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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QuickBooks Commerce
Score 7.1 out of 10
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QuickBooks Commerce (formerly TradeGecko) is a cloud-based Order and Supply Chain Management platform. TradeGecko was acquired by Intuit QuickBooks in August 2020, and plans to sunset the resulting product were announced June 2021 (it will be discontinued as a standalone product in June, 2022).
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Pricing
Lightspeed Retail
QuickBooks Commerce
Editions & Modules
Basic
$79.00 ($69.00)
per month (when billed annually)
Starter
$119.00 ($99.00)
per month (when billed annually)
Standard
$139.00 ($119.00)
per month (when billed annually)
Advanced
$189.00 ($169.00)
per month (when billed annually)
Pro
$259.00 ($229.00)
per month (when billed annually)
Enterprise
Contact Sales
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Lightspeed Retail
QuickBooks Commerce
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Required
Additional Details
—
Monthly and yearly subscriptions available to meet your business' needs. Cancel at anytime.
Basic - $99/month
Business - $249/month
Business Premium - $449/month
Enterprise - $999/month
Vend was terrible for inventory management, as was Square. Neither worked with Shopify. We selected Lightspeed when it was still MerchantOS based on cost and functionality, and haven't left because we haven't had time to research migration costs or alternatives.
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.
Using TradeGecko requires to the company to make compromises. Which compromises depends on the business, what they are using for other 3rd party applications and what they sell. You need to be very good with excel since you are able to upload and modify most files, which gives you major control over your data. They however need to modify the way in which new inventory items get loaded, as it is quite awkward if you use variants. 'Reports' as has been described prior has improved dramatically and most if not all can be downloaded in CSV/Excel format. This allows you to build your own reports with the data from the system. If your business is very complex in nature, TradeGecko probably isn't the system for you. If you are doing thousands of transactions a day, again this is not the system. However, if you are a small to smaller mid-sized business, the system, its cost and the 3rd party applications make it worth a first second and third look.
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.
- Couldn't integrate with existing QBO account. Had to set up a new QBO account and transfer all data, create lots of journal entries - was very time-consuming and labor-intensive. Caused some financial discrepancies to resolve.
- Have to process returns on Amazon and Shopify orders manually
- Tax-inclusive is not allowed - European sales are tax inclusive - can't import order with VAT included. Looks like the software is suitable for US only. Have to create such orders manually in Commerce and then manual journal entries in QBO
- Supports accrual accounting method only. In cash - it's a mess
- Support - not knowledgeable enough - I could only call for support (now they have chat) and they always had to get with the back-end and every call was not less than 1 hour. At the end I would get a link for the training materials
- Inventory not synching timely sometimes - I have a screenshot proving that inventory on our Amazon account was 0 but Commerce still had quantities, I had to manually press synch
- Shipping line from Shopify orders is not coded to Shipping income account but goes together with Sales of product income account
- When partial of the PO is received, not able to create a bill for the partial. There're only 2 settings: either bill created at the time of PO creation (for the whole PO amount - which increases your AP right away) or at the time the whole PO received. It works only when PO is shipped as a whole.
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
Each of the applications has a specific place. We select and implement the best solutions for our clients based on their budget and requirements. This is often determined by integration requirements. We like to say that every application with do a different 95% of what you need it to. There will always be a different 5% to forgo between applications.