Existing users, 
 LightSpeed - 2.8.8Multi-user point of sale system. |
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| Overall Rating: | Not rated (0.0) | Features: | Not rated (0.0) | Support: | Not rated (0.0) |
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Featured Reviews
Lightspeed was a disaster for our business 
- Version: 2.8.5, 6/19/2009 11:20AM PST
(1 of 2 users found this comment useful)
chmal
Lightspeed was a disaster for our retail business.
I've never met a point of sale program that was so difficult to use and so easy to make mistakes with. My true review would be thousands of words long to list all of the problems we had with this program. The short version: It is far to easy for people to make mistakes simply ringing up sales. Ringing up customers takes twice as long as other programs - many mouse clicks needed, no shortcut key for quantity (this was a huge time killer for us as customers buy a lot of little items at a time, with different quantities for each), I was surprised to have no way to hold receipts, no place to enter a coupon to discount the whole sale (must discount a specific item which messes with your margins in reports, so we had to create a product called coupon and charge a negative quantity for it). Even the payment screen takes so many unnecessary steps - click here, select that, swipe card, move cursor to button to tell it to process the card, click process, click OK to acknowledge swipe was successful, then click print, then tell it how many copies, then click print again, etc. Streamline this process please! It's so easy to misswipe a credit card and then print out a complete receipt, giving you the illusion that someone has paid, but looking at the bottom it says paid zero. It's very easy to swipe a card twice for the same transaction - no warning given that you've already charged a customer for this sale. Very difficult to refund a customer back to their credit card. Even watched the tutorial while the poor customer stood there and was no help with our problem. If you scan a UPC that's not in the system it doesn't warn you, it just puts nothing on the receipt, so when ringing up multiple items it's super easy to miss an item. If you click save before going to payment screen, the system removes all the items on that receipt from inventory (instead of removing them when sale is complete). If a customer changes their mind on an item before paying it is a very difficult process to put the item back into inventory and very easy for inventory numbers to be inaccurate. They need to make payment screens much more streamlined and help us to make sure it's not so easy for employees to make mistakes when ringing people up. We lost a lot of money in inventory sent out the door. We spent hours renaming all of our 3000 or so inventory items to make them searchable in the invoice screen (invoice screen only searches for product description, so had to add the manufacturer, color size, etc to every product description in case it had to be searched for when ringing up.
Ordering process was also a nightmare - We do loads of ordering every day from over 300 vendors, 5 or 6 of which are big distributors that we order from - each carry up to 600 items that we have to choose from. I have to be able to see what's available from each and choose from that list - the only way to do that is to open products, view the ones where my distributor is the supplier, then drag items into an open PO. Very difficult to fit both of these windows onto the same screen, very very easy to make mistakes (carefully dragging an item down frequently resulted in the wrong item showing up! The one I dragged wasn't the one that made it onto the order, so have to drag, click on the PO window to make sure the right item made it on, then mouse click the quantity to change it, go back to the product screen, etc. With my old 6 year old software it took us about 45 minutes to order from one of those distributors. With lightspeed it was an hour and a half. With my new Quickbooks point of sale program, I can pull up a screen that has an empty row next to my inventory numbers for that distributor, I type in the quantities using my down arrow and my quantitiy shortcut key, and click enter at the end, which populates a PO with everything I chose. Ordering now takes me about 15 minutes. Receiving a PO is overly complicated as well, with too many clicks and saves, no place to put very simple things like freight charges, or discounts from a supplier (again we had to create new products called freight and supplier discounts, and then the system is fussy about the fact that they have no product codes or suppliers for freight, which caused us to set up a new vendors for it, etc. Am I the only retailer that has to pay freight for a delivery?) Changing a price as you receive an item doesn't update the costs for that product, so separate cost adjustments have to be made for each item, etc. Time wasters.
