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Lightspeed POS is a retail point-of-sale system that’s designed to be quick and easy for retailers of all sizes. It automates the checkout process, tracks inventory, manages orders and more using blockchain technology.
The “best pos system 2022” is a review of the 2022 Lightspeed POS. The article reviews how it works, what the advantages are, and what retailers need to know about it.
Lightspeed Retail is a prominent cloud-based POS software that is often used by brick-and-mortar stores with large inventory or a large number of SKUs. Lightspeed is one of the top POS systems for small companies because it gives outstanding stock management and analytic insights at a pricing point that small businesses can afford ($79 per month).
Pay a visit to Lightspeed Retail.
Lightspeed Retail’s Recommendations
Lightspeed stands out among the POS choices on the market for its powerful and granular Management of Inventory tools, which make it simple to handle big volumes of items and keep track of incoming and exiting goods. It provides inventory reports that not only display the data but also provide key takeaways and suggestions, as well as graphics, tips, and instructions on how to interpret the data.
Lightspeed provides a sophisticated ecommerce platform that challenges independent ecommerce solutions like Shopify and BigCommerce, in addition to being a top POS software business. It’s now simple to connect your online shop to your POS system and control all of your sales channels from a single dashboard.
Lightspeed excels at the following tasks in particular:
- Lightspeed is our top option for premier retail POS inventory systems, receiving a 4.43 out of 5 rating in our POS inventory software evaluation. Product tracking, bulk import, and editing features, as well as a configurable matrix inventory, make it simple for storefronts with a large number of SKUs to manage their inventory.
- Lightspeed provides a powerful ecommerce platform with centralized Management of Inventory for multichannel merchants with several locations or huge product catalogs wishing to expand into online sales. It’s one of our top selections for the finest multichannel POS systems, with a 4.55 out of 5 rating in our tests.
- Lightspeed is a cloud-based POS system that can operate on any computer, making it ideal for retailers seeking for an iPad POS. For ringing up items on the sales floor or processing orders curbside, the program comes with an iPad app and a mobile card reader. Lightspeed is one of the most highly rated iPad POS systems, with a 4.06 out of 5 rating in our review.
- Lightspeed’s sophisticated Management of work orders capabilities make it ideal for highly specialized and niche businesses, such as jewelry, repair, bike, and electronic stores, as well as any merchant that offers custom orders, repairs, or related services. Because of its age-verification features, Lightspeed Retail is also our preferred solution for vape stores.
When Lightspeed Retail Isn’t the Right Fit
- New storefronts and stores with a limited product selection may not need all of Lightspeed’s functionality and may be better served by a more simplified mobile POS system.
- Firms on a budget: Free POS systems may be a better alternative for new and small businesses that don’t need complicated Management of Inventory features and are seeking for the most cost-effective solution.
- Grocery businesses, convenience stores, cafés, and coffee shops, for example, need perishable products management, ingredient-level monitoring, menu item development, and native local delivery options, which may be found in a more industry-specific POS system.
Overview of Lightspeed Retail
Pay a visit to Lightspeed Retail.
Retail Pricing for Lightspeed
Lightspeed Retail offers three price options. Each subscription level provides additional capabilities while offering limitless items and transactions with built-in payments. The pricing shown below are for a single register; additional registers cost $29 per month each. Every package also includes a complimentary payment terminal. Custom packages may be negotiated for enterprise-level and high-volume clients.
*Pricing plans are based on Payments at Lightspeed-enabled accounts.
**An extra $29 per month per location is charged for additional locations (includes register)
Payments at Lightspeed
- Payment processing with a fixed charge is built-in.
- For chip, tap, and swipe payments, the rate is 2.6 percent plus 10 cents.
- For keyed-in payments, the rate is 2.6 percent plus 30 cents.
- Payments made without using a credit card
- Retailers who handle more than $250,000 get volume savings.
- Chargeback help and dispute resolution were offered.
- End-to-end encryption that complies with EMV requirements
- Lightspeed Subscriptions offers recurring and membership billing options.
Lightspeed is one of the many POS systems that now includes built-in payment processing. For many small companies, this is a terrific solution since it simplifies operations by allowing you to deal with only one IT provider for POS and payments.
Lightspeed connects with various alternative choices, including Worldpay triPOS, Cayan, Element Express, Mercury, Tyro, BNP, and Concardis, if you choose to utilize a third-party payment processor or operate outside of North America. This alternative, however, usually comes with higher monthly software expenses.
