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.
Kounta is particularly well suited to small to medium sized hospitality businesses. It has a great many number of add-ons and integrations that enhance the user experience and its general usefulness from a back end perspective. For example, there is the ability to program automatic menu surcharges for certain circumstances, such as public holidays. It also handles bill-splitting well. It could possibly be less appropriate for venues that need extremely detailed sales data, or for those venues that have very complicated menus or ordering options.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We moved from Vend to Kounta because of Kounta's enhanced functionality for the hospitality domain. Vend was, at the time, more oriented towards the retail industry and so it lacked key features that would have allowed our business to grow and become more efficient. Over time, Kounta has continually improved and adapted to better suit its customers' needs.
The challenge with this is that because Lightspeed has such poor reporting with their POS, and the ability to actually see your data, it is nearly impossible to move to another POS without a very expensive integration process. So while I have explored these other options, I have been unable to see if they would be a better fit. However, on paper, these guys are set up to grow with you if you are a growing company.