Learning lightspeed is very difficult process. It's surprisingly non-intuitive, especially for a MAC product. The tutorials are very incomplete, support takes 24 hours to get back to you, and the solutions they suggest invariably cause new problems. It's a frustrating, time wasting, bloated piece of software that seems like no one ever tried to use it in a retail situation before putting it on the market. It can do so many things, but for a retail situation where we essentially just need a program to help us keep track of inventory, ring up and keep track of customers easily, and order and receive products quickly. We did almost 1000 sales items in the first few weeks, and still we felt like it was getting no easier. I think Lightspeed has a lot of work to do to make this program fit what you think a Mac program should be - easy to use, easy to learn. This is neither, and it costs a bundle.
I've never met a point of sale program that was so difficult to use and so easy to make mistakes with. My true review would be thousands of words long to list all of the problems we had with this program. The short version: It is far to easy for people to make mistakes simply ringing up sales. Ringing up customers takes twice as long as other programs - many mouse clicks needed, no shortcut key for quantity (this was a huge time killer for us as customers buy a lot of little items at a time, with different quantities for each), I was surprised to have no way to hold receipts, no place to enter a coupon to discount the whole sale (must discount a specific item which messes with your margins in reports, so we had to create a product called coupon and charge a negative quantity for it). Even the payment screen takes so many unnecessary steps - click here, select that, swipe card, move cursor to button to tell it to process the card, click process, click OK to acknowledge swipe was successful, then click print, then tell it how many copies, then click print again, etc. Streamline this process please! It's so easy to misswipe a credit card and then print out a complete receipt, giving you the illusion that someone has paid, but looking at the bottom it says paid zero. It's very easy to swipe a card twice for the same transaction - no warning given that you've already charged a customer for this sale. Very difficult to refund a customer back to their credit card. Even watched the tutorial while the poor customer stood there and was no help with our problem. If you scan a UPC that's not in the system it doesn't warn you, it just puts nothing on the receipt, so when ringing up multiple items it's super easy to miss an item. If you click save before going to payment screen, the system removes all the items on that receipt from inventory (instead of removing them when sale is complete). If a customer changes their mind on an item before paying it is a very difficult process to put the item back into inventory and very easy for inventory numbers to be inaccurate. They need to make payment screens much more streamlined and help us to make sure it's not so easy for employees to make mistakes when ringing people up. We lost a lot of money in inventory sent out the door. We spent hours renaming all of our 3000 or so inventory items to make them searchable in the invoice screen (invoice screen only searches for product description, so had to add the manufacturer, color size, etc to every product description in case it had to be searched for when ringing up.
Ordering process was also a nightmare - We do loads of ordering every day from over 300 vendors, 5 or 6 of which are big distributors that we order from - each carry up to 600 items that we have to choose from. I have to be able to see what's available from each and choose from that list - the only way to do that is to open products, view the ones where my distributor is the supplier, then drag items into an open PO. Very difficult to fit both of these windows onto the same screen, very very easy to make mistakes (carefully dragging an item down frequently resulted in the wrong item showing up! The one I dragged wasn't the one that made it onto the order, so have to drag, click on the PO window to make sure the right item made it on, then mouse click the quantity to change it, go back to the product screen, etc. With my old 6 year old software it took us about 45 minutes to order from one of those distributors. With lightspeed it was an hour and a half. With my new Quickbooks point of sale program, I can pull up a screen that has an empty row next to my inventory numbers for that distributor, I type in the quantities using my down arrow and my quantitiy shortcut key, and click enter at the end, which populates a PO with everything I chose. Ordering now takes me about 15 minutes. Receiving a PO is overly complicated as well, with too many clicks and saves, no place to put very simple things like freight charges, or discounts from a supplier (again we had to create new products called freight and supplier discounts, and then the system is fussy about the fact that they have no product codes or suppliers for freight, which caused us to set up a new vendors for it, etc. Am I the only retailer that has to pay freight for a delivery?) Changing a price as you receive an item doesn't update the costs for that product, so separate cost adjustments have to be made for each item, etc. Time wasters.
