email customer notifications
  • Multilingual capabilities in 14 languages
  • Weekly sales reports

Note that while Lightspeed Retail works with a range of retail operations, it really excels with retail businesses with physical inventory, versus drop shipping or digital products. Some examples of retail types that Lightspeed works well with are:

  • Apparel
  • Sporting goods
  • Household goods
  • Gifts
  • Toys
  • Hobby and craft supplies
  • Vaping supplies
  • Smoking supplies
  • Wine or liquor
  • Electronics
  • Jewelry
  • Pet supplies
  • Home décor
  • Furniture

Benefits for Both Retail and Restaurant

There are many Lightspeed features that benefit both retail and restaurant business types. These include:

  • Multiple payment options
  • Customizable inventory management with capability to bundle items with extensive customization right down to
  • P.O. management for vendor tracking
  • Employee management punch-in/punch-out timeclock, employee sales tracking, customized role-setting, etc.
  • CRM functionality to manage customer interactions and data
  • Work order management
  • Multi-site functionality
  • Integrations with QuickBooks, Xero, NimbleSchedule, Booxi, and MailSync and MailChimp

What’s Unique About Lightspeed

Lightspeed is unique in many of its offerings. Business owners can customize and print a wide range of reports on everything from employee productivity to customer behaviors. Profits can be viewed by margin or total revenue. Business owners can even create a visual dashboard with supplied widgets that provide a snapshot of select performance metrics that are most important to them.

Pricing

Setup and updates are offered free of charge. Pricing varies between retail and restaurant.

Retail Pricing (paid annually):

Basic: $69/month

Starter: $99/month

Standard: $119/month

Advanced: $169/month

Pro: $229/month

Restaurant Pricing (paid annually)

POS: $59/month

Add-ons: $12/month and up

Premium add-ons: $39.99/month and up

Contract Terms

Business owners can try out Lightspeed with no obligation for 14 days. After that, there’s a long-term contract that last for 14 months. Hardware comes with a 30-day warranty, after which point the manufacturer’s warranty kicks in.

Customer Support

Lightspeed offers its clients 24/7 support via a toll-free number. There’s also a live chat feature on the website, but it’s a bot, so it’s only capable of addressing the most standard of questions. According to reviews, the customer support is friendly and knowledgeable. Customer support is offered free of charge to help business owners get up and running as soon as possible. Furthermore, all data is stored on the cloud, so backup is secured.

Bottom Line

If you own a restaurant, retail brick and mortar store or an ecommerce store with physical inventory, Lightspeed offers everything you’ll need for point-of-sale software and management. Between its robust platform offerings and its extensive integrations with accounting, scheduling and management software, a business owner could get by with Lightspeed and nothing else. This one is worth considering because of the wide range of features and benefits, the stellar customer service and the robust reporting functionality.

Lightspeed offers point-of-sale services to businesses in the retail and restaurant industries. Its heavier focus is on the retail side, while also establishing a division dedicated to ecommerce retail. Lightspeed was founded in 2012, and as of 2021, the company has burgeoned to over 900 employees and has significantly added to its service offerings. They operate in over 100 countries around the world and have 14 offices, globally. Their leadership is a diverse mix of men and women who work from locations worldwide.

Ease of Use

Lightspeed is incredibly easy to use, according to many of its past and current clients. Their software has been designed to be very user-friendly, so that business employees don’t need to go through extensive training to be able to use it.

Lightspeed’s restaurant application lets business owners design their own restaurant seating layouts, create an online menu and control access and permissions among staff members. Orders can be printed anywhere, which enables orders to be seamlessly sent from the bar or front desk straight to the kitchen. In addition, there’s integration for bar tabs and bill splitting among patrons.

Benefits and Features

Depending upon which type of business you run, you will be using either Lightspeed Restaurant or Lightspeed Retail. Each one comes with its own set of benefits and features, as outlined below:

Lightspeed Restaurant Benefits and Features

  • Build customizable menus with images and descriptions
  • Create floor plans visible by entire staff
  • Create kitchen plans visible by entire staff
  • Build individual employee profiles
  • Process delivery and take-out orders
  • Mobile-ready: Access menu, data and complete ordering system via Android or iOS devices
  • Real-time reporting function to track order progress
  • Customizable employee report building for tracking efficiency and hours worked
  • Daily report function to track sales and cash drawer activity

Lightspeed Retail Benefits and Features

  • Import stock data to the online Lightspeed platform
  • Create discount codes
  • Spreadsheets for updating and editing product data
  • High-def product display
  • Customizable ecommerce templates  
  • Create points-based rewards for customers
  • Customers can build their own wish lists 
  • Manage shipments
  • Integration with shipping apps
  • Built-in SEO tools
  • Create newsletters
  • Email customer notifications
  • Multilingual capabilities in 14 languages
  • Weekly sales reports

Note that while Lightspeed Retail works with a range of retail operations, it really excels with retail businesses with physical inventory, versus drop shipping or digital products. Some examples of retail types that Lightspeed works well with are:

  • Apparel
  • Sporting goods
  • Household goods
  • Gifts
  • Toys
  • Hobby and craft supplies
  • Vaping supplies
  • Smoking supplies
  • Wine or liquor
  • Electronics
  • Jewelry
  • Pet supplies
  • Home décor
  • Furniture

Benefits for Both Retail and Restaurant

There are many Lightspeed features that benefit both retail and restaurant business types. These include:

  • Multiple payment options
  • Customizable inventory management with capability to bundle items with extensive customization right down to
  • P.O. management for vendor tracking
  • Employee management punch-in/punch-out timeclock, employee sales tracking, customized role-setting, etc.
  • CRM functionality to manage customer interactions and data
  • Work order management
  • Multi-site functionality
  • Integrations with QuickBooks, Xero, NimbleSchedule, Booxi, and MailSync and MailChimp

What’s Unique About Lightspeed

Lightspeed is unique in many of its offerings. Business owners can customize and print a wide range of reports on everything from employee productivity to customer behaviors. Profits can be viewed by margin or total revenue. Business owners can even create a visual dashboard with supplied widgets that provide a snapshot of select performance metrics that are most important to them.

Pricing

Setup and updates are offered free of charge. Pricing varies between retail and restaurant.

Retail Pricing (paid annually):

Basic: $69/month

Starter: $99/month

Standard: $119/month

Advanced: $169/month

Pro: $229/month

Restaurant Pricing (paid annually)

POS: $59/month

Add-ons: $12/month and up

Premium add-ons: $39.99/month and up

Contract Terms

Business owners can try out Lightspeed with no obligation for 14 days. After that, there’s a long-term contract that last for 14 months. Hardware comes with a 30-day warranty, after which point the manufacturer’s warranty kicks in.

Customer Support

Lightspeed offers its clients 24/7 support via a toll-free number. There’s also a live chat feature on the website, but it’s a bot, so it’s only capable of addressing the most standard of questions. According to reviews, the customer support is friendly and knowledgeable. Customer support is offered free of charge to help business owners get up and running as soon as possible. Furthermore, all data is stored on the cloud, so backup is secured.

Bottom Line

If you own a restaurant, retail brick and mortar store or an ecommerce store with physical inventory, Lightspeed offers everything you’ll need for point-of-sale software and management. Between its robust platform offerings and its extensive integrations with accounting, scheduling and management software, a business owner could get by with Lightspeed and nothing else. This one is worth considering because of the wide range of features and benefits, the stellar customer service and the robust reporting functionality.

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