WSW - POS Migration LS Pt 1
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[00:00:00] [00:00:30]
[00:00:38] Dan DeLong: Welcome to another workshop Wednesday brought to you by the school of bookkeeping. com where it's casual conversations for serious workflows and you may notice that Rachel or Carrie doesn't look like Rachel or Carrie because today I'm actually joined by KG from Lightspeed.
So this is KG, why don't you introduce yourself a little bit [00:01:00] and and then we'll talk about what it is that we're doing over the And then the next few workshop Wednesdays. Absolutely.
[00:01:07] KG: Thanks, Dan. So yeah, my name is Kevin. KG is a kind of a name that's stuck here. I've been with Lightspeed for about five and a half years.
I previously used to sell this product. So Lightspeed X series who had at one point a competitor to QuickBooks point of sale. And now I'm working with Dan to pretty much highlight the parallels and maybe even some of the differences between the two point of sales. There's a lot of great parallels, which is why a lot of businesses have chosen the [00:01:30] path of light speed.
But again, there are some differences, maybe some things that you need to pivot to. So that's the purpose of this meeting to show you what those differences are and how you can relate
to
[00:01:38] Dan DeLong: them. And Carrie and I did that, did a previous workshop Wednesday. I put the link of it in the.
the comments or the chat. So if you're wondering what the heck are we talking about? You can go back and watch that one. But basically to set the stage in 20, early 2023 Intuit made an announcement that QuickBooks point of sale, a [00:02:00] desktop point of sale product was being discontinued and by discontinued, it also, it sounds so there's a misnomer about that, but they, they throw this word service discontinuation in front of that.
But basically what that means is that QuickBooks point of sale will no longer be supported. It's not gonna be actively developed. You can still use it, however. Any services that were connected to your QuickBooks point of sale, like payments or [00:02:30] the store exchange or anything that was online will no longer function.
And that happened October 3rd, they picked some weird dates typically because there's a a weekend in there. October 3rd was the service discontinuation date for QuickBooks point of sale. So we saw that coming. We were Carrie and I were we're actively looking for an alternative point of sale system because she has a A significant amount of of clients that, that use QuickBooks point of sale and didn't [00:03:00] want to have any interruption.
So we happened across Lightspeed. Lightspeed is a cloud based point of sale system. And we we built a pretty good relationship with them and we went to their partner summit. Was that a month ago too? Three up in Montreal and and got to see the headquarters and start to really understand the entire ecosystem.
So part of that as I was milling about, I was wondering, [00:03:30] Hey, it would be awesome for. The people that are in this position of okay what do I do with with my QuickBooks point of sale? There's so many other options out there, Intuit itself has said, try somebody else other than Lightspeed, right?
So there, there's and let's do this at the end of the year when it's your busiest time of year, right? Everybody's so busy with their holidays shopping in the retail stores. And so what I thought would be neat to do [00:04:00] is I don't think it's ever been done before is a before and after, type of situation of somebody who's in this position that would be like either investigating other other point of sale solutions or have invested into Lightspeed.
And they're like I used to do this. I used to do something this way in QuickBooks point of sale. How do I do that in Lightspeed? I said to KG Hey, why don't you come on the workshop Wednesday? And we can have this side by [00:04:30] side Comparison of I'll do the QuickBooks point of sale stuff because that's what I'm most familiar with and you do The Lightspeed point of sale stuff because that's what you do And then we'll just have this migration Before and after, type of situation, right?
So that's what we're going to talk about today is really just setting the stage, but in future workshops, we'll go through like sales stuff, what do you do? What you used to [00:05:00] do inside a QuickBooks point of sale with sales, ringing up sales, ringing up returns, those types of things.
And then KG will be like this is how you do that same task in in, in, in light speed. So can you talk a little bit about. What light speed is and how it, cause that's the main concern. I think a lot of QuickBooks point of sale users would have is what am I not going to be able to do?
How is this different? [00:05:30] Just set a, set an overview of what's the, what is light speed point of sale?
