Lightspeed Point of Sale Rebrands, Adds Restaurant Platform

In recent (October 2014) LightSpeed Retail news:

Lightspeed just unveiled a new logo, a new product, and new branding. http://www.lightspeedpos.com/blog/2014/10/welcome-to-the-new-lightspeed/

The "private cloud" or Mac OS X platform point of sale is now Lightspeed OnSite, formerly known as Lightspeed Pro retail, formerly just Lightspeed Retail point of sale.

The public cloud offering, formerly Lightspeed Cloud (from the Merchant OS acquisition) is now Lightspeed Retail.

They also released a new version of Lightspeed Pro (now OnSite), which is great. Congrats.

Next Steps

Glad to see Lightspeed continue to pursue growth and release new versions of their core platform(s). We hope that Lightspeed will do the following things:

• Open-source the magento connector so we can fix some bugs and upgrade the Magento dependency for security and performance reasons.
• Keep improving LightSpeed OnSite.
• Ramp up growth by supporting a sales channel of integrators which can deliver on the core Lightspeed value proposition: Integrating online commerce with best-in-class brick and mortar shopping.

Fact is, getting stores to deploy a point of sale system with integrated web store is still a daunting task. A strong sales channel of systems integrators could help store owners get the system implemented. A solid open-source community around integrations is a tremendous way to leverage R&D investment and expand your footprint. We are available to help.

Lightspeed Changing POS Pricing to Subscription Model

We received an email that Lightspeed Pro retail point of sale is changing their pricing from a one-time purchase to a monthly subscription.

Effective December 3rd, 2013, LightSpeed Pro will be shifting from a perpetual license to a monthly subscription plan. This means that rather than purchasing the software for a one-time fee, a significantly smaller fee will be paid each month for the duration of the software's use.

How does this compare to the existing pricing, for example, for three user licenses:

3 licenses (1 year support) = $2548 = $212 / month for 1 year = $106 / month 2 years = $53 / month 4 years.

In our case, we currently pay about $53 / month considering a 4 year amortization.

The new pricing, pasted from our email, is as follows:

SMALL $79/month paid annually 1 Register $89 / mo. paid monthly MEDIUM $134/month paid annually 2 Registers $149 / mo. paid monthly LARGE $229/month paid annually 4 Registers $259 / mo. paid monthly

For our business, this would be a cost increase of about $2400 / year. Even if you subtract $1000 for an annual support contract, it is still $1400 more. I believe Ecommerce support is extra as well. If this pricing were in effect when we moved to Lightspeed Retail POS (now Lightspeed Pro), I don't think we would have made the move. The ROI may not pencil out versus competitors such as Quickbooks POS which have superior inventory management and cash handling, and now cost less to operate.

To me, the whole point of buying Lightspeed Pro POS is to actually own software you can run on your own hardware. It works if the Internet goes down. You own it. It integrates with an open source web store (well, it is advertised to, but has been broken for us for a month).

Now, you don't own anything unless you pay the subscription fees. Of course we're unhappy that our install still doesn't work with Magento web store as advertised. We had high hopes for this platform, but I can't see new customers adopting the platform with this pricing. It's like the cost of a SaaS or cloud-based POS, without the IT opex benefits. Perhaps Lightspeed is trying to push people to adopt it's new cheaper cloud-based POS instead.

Yes, Data Corruption. Lightspeed Retail POS Ecommerce

We've run into a show-stopper issue with Lightspeed Retail POS w/ Ecommerce.  Their support team is working on it, but it has been almost three weeks and we're curious if anyone else is seeing this.

We've been working very hard to get our new web store launched for the holidays.  We're currently blocked on a data corruption bug, where Lightspeed data for our products' Web Category assignments are totally wrong.  They don't match what is set in Lightspeed.

The good news is that we have a software engineer available, who wrote a Magento script to show exactly how Lightspeed Retail POS is pushing the wrong data into Magento.  The bad news is that Lightspeed is closed source, and our debugging stops there.

The output below is part of a diff (shows what changes) before and after we updated the web store from Lightspeed. As you can see, the last four items were not assigned a category [388, Straining Bags]. That category was incorrectly assigned to the wrong item instead [Product 102, ... Art of Making Wine].

-- oct20-data1.txt     2013-10-21 01:36:52.000000000 +0000
+++ oct20-data2b.txt    2013-10-21 01:46:42.000000000 +0000
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 Loading products...
 done.
-Got 230 products.. Loading categories...
+Got 245 products.. Loading categories...
 Got 187 categories.
 Product 62, 484, Cinnamon Sticks 1 oz organic: [424,Brewing Herbs],
 Product 63, 353, Sweet orange peel 1oz: [424,Brewing Herbs],
@@ -42,18 +42,18 @@
 Product 99, 260, Moonshine : [304,Other],
 Product 100, 639, Homebrewer's Companion: [300,Brewing Beer],
 Product 101, 200, Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers : [300,Brewing Beer],
-Product 102, 152, Art of Making Wine: [302,Wine / Cider / Mead],
-Product 103, 331, Making the Best Apple Cider: [302,Wine / Cider / Mead],
-Product 104, 155, Homemade Rootbeer, Soda & Pop: [304,Other],
-Product 105, 969, Homemade Cheese: [301,Cheese Making],
+Product 102, 152, Art of Making Wine: [302,Wine / Cider / Mead],[388,Straining Bags],
+Product 103, 331, Making the Best Apple Cider: [302,Wine / Cider / Mead],[388,Straining Bags],
+Product 104, 155, Homemade Rootbeer, Soda & Pop: [304,Other],[388,Straining Bags],
+Product 105, 969, Homemade Cheese: [301,Cheese Making],[388,Straining Bags],
+Product 292, 102, Sparging Bag 6.5 G: 
+Product 293, 103, Straining Bag Large Fine: 
+Product 294, 104, Muslin Hop Bag: 
+Product 295, 105, Nylon Hop Bag: 

