Lightspeed Retail

Vorteile

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

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

There isn't much I like about the systems ease of use.

Nachteile

It is impossible to speak to any customer service representatives. All they do as an attempt for customer service is to send you articles to read which have nothing to do with the issue you are having.

Vorteile

Fast, all online, easy to import and export between excel

Nachteile

Basic functions simply do not work and have not been fixed after months to years

Vorteile

Easy to set up and initial entry of inventory was very straight forward.

Nachteile

Lack of human support options. We have lost more revenue waiting to speak with Lightspeed technical support that we spent on the system. DO NOT BUY Lightspeed unless your business has only plain vanilla types of customer interactions because you will not be able to reach anyone at Lightspeed for assistance after your get their system..

Vorteile

It's very convenient that it's cloud based, allowing me to access my POS from anywhere. The payment processing is very quick. For commission based employees, it's nice to be able to assign employee credit to different line items on a single sale. The inventory matrix tool is very convenient when it comes to editing wholesale and retail pricing. That's about where the positives end for me in regards to this POS system.

Nachteile

*Individual customers can only have a single sale/layaway/special order at a time. I hope you don't deal with commercial accounts that send their orders to you using separate POs. There's no way to separate different orders from a customer. It all gets put on the same sale/layaway/special order.
*If I send a purchase order to a vendor for 10 items, but that vendor is only able to ship me 5 of those items immediately, and will ship the other 5 once available, I have to delete the 5 backordered items off of that PO in order for the "finished" PO to match the invoice sent by the vendor for the 5 items that did ship immediately. Once the PO is "finished" in retail, I'm unable to edit it or add the backordered items back to it. *So I need to make a completely new PO with those backordered items and reference the original PO in the notes so I can trace it when those backordered items do finally ship.
*There's no easy way to view all customer layaways/special orders and the information/notes within each one.
*The "Company Name" field of a customer account doesn't show up on the customer lists.
*Trying to print labels is a really goofy process.
*I'm unable to change the "ship to" address on purchase orders if I need a product shipped to different locations, example: drop shipping directly to customer.
*There's no way to print a customer packing slip for deliveries or shipments.
*Discounts are applied to total quantity cost of line items, instead of each item individually.

Vorteile

They have 24/7 customer support, their e-commerce platform is integrated with their retail platform.

Nachteile

They trap customers in a 1 year contract with no way out. Not designed for the furniture industry but they'll force you to keep using it if you're signed up with them no matter what.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

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Zuvor genutzte Software

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Lightspeed Retail

Vorteile

Easy to keep track of the inventory, editing from the back end was easy as well.

Nachteile

Interface could be better, sometimes the photo won't load properly and it lags sometimes

Vorteile

It is easy to use and works well for a web based system.

Nachteile

A couple of things:
1. Lack of responsiveness from the company after you purchase it.
2. Beware that you are giving up rights when you use them to process their credit card payments. You are normally provided "appeal rights" for issues related to chargebacks from all credit card companies. Lightspeed has given those rights up for you so you are limited on appealing any chargebacks.

Vorteile

Ease of use, very easy to set up on the back end, great add on's (Loyalty program), ecom is very easy to set up. Able to pull up sales or reports from my phone anytime. Great inventory management very easy to check in merchandise and take inventory.

Nachteile

The breakdown on the sales receipt so it is easier for the customer to read.

Vorteile

I especially like the way Lightspeed makes it easy to manage special orders and purchase orders.

Nachteile

The only issues I have had were with printing, however tech support has been very helpful.

Vorteile

While we are new in the process the head office has been superb in hooking us up with a consultant since we are new in the process of integrating this front end powerful piece with backend accounting software

Nachteile

nothing yet and that speaks for itself we are happy very so far!

Vorteile

The software is easy to learn, readily adapted to a particular retail system. Customer support has always always been quick to respond to any questions.

Nachteile

Have yet to find anything we don’t like about the software.

Vorteile

iPad and desktop systems can functions with the same look/feel/functionality. Can track marketing/how customers heard about us. Can have default line items notes when specific info about a product or delivery option is required; super helpful. Can easily add shipping info to an individual order w/o affecting the master account. Refunds/exchanges are easy.

Nachteile

Lack of flexibility with discounts; must be an exact % or $ from a menu. It has issues printing receipts from a regular printer due to conflicts with browsers. The cash drawer pops open after every transaction even if it's a credit card payment; it's either on or off but not intuitive. It takes a digital signature but doesn't print it out on the receipt. Sales tax has to be selected from a self created menu; better if it was intuitive.