[00:05:36] KG: So I'll give the history in a nutshell. So if some of you may have heard of. A point of sale called Vend. Vend was acquired by Lightspeed in 2021. And actually at that point, Vend was chosen as the flagship for retail product moving forward for two main reasons.
And we could probably talk about this in maybe a later session or maybe a little bit today, but one of the key reasons why this was chosen as the flagship is because it was the [00:06:00] simplest to set up and get started. So if I could go from brand new business to actively transactional in two to four weeks, which is our typical average.
And not only that, train my staff to use a simple platform that makes my job significantly easier. So that's priority number one. And I know that one of the biggest concerns, especially moving over into a cloud based system, is it's on the cloud, so the internet. It's not if and, it's not if the internet cuts out, I always like to say it's when the internet cuts out, and it will happen.[00:06:30]
One of the things that being a, one of the first cloud based point of sale systems is being able to do something like sell offline. Obviously, we're predominantly on the cloud, and that's how we are always going to be used. But, when the internet cuts out, we have the capability to do the most important function, which is to sell.
Internet cuts out, I can still transact with my customer is none the wiser, they buy their product, they leave, what my system does at that point is it stores that information, and then puts it back on the cloud once the internet syncs up. There's ways around this, [00:07:00] just by connecting, like for example, to a hotspot on your phone, or having an iPad that has Connectivity to the towers and all that.
But what you'll really get here at late speed is a System that started off as a point of sale for brick and mortar stores. I'm sure you're aware that Intuit has chosen maybe a path like Shopify, and they're really good at things like e commerce. But they are e commerce platform first, and then some of our other competitors are banks first.
So think Clover with Stripe or First Data. So with us, [00:07:30] we are a point of sale for brick and mortar inventory first, and then we're scaling to other things like e
[00:07:35] Dan DeLong: commerce and payment processing. Yeah, that was when I worked at Intuit and I worked pretty closely with the point of sale product there was a point in time where, you know every year they do some reorganization or restructuring.
And there was a point in time where point of sale, the program was actually positioned underneath payments. So it was, the payments division and then point of sale was a, basically a vehicle [00:08:00] to payments, right? Because, it is rare that you find a brick and mortar establishment that doesn't accept credit cards, right?
So when you have an integrated payment processor, then it gets a lot, you can do a lot more with that than if you're doing things separately. And you have that as well, right? So you have a unified payment platform,
[00:08:21] KG: correct? Correct. Yes. When it comes to our payment processing, we do offer in house payment processing.
The goal here is to provide you something that is [00:08:30] all under one roof, so you have one support to call if anything were to happen with any of the hardware or the software. But on top of that, the analytics that's provided within the system, taken within our payment processing platform is monumental.
It makes running the business that much easier. And on top of that, you have a lot more insight and visibility into what you're actually being charged on your payment processor, as opposed to just paying a bill
[00:08:52] Dan DeLong: when you get it. And so as of October 3rd, anybody using QuickBooks point of sale can't do that [00:09:00] because they discontinued the payment processing.
So now, somebody who is. Actively using QuickBooks point of sale today, if they are charging credit cards because again, what retail establishment is not accepting credit card payments, they have to do that separately, right? So they, and what are some of the challenges that you've seen when you don't have an integrated payment solution in your point of sale?
Yeah,
[00:09:26] KG: I always like to relate this back because we're all consumers. We all go [00:09:30] shopping. So picture this, you're going into a store and you're going to pay. And the cashier says it is 120 and 45 cents. And you say, okay, it's on card. They have to pick up the terminal punch in the one 20. 4, five, press. Okay.
Hand it to you. And then you look and it's the wrong price. And then you say, oh no, I'm actually, this says it's actually 1, 200. And then you have to hand it back. Human error doesn't happen often with cash registers, but when it does, it can be crucial, especially on the accounting side. So you have to hand it [00:10:00] back.
Employee has to start this kind of transaction from start. So this is a big issue with non integrated payments is the human error aspect to it. Again, as a consumer, I just want to pay for my stuff and leave. As quickly as possible. So if my point of sale says 120, they say card, I press card, the terminal automatically says 120 and then I don't have to do is tap and get out of there.