Learning lightspeed is very difficult process. It's surprisingly non-intuitive, especially for a MAC product. The tutorials are very incomplete, support takes 24 hours to get back to you, and the solutions they suggest invariably cause new problems. It's a frustrating, time wasting, bloated piece of software that seems like no one ever tried to use it in a retail situation before putting it on the market. It can do so many things, but for a retail situation where we essentially just need a program to help us keep track of inventory, ring up and keep track of customers easily, and order and receive products quickly. We did almost 1000 sales items in the first few weeks, and still we felt like it was getting no easier. I think Lightspeed has a lot of work to do to make this program fit what you think a Mac program should be - easy to use, easy to learn. This is neither, and it costs a bundle.
Best Support - Version: 2.5, 12/28/2007 08:30AM PST
(3 of 3 users found this comment useful)
dpeck1
The product is terrific, but the support is even better! I have been in this industry for over twenty years, and it's safe to say, Xsilva's support is among the best I have ever seen. Spectacular!
Good but very far from perfect - Version: 2.0.2a, 9/18/2007 03:07PM PST
(6 of 6 users found this comment useful)
davidb1224
I've been using LightSpeed for over a year. We have not yet upgraded to the latest version, but we're only a build or two behind.
Basically, it's fine software, but it's far from perfect. Everyone else here will tell you it's the best Mac POS software around, and I think this is true from a conceptual standpoint. However, it causes a great deal of frustration in daily operation. On a PowerPC iMac (last PPC version before Intel), it runs absolutely glacially, making the name "LightSpeed" an ironic joke around our store. As they presumably continue to optimize for Intel, we've noticed it runs slower with every upgrade, which is why no matter how many problems it causes us, we never rush to download the latest versions.
Their compatibility with peripherals (cash drawers, receipt printers) seems oddly spotty, and these things run very slow with our software. Sometimes, it takes thirty seconds just to get the drawer open during a cash transaction, and one must go through a great number of superfluous dialog boxes to get there (we were told by their technical support that there is a way to cut down on the number of the dialog boxes, but this never seemed to work for us).
Their technical support has been very helpful during the numerous bugs and problems we've had, but the documentation has been merely OK.
I feel that XSilva and LightSpeed are capable of great things, but they aren't there yet. I do recommend this project, but I wish I could recommend it more heartily.
Basically, it's fine software, but it's far from perfect. Everyone else here will tell you it's the best Mac POS software around, and I think this is true from a conceptual standpoint. However, it causes a great deal of frustration in daily operation. On a PowerPC iMac (last PPC version before Intel), it runs absolutely glacially, making the name "LightSpeed" an ironic joke around our store. As they presumably continue to optimize for Intel, we've noticed it runs slower with every upgrade, which is why no matter how many problems it causes us, we never rush to download the latest versions.
Their compatibility with peripherals (cash drawers, receipt printers) seems oddly spotty, and these things run very slow with our software. Sometimes, it takes thirty seconds just to get the drawer open during a cash transaction, and one must go through a great number of superfluous dialog boxes to get there (we were told by their technical support that there is a way to cut down on the number of the dialog boxes, but this never seemed to work for us).
Their technical support has been very helpful during the numerous bugs and problems we've had, but the documentation has been merely OK.
I feel that XSilva and LightSpeed are capable of great things, but they aren't there yet. I do recommend this project, but I wish I could recommend it more heartily.
Most Recent Replies: View All 1 Replies
- Good but very far from perfect
LightSpeed is an excellent solution with a solid track record and forward plan - Version: 2.0a, 5/1/2007 07:07AM PST
(4 of 5 users found this comment useful)
scott.gardner
LightSpeed 2.0 extends its lead in POS/inventory management software with new features and enhancements including a much improved back-end interface. Not that the pre-2.x interface was bad, but that's exactly the point I want to make. *There is no perfect software.* I feel what defines the relative value of an application can be broken down into 4 simple concepts:
1. Functionality
2. Interface
3. Developer
4. Tech support
Functionally, LightSpeed is highly-capable, well-organized, and stable. The interface is very handsome and Mac-like. These are justifiable reasons for downloading the free demo to try it for yourself as an A-B comparison with whatever other titles you are evaluating. That said, I can tell you from experience (I am a software consultant and have been working closely with Xsilva for over a year, and we also use LightSpeed to run our business), the people at Xsilva shine. They are genuinely interested in understanding and meeting the customer's needs (e.g., they host an active public blog), their tech support possesses a wonderful combination of expertise, patience, and courteousness, and the company's work ethic is epitomized by Dax Dasilva, the president and developer of LightSpeed.