Retail Hardware at Lightspeed
Lightspeed is a browser-based point-of-sale system that may be used on any computer. It also comes with an iPad POS program, allowing you to utilize an iPad as your primary register or to conduct transactions on the sales floor or at the curb.
Businesses may utilize their own hardware or buy Lightspeed’s kits and individual products. iPads are offered separately from PCs and displays. Lightspeed offers two starter kits for new businesses, with prices ranging from $500 to $1,000 depending on the model and version of each piece of equipment.
- USB receipt printer, cash drawer, and USB scanner are included in the desktop hardware package.
- LAN receipt printer, cash drawer, Bluetooth scanner, iPad stand, and receipt printer are included in the iPad hardware package.
Lightspeed isn’t like other POS systems in that it doesn’t force you to use their proprietary hardware. It’s great because it works on any computer, laptop, or iPad. This flexibility significantly lowers your beginning expenses and enables you to choose the gear that best suits your needs. Furthermore, you will not be left with inoperable gadgets if you need to transfer systems in the future.
Features of Lightspeed
Lightspeed Retail is a versatile point-of-sale system for various sorts of retail establishments. Lightspeed is designed specifically for small to medium-sized businesses who desire all of the tools they need to grow and compete with chain retailers.
Lightspeed’s major attractions are its robust inventory and analytics capabilities, but it also offers a very good ecommerce platform with integrated marketing tools and an omnichannel customer loyalty program. The biggest disadvantage of Lightspeed is that, when compared to POS systems like Square, all of these functionalities result in a crowded and sophisticated interface as well as a premium price tag.
Lightspeed includes a lot of Management of Inventory capabilities, which might make navigating the UI a little difficult. (Photo courtesy of Lightspeed)
Register & Checkout
With barcode scanning and a product search capability directly on the checkout page, Lightspeed makes the checkout process simple. You may search for items not only by name and product number, but also by keyword, making it simple to find what you need. The cursor will default to the item field when you start a transaction, so if you start scanning or entering in items, they will be immediately included to the sale, which is not the case with many previous POS systems.
Another wonderful Lightspeed checkout feature is that you may quit the transaction at any point to look at other aspects of your POS system, such as your inventory log or customer list, and then return to finish the sale. With Lightspeed’s checkout procedure, you may pay with gift cards, layaway, on-hold, cash, cheque, credit, debit, and NFC mobile wallet payments, among other choices.
As you make sales, Lightspeed also allows you to tie a customer to the transaction, establish customer profiles, and add custom notes to each transaction. You may also apply discounts to specific goods and whole sales, but you’ll be limited to the discounts you’ve previously put up in your preferences. By restricting the discounts that apply, you can guarantee that your personnel only apply legitimate discounts and don’t make any promotional mistakes. The following discounts are available:
- a percentage off
- Get one free when you buy one.
- Seasonal discounts
- Discounts for VIPs
- Giveaways
- Donations
- Shipping is free.
Management of Inventory
- Matrix inventory that may be customized
- Purchase ordering is built-in.
- Over 3,000 vendor catalogs are already pre-loaded.
- Tracking serial numbers and SKUs
- Low-stock notifications in real time
- Tools for bulk import, editing, and downloading
- Keep track of the finished goods.
- Management of work orders
- Keep track of your unit costs.
- Price changes and price rules may be made in bulk.
- Control of granular variants
- Returns management that is automated
- Return of the vendor
- Syncing across many locations
- Catalogue of integrated supplier networks (over 3000 vendors)
- Mobile access is available.
- Pricing in bulk
The POS system’s sophisticated inventory capabilities are offered with every plan—even the Basic package—despite Lightspeed’s somewhat higher price tag than the competitors. There’s a valid explanation behind this. Lightspeed’s extensive inventory management and reporting capabilities, among other features, set it apart from competing POS systems. Unlike Square or Shopify, Lightspeed is designed to help you manage enormous sales and order volumes by organizing and tracking large amounts of inventory.
Its software includes real-time stock counts based on transactions across sales channels, low stock warnings with adjustable reorder points, complete inventory catalogs with rich product descriptions, and options to arrange goods with tags and categories, among other features. In order to measure joint performance, you may also generate and track serial numbers and/or SKUs, as well as manage bundled or kitted items. Lightspeed will also present you with suggestions and critical takeaways on the analytics tab, which breaks down all information about your inventory.
Want to try out Lightspeed’s Management of Inventory with the software’s 14-day trial? Upload our downloadable inventory list to Lightspeed’s inventory so that you can experiment with all the tools that Lightspeed has to offer.