It makes it that much faster, but the most important part here is the customer experience. And again, just put yourself in that position as a consumer yourself. You've gone shopping, you've experienced it. [00:10:30] I don't want any slowdowns when I'm shopping.
[00:10:33] Dan DeLong: Yeah, I love I love the light speed video that they showed at the summit, where there's these two guys staring at a bicycle.
And one is the sales guy and one is the customer. And they're just like drooling over this bicycle. And. The guy says, do you want it? And he says, yes, pulls out his credit card, swipes the handheld mobile terminal, and then he's done cause it, he doesn't [00:11:00] have to have that dilemma of that interruption, the interruption of, okay let's go over to the cash register.
Let me ring you up and then. Put in something in a different device and those types of things. Yeah, so error is a huge potential problem. And then, you're dealing with these cashiers and associates that, they're not I don't know what's what's a polite way to, to say, people that work in retail, right?
[00:11:30] Or, they're. They're part of the machine, right? Like they're doing things in the machine to, to ring up sales and they're prone to mistakes. You're right. It is the error. Yeah.
[00:11:44] KG: And at the end of the day it's not their business. Like the cashier in most cases, it's either just an employee, just there to do a job really quick.
So as as an owner, you want to look out for that and you don't want to get in the way of the sale. So again, if. An issue with your terminal not connecting or [00:12:00] whatever. Maybe it's interrupting a transaction that affects the customer experience and it affects are they going to come back because of this one issue that they experienced.
[00:12:07] Dan DeLong: Yeah. And it's the sense of urgency and especially in the retail is. wHen it comes to that, when you've got a customer and more importantly, a line of customers, um, wanting to check out and then there's an obstacle to something, there's nothing worse than having to look around for a price check or, get a manager [00:12:30] involved for an override or something like that.
So there is that level of heightened. Heightened urgency when it comes to bringing up sales when there's an obstacle to that. So let's talk a little bit about, just the core different functionality, eco environment issue. Boy, I can't even talk this morning. Environment.
between QuickBooks point of sale and Lightspeed point of sale. And the biggest one, as you mentioned, it's a cloud based, right? [00:13:00] What ultimately does that mean to, to somebody who is evaluating a point of sale system that is cloud based, what is, what do they have to, what do they have to download, install, have, in order to ring up sales?
[00:13:15] KG: That's a great question. Think of it this way, a lot of QuickBooks users are, chances are, they're on the desktop. So in this case, if you just open up a tab on your browser and just go to your website, which is your what we consider our app [00:13:30] you're in. So you don't need to download anything.
All you have to do is log into your platform and it being on the cloud means nothing is stored in the computer. So if for whatever reason, knock on wood, something happens to your computer, nothing is lost, you can just pick up a tablet, pick up another computer, you can pick up your phone and there's all your product already.
[00:13:48] Dan DeLong: Another big concern, so similar to the concern, is theft in the, in that environment, those things can happen. Somebody comes in the middle of the night. steals your devices. You are S. O. L. [00:14:00] Unless you have a, another device that you can just log into and pick up and move on, right?
[00:14:06] KG: So it's one major part that you no longer have to think about. Because again, a lot of companies, hundreds, if not thousands of products on their inventory list hundreds, again, if not thousands of customers on their customer list and something happens to that list. You got to start from scratch.
Whereas in this case, if I close this tab here, open it up on my phone, it's all everywhere. So similar to the way most people use cameras on their phone now. [00:14:30] Take a picture, it's on the cloud, whether it's Google Photos or Apple Photos, whatever it is. So it's very similar. I could access it from anywhere, anytime, as long as I have access to the internet and a login.
[00:14:39] Dan DeLong: Now about a, people will love to have a dedicated terminal or a device what do they need with with light speed in order to have a quote unquote cash register terminal for their point of sale system with light.
[00:14:56] KG: You mean like the physical hardware?
Yeah, [00:15:00] so the good news is that if you're using QuickBooks point of sale, chances are you already have it. We don't have proprietary hardware, which means none of the hardware we sell is lightspeed specific hardware. It's all yours. We're not going to push you to an iPad. We're not going to push you to a desktop.