In *every* application, there is room for improvement and addition of new features. The key questions to ask are:
1. Does the application offer solid functionality that I can use effectively today to run my business?
2. Does the company behind the application have a plan and commitment to continually develop the application?
In my experience, the answer to both questions of LightSpeed and Xsilva is, yes.
1. Functionality
2. Interface
3. Developer
4. Tech support
Functionally, LightSpeed is highly-capable, well-organized, and stable. The interface is very handsome and Mac-like. These are justifiable reasons for downloading the free demo to try it for yourself as an A-B comparison with whatever other titles you are evaluating. That said, I can tell you from experience (I am a software consultant and have been working closely with Xsilva for over a year, and we also use LightSpeed to run our business), the people at Xsilva shine. They are genuinely interested in understanding and meeting the customer's needs (e.g., they host an active public blog), their tech support possesses a wonderful combination of expertise, patience, and courteousness, and the company's work ethic is epitomized by Dax Dasilva, the president and developer of LightSpeed.
In *every* application, there is room for improvement and addition of new features. The key questions to ask are:
1. Does the application offer solid functionality that I can use effectively today to run my business?
2. Does the company behind the application have a plan and commitment to continually develop the application?
In my experience, the answer to both questions of LightSpeed and Xsilva is, yes.
Best Point of Sale Solution for the Mac - Version: 2.0, 4/27/2007 04:10PM PST
(3 of 4 users found this comment useful)
anasri
Working in a retail store for the past 13 years that uses only Apple computers has given me the opportunity to work with various point of sale solutions. Without a doubt Lightspeed has been the best system we have used. It is such an easy to use yet robust and stable system. In our multi-user environment it is not uncommon to have 3-4 simultaneous connections to the server and it doesn't slow us down a bit. I think even more importantly our Lightspeed server has never crashed - I can't say that about any other system that I have used.
Not only is the software great but so are the people who work at Xsilva. Their tech support is one of the best I have experienced.
There are so many nice features in the program and you really need to try the software to appreciate it's elegance, simplicity and power.
Not only is the software great but so are the people who work at Xsilva. Their tech support is one of the best I have experienced.
There are so many nice features in the program and you really need to try the software to appreciate it's elegance, simplicity and power.
Xsilva Lightspeed is THE Point of Sale Solution for Mac - Version: 2.0b2r3, 4/22/2007 06:59PM PST
(2 of 2 users found this comment useful)
patrick89
I've been using Xsilva Lightspeed for nearly a year now. Lightspeed 2 is to be released on April 24th, but I've been working with beta releases for a couple months now. Lightspeed 2 is the result of an already excellent product (Lightspeed 1.X) becoming a polished and refined upgrade.
If considering Point of Sale Software for the Mac, Lightspeed is the only one to consider. Xsilva has a great product, but just as important, they've got a great support system. Xsilva has a great network of resellers that they put a lot of support into (my company is an Xsilva reseller), but they also provide outstanding support for their customers.
In the past few weeks of working with beta releases, I've posted bug reports. Every bug that I've reported has been fixed within the same day. We're also working with the current version 1.3.x which is rock solid and troublefree.
If considering Point of Sale Software for the Mac, Lightspeed is the only one to consider. Xsilva has a great product, but just as important, they've got a great support system. Xsilva has a great network of resellers that they put a lot of support into (my company is an Xsilva reseller), but they also provide outstanding support for their customers.
In the past few weeks of working with beta releases, I've posted bug reports. Every bug that I've reported has been fixed within the same day. We're also working with the current version 1.3.x which is rock solid and troublefree.