With real-time data and analysis, Lightspeed makes inventory easier to grasp. (Photo courtesy of Lightspeed)
With bigger inventory amounts and order management tools, Lightspeed’s unique features truly shine. You may handle items bought in bulk but sold individually, such as water bottles or build-your-own six-packs, using the POS system. With its built-in buy order forms and Tracking of orders, as well as its linked supplier network directory, you can manage your inventory orders. Lightspeed, in essence, allows you to find suppliers, buy their items, and then manage and monitor them all from a single dashboard—all without engaging any third parties.
Reporting & Analytics
- Every plan has this feature.
- There are more than 50 built-in reports.
- Tracking sales
- Management of many locations
- Monitoring the performance of employees
- Graphs that make data easier to understand
- Only available on the Advanced ($199/month) plan.
- Reports that can be customized
- Visualizations of data that are generated automatically
- Inventory, staff, and consumers all have their own dashboards.
- Instructions on how to utilize reports
- Emails with customized reports may be scheduled.
- Seg goals
- A/B testing is the process of comparing two options.
Despite the fact that Lightspeed’s sophisticated analytics platform (which we strongly suggest for organizations trying to grow) is only accessible in the Advanced plan, Lightspeed Reporting is offered in every tier and includes over 50 built-in reports for revenue, inventory, and staff performance. View sales, profit, and products sold over any time period, print or export reports as required, filter data, and investigate inventory performance by segment (or person).
Lightspeed can not only show you how your business and inventory are doing in real time and in the past, but it can also predict shopping patterns and notify you to impending supply shortages. This makes it easy to maintain the correct things in stock at the right time. Lightspeed will also show you your top-performing goods and let you to conduct reports on individual inventory items and categories, as well as discover outdated inventory that is eating into your cash flow.
In addition to store performance insights, Lightspeed’s built-in reports include Monitoring the performance of employees. See how often employees are capturing customer data like name and email address, view average order sizes, look at their individual shifts, and spot how often employees are discounting. The employee reporting tools also help you plan with scheduling for peak rush hours by identifying busy periods and making staffing suggestions.
Examine not just the performance of your shop, but also the performance of your personnel. (Photo courtesy of Lightspeed)
You may get even more in-depth information and even create bespoke reports for your specific organization using Lightspeed’s advanced plan analytics tool. Insights are divided into three areas on the Lightspeed Analytics dashboard, each with its own report page: Sales and Inventory, Employee Performance, and Customers and Marketing.
Each of these categories’ interactive dashboards includes a quick summary of your data, as well as many modifications for each report that you can use to assess your company and create estimates. Additionally, Lightspeed keeps your reports up to date by sending you automatic warnings when there are any errors that need to be fixed in order to make the reports more accurate, such as uncategorized items. With Lightspeed Analytics’ features, you can also define corporate or personnel performance targets and track their success.
Lightspeed Analytics allows you to define performance objectives and track how well you achieve them over time. (Photo courtesy of Lightspeed)
You may also build new reports, amend existing ones, and see visual representations of all the results from your reports. These representations, in my opinion, make it lot simpler to read reports, particularly if you’re new to utilizing data to make choices like product buying and staff scheduling.
Lightspeed, on the other hand, does not abandon you. Lightspeed Analytics recognizes that data might be difficult to analyze and put into action, so it provides report walkthroughs, advice on how and when to utilize the data, recommendations on how to read the report, and even actionable insights based on the results. This is a Lightspeed-only tool, making it ideal for companies wishing to integrate more data-driven choices into their operations.
Lightspeed provides a free 14-day trial with no credit card necessary if you want to check out these features for yourself. Lightspeed is a great place to start. to get a hands-on experience with the Analytics platform.
Lightspeed is a great place to start.
Ecommerce
- More than 50 mobile-friendly and customisable themes
- Syncs with the point-of-sale system at the shop
- Product, data, and customer management are all centralized.
- Purchase online and pick up in-store
- Customers may post product reviews on the website.
- Tracking codes for shipments
- Tracking of orders
- Reports on conversion
- One-click checkout with Google Pay and Apple Pay
- Product counts are updated in real time for both in-store and online orders, ensuring that no goods are oversold.
- SEO tools built-in
- Integration with Facebook and Instagram
- Keep an eye on marketing initiatives.
- Returns and wish lists are based on shopper characteristics.
- There are 14 languages available, as well as numerous currencies and worldwide delivery possibilities.