But since most of you are probably using desktop already, again, it's literally just as easy as opening up a browser and using it. If you already have a receipt printer, a cash drawer, or a scanner attached to that computer, It'll most likely work. We have a very long list of supported hardware, which we'll probably share with you a little [00:15:30] bit later.
So if your stuff is on that list, and again, it's industry standard stuff. Chances are we support it and you just saved a couple thousand or a thousand bucks on brand new hardware already,
[00:15:40] Dan DeLong: because that's one of the biggest differences is that, QuickBooks point of sale is a desktop software and it's only in windows, right?
So that meant if you wanted to have a sleek dare I say sexy, point of sale system you would have. You would have to have it on [00:16:00] a windows based operating system to download, install and, store your data into that. So that really limited you to. Basically a surface, right?
Where it came to this is if I wanted to have a tablet based, type of thing where I could swing it around and have them interact with with the point of sale system for whatever reason I would have to do that on a surface. Now I could still. Use that surface with light speed, right?
But I would just be using the browser within [00:16:30] the surface, right? Exactly. And then all my other hardware, all my other hardware that I had the cash drawer, the receipt printer, the barcode scanner that went along with that device or that surface. I could still use that, correct?
[00:16:45] KG: Correct. Exactly. And especially for those and the other benefits of the cloud being For those who have multiple people using the platform at the same time, it's completely doable and in real time.
So if someone's at the front processing a sale, [00:17:00] while me as the owner, I am adding new inventory, while I have someone else in the back doing an inventory count. Can all be done at the same time, uh, and no limitations on that.
[00:17:09] Dan DeLong: Great. That brings up I was wanting to see if I could actually have both of them up at the same time.
No, I can't have them side by side. I could do. So one day, one day. There we go. We can do it that way. We can reorganize, but it's not lined up. You're above, you're below the point of sale and I'm below the light speed. Yeah, [00:17:30] he does. Reorganize. Yeah. I'm just going to play around with it.
This is a great
[00:17:36] KG: platform. I love
[00:17:37] Dan DeLong: this. This is great. All right, we'll leave it like this for now. So we have both Lightspeed and and Point of Sale open at the same time. So you can see the side by side. Now you're. You're in, are you in dark mode? Because it's very dark. Yes.
[00:17:52] KG: Yeah.
Yeah. Mine is auto set it to the computer. So my, if my computer or my Chrome is on night mode, but I could [00:18:00] change that. It could be
[00:18:00] Dan DeLong: in both. It can be in either one, right? Yeah. Just wanted to give a, give an an overview, type of thing where it comes to, the, what you're doing inside of QuickBooks point of sale versus what you could ultimately be doing inside of Lightspeed.
The biggest challenge or the biggest thing when we're talking about, desktop versus a cloud based solution is the fact that. In order to have what you mentioned in order to have the front office and the [00:18:30] back office, you have to have a network, right? You have to have these two computers need to talk to each other.
Now, QuickBooks MySAIL was actually really cool in the way that the workstations connected to to the server because that was an installation type that you specified. And as long as those two computers could see each other. It was the way I described it was basically like the server was a lighthouse and the clients were looking for the lighthouse.
And as long as they could see the beacon, [00:19:00] then they would connect to it, right? Where you didn't have to map network drives. You didn't have to do all this stuff, right? In order to connect those two, but you still had to install it, and have that infrastructure in place. And now we're Now we've got a light mode of, so it's a little easier to see, so that's good.
But all of that stuff is non existent, right? When it comes to light speed, you don't have to set up a network. You have to have an [00:19:30] active internet connection. That is the main requirement. Is there any other requirements for like infrastructure wise, like a certain browser or could you use an Android tablet?
I know you have an, like more of an app for iPad, but can you use an Android tablet? If that's all
[00:19:47] KG: you have. lEt's put it this way. When it comes to, oh, to answer your question, sorry, we cannot use Android. Not yet, anyway. It was something we were considering at one point, but right now our main focus is [00:20:00] Windows, Mac, and PCs.
So in this case on windows, as long as it's windows seven or higher. And if you're using windows
[00:20:06] Dan DeLong: seven, if you're not using windows seven, wow. Okay.