Vorteile

The reporting features
Professional look
Excellent tech support

Nachteile

The grouping of items to sell in a set could be done smoother.

Vorteile

Customer searches, inventory search, inventory uploads

Nachteile

Printing of receipts adding items to a sale finding a sale once it’s been finished, trying to return an item should be easier

Vorteile

The fact that I can properly input my inventory into the system and get up to the second updates is great!

Nachteile

As I know that having a furniture retail using Light speed isn't popular, I expect a few glitches but with the issues that I have, their support team is always able to assist and help solve them.

Vorteile

It has great features, love the cloud based POS I can pull it up anywhere. It is easy to navigate through and if you are not computer savvy it's. okay it is very user friendly

Nachteile

I would like to see some more reports....Inventory and Profit and Loss. I would like to see a mobile app.

Vorteile

Easy to use software. Setting up the basic store was simple. It took a couple of weeks until we wrapped our heads around data input, but once we did and started uploading data from spreadsheets, it was a breeze. The e-commerce site is slick. Easy to use and the finished product looks like a million bucks. Lastly

Nachteile

The one major downfall of this software is the way they treat case-packs. They treat them as boxes and it is very confusing. We decided not to use case-packs because of it.

Vorteile

I found Lightspeed's system to be way more intuitive than other POS systems I have used in the past. This was really important to me as a business owner, because we are going to have to train employees as well. The hours saved with Lightspeed's interface will help pay for itself. Because it is cloud-based, I can easily log in from home or while away when important things come up.

Nachteile

I can't attach a picture to a customer record. I would also like the ability to include a special order information on a purchase order so I can send this directly to a vendor. Also, better reporting for special orders as we do lots of them. I want to see the money I have coming in in the future, not just closed orders.

Vorteile

I'm sure its robust and great software once you learn it.

Nachteile

The learning curve is very difficult, timely, and costly at this time. Looking forward to finally understanding its process. Going on my second month with no hardware or line items setup to go live.

Vorteile

Lightspeed is created for the modern user, a user used to smartphones, the cloud, and speed. There is nothing old school about this produc. It is entirely "new school" and has all bases covered when it comes to what any modern retailer needs for a POS and Inventory Management system. We find it so intuitive to use and the interface is easy on the eyes and easy on the mind. We got up and running on it with almost zero training, because it was that easy to figure out.

Nachteile

There still seem to be a few kinks in the system that are being worked out. Every once in a while we catch a glitch, but it is nothing major.

Vorteile

You do not have to be tech savvy to know what you are doing. Also, they make the software super easy to navigate and add items to the system.

Nachteile

The only thing I did not like was that when we reached out for lessons on how to do certain things, the service we received was not good. The woman had no idea how to answer our questions on the session she was teaching us.

Vorteile

The product is very user-friendly and offers many options for the entire staff to always be hands on at any time of the day. Navigating through the software was easy, and the LightSpeed tech support is always quick to respond and walk us through any questions while setting up our system. There are plenty of advanced tools to give you many options when setting up, which gives you a more advanced platform to grow your business.

Nachteile

No complaints at all. Every aspect of the software has allowed us to manage our business more efficiently.

Vorteile

It is Mac-friendly and pretty easy to navigate. The dashboard element to track monthly sales trends, most products sold, etc. is great.

Nachteile

It's not easy to setup offsite login options. Transferring product data into the system doesn't work very well. Prices get excluded and you have to enter them in as you go about business, which isn't bad.

Vorteile

LightSpeed Pro is the way to go. Cloud is not.

Nachteile

We purchased LightSpeed cloud, which turned out to be a mistake. There is a definite difference between the two options. It looks really cool from the demo and pictures, but once we got involved, it's like a bad dream.

Vorteile

The fact that it is online helps me tremendously. I am not at the store every day, so I can obtain info remotely and assist clerks if needed. LightSpeed techs are very helpful and timely.

Nachteile

Nothing at all. They are very helpful, and I am totally satisfied

Vorteile

Ease of use, with only a few exceptions but the cloud allows me to always be in touch with what is happening in the shop and when needed take the show on the road... (pop up) with ease! Customer service has improved since we started.

Nachteile

I wish there were are few shortcuts..on transferring merchandise between my 2 stores.

Vorteile

It's cloud based and very easy to use. I think they have a bright future ahead of them if they can manage to scale.

Nachteile

Major failure when it comes servicing clients. Called easily over 20 times in 3 weeks to get our problem resolved. API was down for over a month when they changed servers. Unacceptable.