What this means, is that all the items on our web store are shuffled like a deck of cards into the wrong categories. Many are not categorized at all. It is a total mess, and we've been blocked on it for almost three weeks, with no hope of a fix. I hope Lightspeed comes through for us, so we can get back to writing positive reviews and migration guides for their software.  If not, it is going to make for a very sad holiday story for our small business.

By now you may be noticing that this blog is changing from "Hey everybody, switch from Quickbooks POS to Lightspeed Retail, here's how" to "here are issues with Lightspeed".  Ultimately, we want Lightspeed succeed.  We try to give feedback and support tickets to them first, and give them time to respond.  If we don't see any progress we feel the best way to help is to share our experiences publicly to create a case for change.  In this case, we're in a difficult position and pretty nervous about our investment--our business is at stake.


UpdateDec 15, 2013. We just received a fix for this issue. Thanks to Lightspeed for working on this and getting us a build to fix it. We effectively missed our shopping season for the new webstore, but look forward to switching over in the next couple of days. Having integration with our point of sale will be awesome.

Lightspeed Retail POS and Magento Webstore Integration

We're finally getting to one of the main reasons we switched to Lightspeed Retail Point of Sale (POS): Integration with Magento web store.   Honestly, we're a little disappointed with how the two systems integrate.  Here are our thoughts on how the two systems work together.  Also see our article on the major pain points we have in-store using Lightspeed Retail POS.  Please correct any mistakes in the comments below.

Magento Integration is The Killer Feature

First off, Magento integration is a brilliant feature for a retail point of sale (POS), especially these days. Brick and mortar retailers really need to be able to showcase their items online to compete. It gives customers who want to shop local all the advantages of shopping online. Mainly, you can browse products in your underwear in bed, with a cup of coffee.  You can see what is in stock before you drive to the store, or you can have it delivered.

But Lightspeed's Integration Needs A Lot of Work

Unfortunately, the integration between Lightspeed (LS) and Magento appears to be very minimal, feature wise. To use Lightspeed to manage your inventory, you'll have to forgo many great Magento features. Most of this is because: 

1. Lightspeed (LS) doesn't support partial product updates on most attributes.  Want to change a group of products' categories?   The only automated way I see to do this, deletes all your Magento product product data, and reuploads from LS.
2. Lightspeed does not synchronize much of the data Magento uses.  Product reviews, tags, related items, and so on.

The combination of these two things hurts a great deal in production.  Product reviews, for example, is the reason many people shop on amazon.com.  Magento is great for accumulating product reviews, but as soon as you need to update something like a product photo or category in Lightspeed, you'll have to delete your product reviews, as Lightspeed does not remember them.  This is just the tip of the iceburg.

How It Should Work

Let me propose an idea of how this integration could work better.

1. Lightspeed becomes smart enough to update products without resetting them.
2. Lightspeed (LS) does a proper merge of changes from LS to Magento.  If it detects conflicts (things which were edited on the web and in LS), it presents a list to the user and allows them to resolve the conflicts, choosing which version of each change they want to keep.

I even offered to help implement this functionality.  We want it that bad. (Update November 7, the window on this offer is probably closing.)

Our Recommendation

Until these major issues are updated, we believe customers may be better served with another system.  Using Lightspeed's Web Store product (an alternative to Magento), is a poor solution in our opinion, as it does not have the rich features or proven ability to scale that Magento has.  (They just rewrote the thing from scratch.)  It also locks you into a very small ecosystem, compared to Magento.  You can find Magento developers and plugins anywhere.  Not the case for Lightspeed Web Store.

Before we switched from QuickBooks POS, we looked at a 3rd party Magento connector.  At the time we thought it looked half-baked or hacky, but now that we've seen the Lightspeed Magento connector as well, it is clear the former is much more full-featured.  Comparing the ratings for the eCC Quickbooks Magento connector and the Lightspeed Retail connector seems to validate this opinion.  Currently the Quickbooks connector has twice the downloads, and almost twice the rating.

Disclaimer

This information is based on my initial Magento deployment (as of Lightspeed 3.8.1.0 and Magento 1.7.x).  I could be wrong on some things, but the lack of documentation on the Lightspeed/Magento connector doesn't help.