[00:20:09] KG: And then from there it's Chrome edge or Firefox. I think the priority is Chrome just because it's a little bit easier to run. But either one of those can work.
Same thing on Mac, except for it adds in Safari and on an iPad, it's an app. So yeah, and Dan had mentioned, the mode here is based off of either your computer or iPad. In this case, you [00:20:30] could go into the settings and have it ignore that as well. It's more for if you have an iPad, dark mode helps save the battery a little bit more.
So it'll the length or lifetime of the battery on
[00:20:39] Dan DeLong: the iPad, but Because that's one thing that you can do with a tablet that you can't do with a laptop is go schlep it around the store, or ring somebody up. Where they're at, right? Oh, hey, how can I help you? Okay, let's ring it up right here.
Yeah, exactly. Got my devices with me. So the infrastructure piece [00:21:00] is a basically a non issue uh, when it comes to, when it comes to light speed, because as long as you have an internet connection, and then you also mentioned that you have this offline mode so that not if, but when the internet goes out.
Oh, I can't ring up a sale because I don't have, I don't have internet. No, that's not the case. You can still ring up a sale. What about credit card processing though? If you talk a little bit about what would happen there in offline mode.
[00:21:28] KG: Yeah, for sure. So I wish I could display [00:21:30] it, but then that would drop from the stream.
But yes, in long story short. As long as the cash register, which they, of course, they should be on the sale screen, internet goes out. What will happen is a nice little gray banner will appear at the top of the screen. It says you're on offline mode and you'll still be able to transact at a product.
You can't do things like add a customer or do layaways or anything that the priority is customer checks. Pays and leaves when it comes to accepting credit cards It really is up to the customer at the end of the day or not the customer the owner At the day because [00:22:00] if the credit card gets declined you just won't know Until they have left with the product already.
Yeah, so I used to work retail. So in my experience when the internet cut out, it would be cash only until it came back up. But we do accept offline credit cards, but again it's up to the discretion of the owner at that point.
[00:22:17] Dan DeLong: I have a horror story of a customer that was they never set up their merchant account inside of point of sale.
They just had it. Set up as, Visa, MasterCard, the card type and they [00:22:30] went for months taking credit cards by just marking it as Visa, MasterCard. And then they called months later and they were like, where's our money? And I'm like how do you feel about giving away your services for months for free?
I had to give them the bad news that because they hadn't. Entered their merchant number and those types of things that they basically gave away Their tours where they were a tour company for free because [00:23:00] there's no way to, reach out to those customers cause they, they weren't tracking customers and and once they leave the chance of the likelihood of actually them paying um, it's not high, not ideal.
Yeah. To your point it is up to, owner beware of that, because if if they do walk out the door and then you charge later, and then there's a problem with the charge, just it's a challenge to to recoup that, but doable is possible, right? [00:23:30] I know. I know some folks, like they might be in remote.
Locations and those types of things. And that's one of the, I think one of the benefits for, other credit card processing that do allow for awful offline is that they can do that stuff without the internet access. And then later, but. It comes to that point of okay, what happens, if something bad is going to happen, it's going to happen to a retailer, right?
Yeah.
[00:23:56] KG: At the end of the day it's especially at the highest [00:24:00] point, it would be on a lineup of customers and something will happen. And again, it's always to ease the mind of an owner who's looking to, or even considering switching, chances are you're already using the cloud on your phone for whatever reason.
But on top of that, because there's no need to switch hardware this makes it one less hurdle to jump. All you have to do is open a browser, export a file, import a file, and you could have this up and running. A day or two, if you really prioritize it. So it makes that transition that [00:24:30] much smoother.
So
[00:24:30] Dan DeLong: Let's talk about the general workflows that are done in inside of QuickBooks point of sale and how they correlate to to light speed. So when I would always talk to talk to someone, especially when they're, integrating it with their QuickBooks financial software is that QuickBooks point of sale handles the day to day activities.
And then QuickBooks financial would. would handle the routine tasks, right? So the routine tasks would be like banking, paying their bills payroll, bank [00:25:00] reconciliation, the things that you do on a regular basis, but not necessarily something that's day to day. If anything, that is day to day.
