Jirav, headquartered in San Francisco, aims to deliver smarter financials and faster insights, helping to understand where a business has been and predict where it will go. The system joins cloud-based Accounting, HR, CRM and billing data to automatically surface an interconnected model that is unique to a business. The solution helps eradicate spreadsheet errors, produce monthly reports that occur in real-time, and connected data enables teams to collaborate on multiple scenarios – bookings,…
$10,000
per year
Lightspeed Retail
Score9.2 out of 10
N/A
Lightspeed Retail is a retail PoS system from Lightspeed headquartered in Quebec. Core retail POS features are expanded on higher service tiers with ecommerce option and payments gateway, an accounting system, and a customer loyalty program.
I feel that Jirav would be best suited for companies with less than 75 employees that need a more robust software than Fathom (Quickbooks Onlne integrated FP&A tool based in Australia) that is very customizable, with simple revenue modeling, few personnel changes every month, few departments, no multi currency, and need collaboration only with top-level personnel. I think Jirav is a product that is being highly recommended in the accounting industry for outsourced accounting firms, but accounting only looks at historical information and there needs to more finance industry influence, approval, and input so they can improve their product.
It is perfect for any small business looking for inventory control, Tracking purchase history, and just an all round easy to use software for retail and beyond. I would not use it if I have only a few hundred items or was a larger company that can afford to build my own POS software.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Jirav integrates well with Quickbooks Online (QBO), and I like how you can easily customize the reporting presentation by combining GL accounts and showing more or less details as needed for managerial reporting
I like that Jirav is browser-based and that I can easily share reports with internal and external parties for comments
I feel more confident using Jirav than I do with Excel because there is more data validation, and some notifications will appear if there are errors in the model
The sales capacity model and ramping employees schedule that their implementation / professional services team built for us works well overall (with some limitations)
Ideally, having a direct integration into Jirav would be great for all our data. However, some of our software didn't have a direct integration, so I was glad that Jirav offered the ability to use a connected Google Sheet that lets me input data that can be imported directly into the system
Lightspeed Retail has great reports that are very easy to read and understand.
Lightspeed Retail is great to train new employees on because of its ease of use. There are not lots of different things that you have to learn just basics.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
At times, I feel that Jirav is too customizable. It would be great if they could tailor the system to be more industry-specific. For example, if the system could provide standard formulas for SaaS industry metrics already within the system, then that would have saved me a ton of time with having to create the metrics myself. The formula creation for metrics is quite tedious as well because you can only do simple calculations, such as A + B or A x C. You cannot do A + B + C or A x B x C.
I struggle with the way they have their staff planning set up because I have to reimport an Excel every month with all the changes (new hires, terminations, pay changes), and the changes appear to be retroactive on reports, which doesn't make sense if someone receives a raise or pay change during the year. It would be much easier for planning for bookings if they could add a column for quota by salesperson.
If there are notifications of errors in the model, then the notifications will continue to present themselves after I resolve the issue. It would be nice if I could clear out notifications I know are not relevant anymore. I also still find errors in the system that I would have expected the system to notify me about, such as Assumptions that are set up but they are not included in any formulas, so I should delete that assumption to prevent anyone from thinking changing that assumption will impact the model.
There is some functionality for sharing reports and information, but there is not enough granularity in security settings to allow me to share certain information easily. For example, if I want to share information with managers to manage their departments' budget, but also not see their boss' compensation, then it takes some work to set that up. Or, if I want to share a report with a recruiter of planned headcount and salary, then I need to export it to Excel first and delete Actual headcount and salary, so they don't see current employees' compensation (including the person's boss' salary).
Customer and vendor names do not import, only the totals, so if you look at Actuals vs Plan, the actuals will show a total figure and the plan will show detail, creating the need for an external and manual reconciliation
There is no multi-currency available
Scenario analysis can be difficult to do quickly. For example, if I want to see the plan with planned hires and without planned hires, then I would need to create two separate plans, individually select and delete the planned hires in one plan and keep then in another plan, which is time-consuming
Using Google Sign-In causes the system to time-out frequently for me, so I get kicked out of the system and have to log back in. If I have multiple tabs of Jirav open, then re-logging in sometimes doesn't bring me back to where I was originally at.
You can export reports to Excel, but there are no formulas of the calculations, which makes it more difficult to understand how calculations are being performed unless you look in the browser and dig into the calculations. This also might make it more difficult if you decide to go to another software in the future since you may need to start from scratch in the next software
Seasonality has been difficult to model. For example, the way our model is set up, I can use an assumption for Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4. However, if I update Q3 for this year, then it also updates Q3 of all subsequent years, which I don't want. A more complex model and additional maintenance would be needed to accomplish more accurate seasonality planning
With a larger SKU assortment size, the software really starts to struggle with doing physical inventory after scanning in a few hundred items.
Several times throughout each year Lightspeed went down on us (not our internet connection but actually Lightspeed verified).
Special order system could use a lot of modern improvements (ability to schedule ahead of time, etc.)
Reports are very basic, and will likely require there Lightspeed Analytics to actually get reports useful for day to day operations.
Weak system for receiving purchase orders.
Does not handle items and cases for reordering very well. Have used multiple Point of Sale systems in the past 10 years that allow to set reorder points based on single items, but reorder the case automatically, Lightspeed has no support for this.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
I gave the rating of a 9 because ninety percent of the time when I talk to their support they're very helpful. One of the only real issues I have is there are times where the queue will be 7-9 people deep. When you have an error you don't know how to fix, sometimes this is very troubling. But overall their support is usually quick and friendly.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Fathom was the cheapest and most basic as an add-on directly to QuickBooks Online Plus, but you lose functionality with Fathom if you use QuickBooks Online Advanced (QBOA). The main loss of functionality for me was the lack of multiple department reporting, which was absolutely necessary for my analysis. Jirav was half the price of Moscaic.tech, but I've heard Mosaic has standard metrics for the SaaS-industry, which is appealing after going through the tedious process of setting up metrics in Jirav. QBOA has additional reporting than QBO Plus, but not enough robust features for planning and modeling. PlaceCPM is Salesforce-based and a I felt having a strong Salesforce admin that can great reports made their unnecessary, and I feel like most of the time you need a Salesforce admin just to run Salesforce. Cube, Vena and OnPlan are spreadsheet-based, but I don't want to use spreadsheets. Prophix, Board and Anaplan seem outdated. Workday was more than what I needed
Lightspeed is faster, sleeker and more modern than our previous POS system. I can’t express enough how easy the online store portion of Lightspeed is - it just intuitive and sometimes, is TOO easy, I feel like I have to be forgetting something. Lightspeed is staying modern and current where our previous POS was not
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
