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.
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Square for Retail
Score 9.4 out of 10
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Square for Retail bundles payment process and point of sale (PoS), as well as vendor and inventory management features, for small retailers. A free trial is available.
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.
Square for Retail is simple, easy to account for, and serves most purposes that a business like ours needs. There are very few drawbacks once it's up and running. For a company like ours who wants to emphasize experience from the time the customer walks in the door to the time they walk out, and where cost is important, Square for Retail provides an awesome interface for the customer, with attractive, easy to use terminals, and a very accessible price point where we can get set up with a clean, attractive, and functional point of sale system while starting up. We have no intentions of moving away from Square for Retail as long as it maintains its quality and support.
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.
This may just be me, but I want some additional customizations for our biggest annual fundraiser, so that we can differentiate between donations, chance drawings, etc.
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.
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
Stripe is more suited for internet or online order forms and businesses for which it integrates. It works well and same as Square with similar fees. Stripe however does not send a physical card reader by default and is not as large of a company. We chose Square due to the integrations it offers, ease of use, and familiarity clients have with existing card readers to make them more comfortable.