Things coming in, inventory coming in and inventory going out. That's a day to day activity. We would hope we would hope that there are people coming in the door in order to take some of our inventory out of our out of our hot little hands, right? So anything that's going to impact the day to day, those will be that, that those tasks will be happening inside of point of sale.
As the name [00:25:30] implies sales, right? Ringing up and recording of every sale that in, in, in that affects my inventory. I wanna be doing that inside of my point of sale system. How does that compare that to to, to Lightspeed?
[00:25:45] KG: Sorry, what was the
[00:25:46] Dan DeLong: question? So is that the same kind of scenario where you have your QuickBooks for your routine stuff, but then your inventory management sales and receiving all of that will be handled inside of the point of sale system?[00:26:00]
[00:26:00] KG: Yeah, absolutely. I'm not sure if we did it already, but yeah, we do have a direct integration with QuickBooks online or QuickBooks desktop. In this case, when it comes to everything that has to do with inventory movements, customer data, online transactions reporting in general for anything that's to do with inventory starts and ends here.
On this platform. Things that transfer over into your QuickBooks are, of course, things like purchase orders on account transactions for invoices all of those things will still remain on your accounting
[00:26:28] Dan DeLong: software. So I [00:26:30] have here up on the screen, which is above you, which is, you probably like burning that QuickBooks point of sale is is on your side of the screen.
But this, these tasks, customer orders, making sales history, customer lists. And then purchase orders, receiving vouchers managing time, for cashiers, in and out, those types of things, all those tasks are here and available inside of QuickBooks point of sale.
Does that correlate to what you do inside of light speed. [00:27:00] And is there is there like a navigator, a main navigator in in in, in light speed to show, kind of show these easy access points where I can just tap on this and it'll take me to it.
[00:27:14] KG: sO when we first started back in, I think it was 2010 with this product, the goal was to have a very simple UI compared to Apple so we wanted to keep it as simple as possible. So our. Main page is on the left side here in the form of tabs, and if you click on one of them, it'll open up a few [00:27:30] more options on the right side. So if I'm in my inventory page, it shows my products, my promotions, price books, and everything that has to do with those.
So we don't have any more, depending on the business and the needs that they have, some of these things may not be here. For example, services, not every business offers a service, so it can be as little as I believe. Five tabs on the left as much as I think seven that I have or eight So it's all managed right here on the left side and then it could be broken down Yeah, the smaller sections
[00:27:58] Dan DeLong: now is that screen that [00:28:00] you like what you're looking at?
There is that the back office or is that the register? Yeah,
[00:28:06] KG: correct So this is the back office what we consider the front end or the cash register is the sale screen Which is this one page and then I could have Again, like I mentioned earlier, unlimited people on the back end doing things like back office work, like checking, reporting, updating product, doing inventory counts receiving purchase orders, things like that, all from the back office at the same time.
[00:28:27] Dan DeLong: Got it. Okay.
[00:28:28] KG: So anything that is not [00:28:30] the cell screen is
[00:28:30] Dan DeLong: back office. Okay. So you have a register mode where it takes that back, back, back office stuff off the screen so that, wandering fingers of the cashiers don't happen to, Let's see what the cost of these things are.
[00:28:49] KG: Yeah, I should.
I should know that. Of course, there is user permissions, which means I could limit my cashiers to see or do whatever I'd like them to do. So there's a setting in the back where I could say, oh, my [00:29:00] cashiers have no access to my products page. So that way, even if they did click on it, it would just be a blank page for them.
It's going to, it's going to happen again. I used to work retail. I get it. I was there. I wonder what this page is, right?
[00:29:12] Dan DeLong: Because fraud and theft is such a huge concern, not just for the because people get the retailers have it from all sides, right? It's a, it's not just The the shoplifters that they need to be concerned about and sometimes their own employees,[00:29:30] and I remember, this whole idea of printing held receipts, which was something that was in, in QuickBooks point of sale.
