Lightspeed POS Reviews

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
This software is designed for RETAIL, makes doing business in our Realtor Store simple. Ringing up customer is a breeze. Easy and fast to create a purchase order and receive products to inventory. This software is intuitive and simple to learn. We keep track of our inventory and sales reports, with accuracy. Love the scanners and printed product label option.

Cons
The only negative is the long wait by phone, when we need to speak to support. Definitely worth the wait! All customer service people are polite. They always help us work through our issue with professionalism and follow-up email.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 0/10

Pros
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.

Cons
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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
it's pretty easy, the inventory entering is easy, sales are easy. Reports are good, although none of them integrate, you have to pull 3-4 reports to get what you need unless you upgrade to way more $

Cons
This is an app based program, so there are definite issues using this with an iPad, which is how we run our retail store. The gift card has been a problem from day one which we have reported many time and have an open ongoing unresolved case. We purchased the gift card from the company they recommended and they both point fingers at each other, meanwhile it is a nightmare for our customers who have to sit & wait while we figure out how to make their return or issue a gift card. Still not resolved. The cache fills up and you have to delete the app and reload it or certain functions do not work, like getting a new customers name in the system. The last thing you want to deal with is deleting an ap and reloading it. Customer service on management level is incredibly slow to respond if they ever do. The day to day service is very responsive. The rep also over sold us the program and sold us 2 registers and so we over paid $1,000 a year for 3 years until we caught it. Never heard back from upper management regarding a credit or a few free months. They are very responsive when you are up for review though! ALSO beware of their own integrative payment processing that they tell you will save you a lot of $, not really true.Get it in writing. First of all they will take their fee right off the top daily, so forget trying to reconcile your statement with your daily reports. You will get paid for Wed, Thur & friday the following Tuesday...so your cash flow is delayed. Way slow!!!!!!

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 5/10

Pros
The software is great. The product is nearly complete with features - some add-ons that shouldn't be but overall a great product. Inventory counts and management is fantastic, transfers between our 4 stores in pretty seamless and very flexible, ability to customize labels, receipts, transfers, etc. Terrific. Sales, refunds, on account payments. All A+

Cons
So much down-time. In only 6 weeks of us using the system we had 3 Saturdays with credit card processing failures for over an hour. We've had 2 complete system failures, and today we are experiencing a bad gateway. Another is storing credit cards. We service many racquet sports clubs and do drop-off / pick-up service. Customers want to keep credit cards on file. We had to by a 3rd party add-on in order to do that. While the solution works, it is not 100% seamless, nor does this work at (wait for it....) "Light Speed".

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 7/10

Pros
The amount of data your can sort and digest quickly iCloud storage

Cons
if the processor goes down, you are screwed without a square reader if the internet is down, you need a hotspot

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
When their servers go down you're screwed - No backup / offline mode! You're unable to access the POS or any of your inventory.

Cons
Their servers go down sometimes which makes the POS unusable. This happens a few times a month at least. They say that their uptime is 99% or something like that but that 1% of down time is very damaging when there are lines of people waiting to check out. You cannot backup anything offline, they don't have an offline mode, so when their servers go down, you cant access any of your inventory or run transactions. It's all stored on their end which is extremely inconvenient. You can download all of your inventory into a XLS file so that when you stop using lightspeed you don't loose absolutely everything. It's also a browser based POS which means there is a lag when moving between screens and checking people out. It's only as fast as the internet that you have. The old POS that we had didn't use the internet and was installed on the PC, so we didn't have any issues with down time and were in control of all of our customer files, and invintory.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 4/10

Pros
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.

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

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
3rd Party integrations, 1st party ecom integrations, Cayan payment integration, and the robust special order system that is rooted in the entire platform. These are the big ones but there is many more small things.

Cons
No POS is perfect so there are definitely things that could be fixed. I would say being able to redeem gift cards online is a big one. They know this though and are working on it. Also, being able to see Matrix inventory in regular retail vs just in Analytics but again very small things.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
LS Retail is smart, accurate and quick. Inventory management is great, and reporting is comprehensive. This is everything we need to efficiently run our business. Being a cloud based system, we can track the business remotely.

Cons
LS Retail (coming from LS Onsite), can be a little clunky at first, however once you understand the work flow of the system, it all makes sense.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
The sales tools are very easy to understand and enable us to train new employees quickly on the software. The software also makes managing multiple store locations easy and centralizes order and vendor information for our product managers to use across the company and analytics and insights that the software provides is essential to master the merchandising and inventory needs of our store.

Cons
While Lightspeed offers excellent analytics tools and integrations, most of them come at an additional cost which may be a deterrent for smaller businesses. If you aren't planning on investing a great deal of effort into the growth of your business (i.e. more locations or omnichannel sales) than you may be better served with another option. Also, while there are several integrations and API connections available for the system without designing custom solutions, some POS systems offer greater scalability and integrations with software like third-party e-commerce management tools. When moving away from Lightspeed's products for solutions such as this, costs can quickly add up.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
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.

Cons
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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
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!

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

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

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

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

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
The user interface was my first draw to Lightspeed. Ease of use and mostly easy workflows pulled me in. We also like the numerous integratabtle add ons available. The multi-store feature works well.

Cons
It did not believe in negative numbers but that is changing. We do not like that custom fields don't save the same way as other standard fields.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

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

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10