LightSpeed Retail Acquires MerchantOS, Rebrands as LightSpeed Cloud

LightSpeed, makers of LightSpeed Retail Point of Sale (POS), today announced that they've acquired the web-based POS company MerchantOS, and will be selling their solution under the new name LightSpeed Cloud.

The news that LightSpeed was launching a new and separate POS product was met with some skepticism from existing LightSpeed Retail (now LightSpeed Pro) customers who have been asking for some critical missing features for years now.  However, the fact that LightSpeed acquired its new cloud offering by acquiring MerchantOS, and not by diverting existing resources, is good news.   It appears that the reason for the acquisition was the desire for a cloud POS offering, that features the "any device, anywhere" deployment and trades off a large up-front cost for a startup-friendly monthly fee.

The fact that the two POS offerings do not interoperate is a negative, and hopefully they will at least offer a data migration path between the two in the future.

The re-branded Lightspeed Cloud has an attractive new look and feel, compared to the existing MerchantOS. Experienced retailers who have dealt with Internet or website downtime, however, may be shy to depend on a web-only solution.  I could not find any mention of an offline mode to the web interface.  Presumably, if your Internet connection or their servers go down, you are out of business.  With the existing Mac-based LightSpeed Pro, however, you could continue to run cash sales and manual credit card slips until your Internet comes back.  We've had at least ten instances of Internet downtime in the last 9 months, and switching between the two Internet providers in the area hasn't helped.  If we were on MerchantOS we would have been pretty unhappy.

While we are passionate about the need for better point of sale software, and support LightSpeed's efforts to fill the gaps in the market, we believe they should focus more on fixing the existing POS software's major issues, and less on flashy new products.

When creating software, the last 5% of bug fixes and features take 50% of the effort.  It takes tremendous discipline to finish the job and ship a complete and robust package.  Here's hoping they make the changes necessary to become an organization that can accomplish this.  They are pretty close.

Major Pain Points for LightSpeed Retail POS

We recently deployed LightSpeed Retail POS in our brick-and-mortar store.  We have about 1500 different items, and sell many things in bulk.  This post lists some of the major issues we are running into with LightSpeed Retail POS (currently version 3.8.1.0).

Update: We are currently experiencing data corruption with Lighspeed POS.  Updates posted here.  

 No Fractional Cents for Product Costs

When you enter the cost of an item, you are not allowed to enter a cost with fractional cents.  For example, for a bulk foods section, assume you buy your Wheat Flour in 50 pound bags with a supplier cost of 41.92 per bag.  You should enter a product called "Wheat Flour Bulk per lb" with a supplier cost of 1.19275.  When you order from your supplier, you order qty 50 for each bag, and the PO cost would be correct.

In LightSpeed, however, you are not allowed to enter more than two decimal places of cost.  You are forced to enter a supplier cost of 1.19.  This means your POs are all wrong.  You may think about using build/break apart as a workaround, and creating an additional item called "50 lb bag, wheat flour", but this is a horrible solution for many reasons.  (Staff has to exit point of sale, do break aparts, receiving is complicated, searches are complicated, inventory is screwed up, errors are multiplied, etc.).

Because of this issue, we basically cannot use ordering from LightSpeed for many of our suppliers.  It is a huge headache.  Many other people have complained about this for years now.

Inventory Count Tools Are Near Useless

With 1500 different products, the existing inventory counting tools in LightSpeed Retail POS (version 3.8.1.0) are useless.  They give you one tool, "Count Inventory", which requires that you enter a count for every one of your items.  Your are expected to do this in one small window.  The interface bogs down very badly with this many items.  It doesn't support any sane model of inventory counting, where you count one department (LightSpeed Class or Family) at a time.

What we need is a transactional document for each inventory adjustment.  This inventory adjustment needs to be given a reason and a date, and that reason needs to be passed through to the accounting (General Ledger or GL) system as a memo.  This allows for proper accounting due to theft (very important after a shoplifting event), and also end of year inventory.

You can export all your items to a spreadsheet, then filter by department (class / family), then enter a new column with your counts, then re-import the spreadsheet, but this is impossible for retail staff to do. It requires an IT consultant.  Our retail staff should not need to know how to manipulate .csv files or have the privilege to do mass product imports which can easily nuke all your data.

Magento Web Store Integration Is Half Baked

Also take a look at our article on the promise and shortcomings of Lightspeed Retail POS integration with Magento web store.  It is clear this functionality is not quite ready for enterprise use.

Magento versus Web Store for Lighspeed Retail

So you have your fancy new Lightspeed Retail POS system set up and you are ready to deploy a web store.  Once you've purchased the ECommerce license, which web software do you use, Magento, or Lightspeed's own Webstore (github code repo).

Update

We've started our Magento deployment and run into some issues.  We've written our initial thoughts on Magento integration with Lightspeed Retail POS.

Features

The features we need are:

Wholesale / Price Level Support
- Ability to set different price levels for different customers.
- Ability to tag or categorize subset of products as Wholesale.

Customers

- Customer database interaction with Lightspeed POS.  This may be a standard feature for both Magento and Webstore(?).

Would love to hear comments for others.  This post is a work in progress and I will update it.