I'm like, why would that need to be a security problem? And it's you have a guy that's working the cash register. He prints out a receipt, he holds, puts it on hold and then prints it. So now the customer has got the receipt. And then he then pockets the money like, Oh my gosh, this is horrible.
It's we need to be able to help these businesses [00:30:00] hire better people. You never know. Yeah, exactly. Can't say that. I never did that at Burger King when my first job. A couple
[00:30:08] KG: of fries here and there.
[00:30:12] Dan DeLong: Little off the top. Yeah. Okay. I had a question and it just escaped me. The, that I was, well, maybe it'll come back to me. I was distracted by someone on Facebook called me the Jedi Master of all these QuickBooks . I wanted to throw that out [00:30:30] there. Appreciate you, Matt. So in, in general the fun feature, functionality wise is.
But on par, would you say, as with QuickBooks point of sale, because you can have multiple locations, you can have, is there any limits to to what you can have store wide with regards to light speed? Yeah.
[00:30:52] KG: So when it comes to the way we actively have our product, it is we build by location and by registers.
So how many locations and [00:31:00] registers? We don't charge for users or logins or a lot of products or anything like that. It is strictly just you locations and registers. At that point, when it comes to any form of limitations, I would say the limitation is how many registers you have, but then it's again, it's unlimited on backend.
So you could have 20, 30 people running the back office if you'd like. thIs, the functionality is very similar. There's going to be a lot of similarities in regards to what you can actually do. [00:31:30] How you do it, of course, will be different. No matter which point of sale you end up switching to, no matter what, coming from one to the other, there's going to be similar features.
They're going to just be done a little bit differently. We do have onboarding, which is, of course, offered for any new customers. And we have a lot of familiarity with. QuickBooks switching over to light speed
[00:31:49] Dan DeLong: as well. So got it. Now I remember what I was going to ask you there. So for someone like when we started to announce that the reseller company that, that we were [00:32:00] working with complete business group was looking into light speed.
Immediately we heard from people who had a sour experience with Lightspeed where, oh, this reporting didn't work right for me, or, oh, fill in the blank, right? And you mentioned BEND so I would like, like for you to talk about the different series, just a little bit of.
of Lightspeed and and how, like today with Vend being your flagship product, how that might be different from [00:32:30] somebody who may have had a a prior experience with Lightspeed, maybe that didn't like it and how that might be different today.
[00:32:38] KG: Yeah. I came from that acquisition, so working on both sides, I can the way we would always position or sold this product was the simplicity of it, the ease of use from someone who is not too tech savvy to someone who has gone from a physical cash register to moving to this is where we prided ourselves and we made it very simple to do complex [00:33:00] functionalities.
And again, that's the reason why this was chosen as a flagship. In retail, there's two different series. We have X, which is the X Venn product, or R series, which is the original Lightspeed product. So if you have tried Lightspeed previously, chances are you've tried the Legacy product, not this one. This one again is the ease of use is bar none.
And again coming from myself and a lot of the new business owners that are coming into the space, you'll see that. The user interface is a lot less [00:33:30] compact. There's less on the screen, but you could do more with the analytics. So the goal here is to keep it as simple as possible. So again, if you've tried Lightspeed before,
[00:33:39] Dan DeLong: this is a different Lightspeed.
And you have a, you have an interesting use case that I don't, I'm not sure if it's on your blog or if it's on your website, but it talks about someone who came from QuickBooks Point of Sale. Ultimately followed followed into its suggestion of going to shop a five point of sale [00:34:00] and then landed up landing in, in, in light speed.
And can you talk a little bit about that? Do you have the link to share? I couldn't find it.
[00:34:08] KG: I will. I will share with you after I could not find it, but I know that our marketing team has it because it is on our website somewhere. But long story short, yeah, the, together with their partner, they had moved to Shopify followed suit.
And again, Shopify is really good at what they do, which is e commerce first and then having other things that attach to it. But what they found is that this particular business was just [00:34:30] more focused on the brick and mortar. And that's just really wasn't Shopify's focus. That's ours. So they had just spoken back to the partner referred it back to us.
We showed them the ropes and they made the switch. I think it was within less than a month or I think it was a month and a half that they had switched to Shopify, used it for a bit, realized this isn't it. And again, our focus is inventory. So if you're a retail business and you have inventory, that's our focus.