- The app store
- Shippers who are integrated
Though Lightspeed isn’t a stand-alone ecommerce platform like Shopify or BigCommerce, it does provide a robust online selling solution for brick-and-mortar businesses that works in tandem with your POS system.
Choose from over 50 professionally designed themes that are mobile-friendly and can be modified to your shop to start developing your Lightspeed ecommerce site. Themes for fashion, bicycles, electronics, home décor, jewelry, sports goods, and other specialized stores are available. Add more extensive descriptions to your product pages, add HD photographs, and use meta descriptions, keyword tags, and page headers to optimize your product listings for SEO. Extra elements such as a blog, testimonials, sizing recommendations, and integrated movies may also be included.
Customers may establish profiles once the site is up and running to write product evaluations, initiate a return or exchange request, see in-store availability across several locations, and make wish lists. At the same time, your POS system will track all of your online orders, inventory levels, e-shop visits, and general business performance in real time. From a single platform, you can examine information about your online business, assess its performance, manage your orders, and track the growth of your client database throughout your sales channels.
Surprisingly, many prominent ecommerce systems, such as Shopify, do not provide these online and reporting features in their basic or mid-level subscriptions. Lightspeed’s online capabilities do not disappoint, despite the fact that it is originally designed for brick-and-mortar retailers.
At a glance, see all of your current online orders and classify them using customisable statuses. (Photo courtesy of Lightspeed)
Lightspeed ecommerce includes 14 languages, numerous currencies, and variable or flat international shipping prices if you wish to increase your consumer base overseas.
Loyalty, Customer Management & Marketing
- Database of customers
- An omnichannel loyalty program based on points
- Customers may be automatically segmented depending on their purchases.
- Email builder with drag-and-drop functionality
- Promotions by SMS and email
- On Facebook and Instagram, you may sell your stuff.
- Blogging tools built-in
- Coupons and promotions
- Birthday vouchers that are sent automatically
- Keep track of your customers’ preferences.
Every one of Lightspeed’s plans includes a Database of customers where you can store customer information and view their purchase histories. If you move up to the Standard plan, however, you will also get online marketing tools like email marketing, blogging, and customer behavior tracking. On top of that, with the Advanced plan, you get access to an omnichannel points-based loyalty program that rewards customers for purchases at any store location or through your online store. It also offers categorized rewards, automated smart customer groupings, and one-time rewards such as for birthdays or VIP customers.
Ease of Use at Lightspeed Retail
- Support is available 24 hours a day, 7 days
- Onboarding and setup with a personal guide
- Uploading and modifying data in bulk
- Additional training is available at no cost.
- Any PC or iPad may use it.
- Guides and movies in a library
- a crowded user interface
- Account manager who is dedicated to you
- POS dashboard with your company’s logo
- Checkout is simple and includes customer remarks.
Lightspeed has a lot of capabilities, but they all add up to a more messier UI than some of the more streamlined app-based POS systems for small companies. Learning the ins and outs of Lightspeed and customizing things to your satisfaction might take some time. In comparison to Square or Shopify, Lightspeed provides less dashboard customization choices.
Lightspeed also has an easy-to-use checkout experience that is available on both the mobile app and the desktop. Each transaction is guided by the system, making it practically impossible for you or your team to make mistakes. Every transaction also has a simple location for leaving comments and adding customer information.
With its user-friendly design, Lightspeed makes the checkout process simple. (Photo courtesy of Lightspeed)
Alternatives to Lightspeed Retail
Whether you’re not sure if Lightspeed is appropriate for you, compare it to other popular retail point-of-sale systems.
What Users Have to Say About Lightspeed Retail
Users agree with our assessment of Lightspeed Retail being a top POS choice for Management of Inventory. At the time of publication, it has earned the following scores on popular user review sites:
I found some of the following tendencies when reading Lightspeed POS reviews:
Conclusion
Lightspeed Retail offers incredibly robust Management of Inventory that is ideal for almost any independent retailer. Plus, its user-friendly analytics platform provides insights to keep your business profitable, and its top-of-the-line ecommerce tools help your shop compete with the chain stores in your neighborhood.
Despite the fact that Lightspeed is more expensive than other solutions and has a more crowded interface as a result of all the capabilities, I feel it provides excellent overall value for merchants, particularly if you are serious about developing your company. No credit card is needed to start the 14-day trial.
Lightspeed is a great place to start.
The “lightspeed pos hardware” is a new point-of-sale system that allows retailers to process transactions quickly and efficiently.
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