Lightspeed integrates retail point-of-sale platform with Lightspeed Accounting

Montreal eCommerce heavyweight Lightspeed has released Lightspeed Accounting, which syncs a merchant’s point-of-sale terminal with an external accounting system, such as Quickbooks or Xero.
Lightspeed Accounting allows retailers and merchants to export and import accounting data, typically a tedious extra manual step, automating the process of posting revenues, revenue offsets, taxes, tenders and cash drawer events, without any extra action required, on a daily basis.
Lightspeed’s POS platform caters to both retail and service industry merchants, and so Lightspeed Accounting is accordingly available in two varieties, for Lightspeed Retail and for Lightspeed Restaurant.
Lightspeed has 36,000 customers using its Retail, Restaurant and eCommerce platforms.
Three kiosks in Denver belonging to the Fast-Fix Jewelry and Watch Repairs franchise were the first to use Lightspeed Accounting, resulting in an integration that would also benefit its more than 150 franchisees, instantly transmitting sales data to the company’s accounting systems and offering its chief financial officer a clear view of global sales.
Doug Smith, owner of the Fast-Fix Cherry Creek, Fast-Fix Flatiron Crossing, Fast-Fix Park Meadows locations in Denver said, “We now have a daily feed into our accounting package, allowing us to better track revenue to expenses. This data feeds into other tools from Xero, including our KPI dashboard.”
Fast-Fix Jewelry and Watch Repairs CFO Paul Price said, “What we’ve been looking forward to is having great analytical data on a daily basis from all of our franchisees,” adding that the company plans to implement of Lightspeed Retail and Lightspeed Accounting across all of its locations by the end of Q3 2016.
On the restaurant side of things, Lightspeed Restaurant was trialed by Sosban, a restaurant in Llanelli, Wales, speeding up the restaurant’s general operations and reducing time and money spent on accounting processes by roughly 50%.
“The benefits have been massive,” says Sosban manager Rhys Andrews. “There is complete fluidity between the systems and quicker access to data.”
The integration has meant speedier service for customers as well, with Sosban’s staff using iPads running Lightspeed Restaurant point-of-sale software for sending orders to the kitchen while table-side with diners, saving at least five minutes per order.
The Lightspeed Accounting dashboard displays data for retail gathered from across multiple locations, allowing merchants to organize stores according to sales, average ticket size and customer amount, while tracking trends and historical performance, and comparing results with goals.
Founded 10 years ago by Vancouver native Dax Dasilva, who bootstrapped the company for years before hiring his first employees, Lightspeed has now raised a total of $126 million US, almost half of which arrived last September with a $61 million US investment co-led by the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) and Investissement Québec (IQ), along with previously existing investors Accel Partners and iNovia Capital.