Lightspeed Retail Reviews

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

I liked the sales pitch. He promised a ton of stuff that I wanted to hear. Unfortunately none of that stuff ever panned out. Just like a politician.

Here is a list of my complaints about Lightspeed Omnichannel (eCom + Retail PoS) - No E-mail Automation what-so-ever, you'll pay $10/month just for Abandoned Cart Recovery E-mails - Are you a franchise with individually owned locations? No support for that. - You can only add one merchant gateway on your entire account, but you can have up to 100 locations. But if each locations needs a separate...

Read more

Hi Mason, We would like to apologize for your recent experience with Lightspeed. We see that you are currently working with a member of our Customer Success Team who are best suited to get you the assistance you need. We value our customers feedback, and would be grateful to have the opportunity to address your needs and concerns. Thank you, Lightspeed Commerce

Love its ease of use. Cloud based makes taking it on the road to do mobile events a breeze for payment processing and inventory management.

Could have used a little more help importing our inventory but after I figured it out it was easy to do.

We use this to manage cross channel inventory with our warehouse and ecommerce site.

It does not have a direct integration with WooCommerce leading to the purchase of more software for the integration and another third party system. Also you can not send direct invoices with a link for payment processing.

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

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

I love how easy to use it is. It connects my store inventory to my website really easily.

I wish there was an app where I could easily see what sold for the day and what we did in terms of total sales.

Very easy to set up and customize the way your business need.

Some important features are still missing but the development team is quite efficient and open for customer's feedback.

Pos side is very user friendly! Everything is simple.

E-commerce is really lacking. It’s really hard to edit websites.

I have always like the way the system is produced from the Service personnel's prospective & The way CDK tries to customize the product for each of the specific user's or Locations.

I think this system could be improved by having the ability to communicate with & Be programed with available patches to adapt the system to communicate and share info with all other outside vendor's and the coinciding systems that they use. Every company will have separate systems all that are needed for what type of Service it provides. - IE. *( Scheduling a Boat's launch for Valet Service or...

Read more

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.

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.

It's a relatively easy system to navigate. Permission settings are acceptable. Reporting is decent but all very basic unless you purchase Analytics. We use the software for multiple locations but keep separate inventories at each location. We can easily see inventory at other locations, transfer inventory from store to store effortlessly. Creating inventory items is easy as well as setting up pricing rules. Able to customize receipts, labels, and transfer paperwork with some HTML knowledge. Sales are smooth as well. Split payments are pretty easy and relatively intuitive.

No really good way to do rentals. We are a tennis shop and rent/demo racquets. We had to come up with our own solution. B2C eCom is great - and can use the existing inventory; we have it set up as a separate location so we can see all inventory across eCom and retail - until you want to add B2B. It's difficult and expensive to add B2B and have it work the same as eCom. We learned, much later,...

Read more

Integration across POS, eCommerce, Accounting, Data Analytics is excellent. We have been able to increase both sales and efficiency with this system. The accounting feature and its daily export to QuickBooks allows me to spend only a few minutes each day keeping books up to date. It certainly makes year-end a breeze. Lightspeed Analytics is an invaluable resource for forecasting and identifying areas of opportunity. Customer support is available 24/7 and if they aren't able to answer my question immediately, I have received a timely follow-up within a day or two.

There are some work-arounds that I have implemented. It would be nice to have the option for recurring billing and serial number tracking (not just adding a serial number to an item) as well as a better protocol for backordered items on Purchase Orders.

I really appreciate the seamless integration between the POS and the eCommerce. I also really like that this is all web-based, so that a computer can be used for the interface rather than a cash register that will only serve one function. When there is a problem, Lightspeed is usually ahead of me in giving notice that there is one and gives the approximate timing for the fix. Also, if you have both components and the payment processor is down (like at Christmas), you can easily set up the purchase online and your customer can process their goods and walk out of the shop a happy customer.

It feels like the frameworks for the eCommerce should be a little easier to use, but I've had much less robust platforms. Also, I'm still trying to find a better solution for shipping for the kind of shop that I have, but don't actually blame Lightspeed. It would be great if there were a more integrated and less expensive phone app add-on for shopping.

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.

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.

Customer Support is included and accessible Intuitive Useful for heavy amounts of inventory Cloud Based Accessible via multiple operating systems Integrated with Cayan for seamless transition from my previous POS Has extensions that enable enhanced reporting, loyalty and ecommerce integration Updates are included

Frequently Buggy UX issues at times E-commerce integration is through third party Advanced Reporting is an additional cost and is still poorly designed and buggy Long waits for Customer Support Widespread Outages do Occur

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We operate 4 Cannonball Cafés in Jamaica. This is our second year of using Lightspeed. When we bought the business in 2016, we installed another company's system which, after a few months use, revealed it's weakness for use in a multi-unit business. We plodded along for awhile under the "Better to stay with the Devil you know..." philosophy until a sharp eyed customer got very upset because she...

Read more

Have not found anything to dislike about it.

*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

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

I really like that I am able to customize our website and integrate third party apps & APIs easily. And the customer service, the customer service is top notch! Through migration and implementation, the Lightspeed team was right there. At a moment's notice, I can chat with the team or give them a call. Although I may be a one-woman tech team, I have help! It's such a blessing to have a support team for our business. It has been easy to integrate all of our business critical resources and provide a more unified experience for our employees. Employees can access customer data, order data, shipping data, marketing data and product data in one platform. I've been able to customize our store template to our specific business needs and design requirements. It's been a developer's dream.

My main dislike is that I don't have FTP access to my files on LS servers. This would be extremely helpful to optimize our images as needed. I also would like to upload customer data myself. At this time, to upload customer data in bulk, I have to send the data to Lightspeed for import. More options for discounts and coupons would be helpful - BOGO, Buy 2 Get One, or FREE Shipping codes based on domestic addresses only (not international).

Lightspeed POS provided instant inventory, sales, customer and employee data that was missing from my retail business. It was relatively easy to set up and I had lots of support! The amount of information we now have about our retail business is staggering and it allowed us to connect multiple locations which made inventory transfer a breeze!

I had hoped for an integrated Loyalty program from the start (this has now been launched). We were manually keeping track of points for our customers which became tedious and inaccurate quickly. The new Loyalty is a good start but it feels a bit clumsy at times and not as customizable as I would like. Sometimes inventory issues pop up when items are returned. For example, special orders from one...

Read more

I have installed numerous POS systems in my 30+ years of experience. LightSpeed is by far the most comprehensive system, yet easiest system to implement and use. There support mechanism is second to none. If you look your question up in help, there will be documentation to answer your question, and chances are there is a video that walks you step by step through the solution. If you feel like you want to get live help, there chat mechanism is one of the best, better yet, the support people on the chat are the most patient and knowledgeable support people in the business. Simply the best.

I don't have any comments for this section