By far the best Point of Sales system we've ever used. - Version: 1.2.2b, 9/23/2006 10:43AM PST
(2 of 2 users found this comment useful)
agnaldo_tecnico
I work for an Apple Specialist that has been trying differnt business management and point of sale systems for years. We've gone through multiple FileMaker systems, etc. Finally with LightSpeed, we have a real system for the Mac. The developers are amazing when it comes to supporting and listening to your requests. This system gets better every day. We started looking into it about 1 year ago. It wasn't quite where we needed it to be at that time, but they listened. They've implemented our reqeuested features and then some. We have about 20 users hitting the db every day, and it works great!
The Only POS Software to Consider! - Version: 1.2.2b, 8/17/2006 11:07AM PST
(2 of 3 users found this comment useful)
mbattat
We are a Mac retailer and service shop that has been running LightSpeed since 2005 and have found the software to be feature-rich, fast and reliable for our office of six (2 sales, 3 techs, 1 admin). The software is also developing rapidly which means we are continually gaining new functionality as our business grows.
We are big fans of the quoting and invoicing tools and rely on its SRO and GSX features in our service department....other features we love and need: Ingram Micro lookup (what a time saver!!!) as well as reporting functions, just to name a few. .We use a Star Micronics TSP143U printer, and a voyager bar code scanner at our cash and it runs like a charm. Our experience with Xsilva has also been outstanding, anytime that we have questions regarding the software or questions about setting up up, they have responded quickly.
Overall we are very satisfied with the product, it is definitely moving forward at a pace well beyond expectation, and is maturing as it should.
We are big fans of the quoting and invoicing tools and rely on its SRO and GSX features in our service department....other features we love and need: Ingram Micro lookup (what a time saver!!!) as well as reporting functions, just to name a few. .We use a Star Micronics TSP143U printer, and a voyager bar code scanner at our cash and it runs like a charm. Our experience with Xsilva has also been outstanding, anytime that we have questions regarding the software or questions about setting up up, they have responded quickly.
Overall we are very satisfied with the product, it is definitely moving forward at a pace well beyond expectation, and is maturing as it should.
Design Consultant - Version: 1.2.2b, 8/16/2006 05:49PM PST
(3 of 5 users found this comment useful)
shiatan--2008
LightSpeed point of sale and time billing software for Mac OSX is a wish come true! Running a design firm and a furniture store has become so much easier and organised since becoming a LightSpeed user. The software I've been demanding for years is finally a reality.
I can now e-mail PDF quotes on company letterhead with detailed written descriptions integrated with photos for each item I'm pricing. Click, I have an instant invoice, order, purchase order, packing slip, box label and mailing label...just to mention a few. And, tracking inventory, orders, payments, sales and profit reports are instantaneous.
LightSpeed is truly an exquisite and very elaborate tool that I highly recommend for any business!
Steve Dugre
Celadon Collection
186 Peel
Montreal, Quebec
H3C 2G7
Tel. (514) 932-3306
Fax (514) 789-1546
http://www.celadoncollection.com
I can now e-mail PDF quotes on company letterhead with detailed written descriptions integrated with photos for each item I'm pricing. Click, I have an instant invoice, order, purchase order, packing slip, box label and mailing label...just to mention a few. And, tracking inventory, orders, payments, sales and profit reports are instantaneous.
LightSpeed is truly an exquisite and very elaborate tool that I highly recommend for any business!
Steve Dugre
Celadon Collection
186 Peel
Montreal, Quebec
H3C 2G7
Tel. (514) 932-3306
Fax (514) 789-1546
http://www.celadoncollection.com
We purchase all of our inventory with LightSpeed purchase orders, and my manager labels and tags the items pretty quickly every Monday morning in our stock room. I used to have headaches with ordering proper quantities with a previous system, but now I can see what we've sold and what we need really quickly. If you have an iPod LightSpeed makes sense - it's really intuitive with the same interface as iTunes.
The POS screen is simple, and I would like some additional things to be included, and I am told the next version has this element re-written. It is really easy to train on, and we process hundreds of transactions daily on it quickly. I really love this product, and it has given me so much control - especially with the integration to QuickBooks for Mac.
All and all it's a great software. The key is that my employees love it, and I am really happy with the decision I made as a business owner.