That's our foundation. Everything beyond that is extra
[00:34:58] Dan DeLong: if you'd like. Yeah, I think that's probably the best way to [00:35:00] look at it. Shopify, it was e commerce first and they're adding on. And if you've ever done anything with Shopify that you're likely going to need an add on, for, my business handles it this way. Okay. There's an add on for that. Amen. You're in the deep end of the pool of trying to find the right add on and making sure that it does what you want it to do before even implementing that, that sort of thing. Whereas light speed is the [00:35:30] foundation and then.
Do you have an ecosystem for folks that are like okay, this core functionality of what it is that you do in Lightspeed is not what I need. Do you have a ceiling to go to or somewhere next level?
[00:35:45] KG: Absolutely. So the way we position it is these aren't like little apps that we'll have. We cover a lot of what a retail business needs natively.
But we can't do everything for everyone at the end of the day. This is why we have our partner ecosystem. We have a [00:36:00] very long list of things that will take a native feature and make it advanced. So for example, we have a loyalty program within the system. Very simple loyalty program, 5%, here's the, here's 5 percent of your purchase, add it to your account.
But then we could take that, for example, like with Marcello, attach Marcello to it and turn your loyalty program into an omni channel program where it's not just loyalty, it's marketing. And then you could spend online and in store. So it really is dependent on the the position of the business where they are in their journey.
If you're really taking it to [00:36:30] the next level, then that's where our
[00:36:32] Dan DeLong: ecosystem comes in. When it comes to that you have, because that's part of the challenge, I think, with Shopify is that, okay if I'm looking for something to manage subscriptions, for example, and I search for the app of subscriptions, I'm presented with this huge list that I now have to wait and sort through.
So if I, using your example of customer rewards. Okay, but the core functionality of light speed doesn't give me everything that I want to do. And I go [00:37:00] searching for rewards. Am I going to have that same scenario? Or is it going to be just, one or two or three that you've vetted to, to do the things that you've seen people want to do?
[00:37:12] KG: Absolutely. So within the actual platform, you are going to see a No more than three or four options, because like you said, we've vetted some of the best possible ones that'll really Highlight those features that you're looking for. Alternatively, one of the things that we offer is an open API. So chances are, if [00:37:30] you do have a smaller app that maybe isn't too popular, chances are we may have an integration with it because we've developed an open API, which means developers can build integration and support it without necessarily using our resources.
If you have an app that you're really happy to stick with, but not too sure if we have an integration. Nothing a quick Google search won't
[00:37:50] Dan DeLong: won't solve. All right I think we've we've exhausted an overview. We went a little over over our time but great conversation, KG. I [00:38:00] appreciate you coming on.
And so what we'll be doing over the next future workshops is we'll take and do like a side by side. So the next thing will be as. What we'll be coming is sales and we'll talk about the selling aspect and what you can do with sales inside of point of sale and compare and contrast that to light speed.
And then we'll take another section for, receiving and inventory management and those types of things. That's what you're in for, uh, for this next series. We may take a [00:38:30] pause, around the holidays cause gosh, KG doesn't work on a Christmas week.
Give it, spend some time with your families and everything. Yeah, so we will just look for those coming up. We appreciate you joining us today and we'll see you next time on the workshop Wednesday, any closing thoughts KG.
[00:38:53] KG: Enjoy the holiday season. I know you guys, everyone's gonna be busy.
Keep your heads down. You'll get through it. And of course, if you have any questions, if you [00:39:00] have anything off the top of your mind that maybe you didn't want to toss in the chat, feel free to send them through more than happy to help.
[00:39:05] Dan DeLong: Oh, yeah, that reminds me. So we have a We had what happened. Okay.
If you want to learn more about light speed, you can just whip out your phone now and just do that QR code. And that'll take you to a website, co branded website with a complete business group, as well as light speed to learn more about that. You can reach out and hopefully you'll get in touch with someone like KG to talk to you about what what light [00:39:30] speed could do.
And we'll see you next time on the workshop Wednesday and have a great .
