Who connects Lightspeed to an accounting package?

NickS

NickS

Yes

I ask this question following a recent discussion I had with someone from Lightspeed. It never occurred to me that anyone using a POS system would not connect it to an accounting package. It was suggested to me that many people may just export some PDF of CSV files and hand them over to their 'accountant'. I guess in a way that is still connecting to an accounting package - just a very manual way of doing things.

dougfastfix

Yes

We use Lightspeed Accounting to connect to Xero.

VanessaD

Hey @NickS ,

Currently Lightspeed accounting is available and compatible with Quickbooks Online, Quickbooks Desktop, Xero, Exact Online and Sage business Cloud Accounting. This is an API that takes your sales data out of retail based on your setup within LSAccounting and posts them over daily, Monday to Friday. If you're interested in this, feel free to reach out to your accountant, or go to the Lightspeed Accounting Login Portal to register for a free-trial.

You can also go into Lightspeed's Reports section and go to the Quickbooks Settings and Options to start populating the name of the accounts + the Quickbooks Exports to generate Exports for periods at a time. This does export as an IIF file and we do recommend the use of Quickbooks Desktop 2018 or older (it's an older function). Should you try to import this into another type of accounting platform, isn't necessarily impossible, but the results cannot be guaranteed.

Hope this helps shed some light!

NickS

Yes

Hi Vanessa,

I posed the question as an existing LS/Xero user. I was told by one of the team there that they didn't think many people were actually connecting LS to an accounting package directly (which sounded highly implausible to me) - rather they were exporting data in some form or another and then creating their own form of API to get that data into an accounting package.

The initial question came about because of my ongoing disappointment in LS addressing my concerns about inconsistencies between LS reporting and what Xero shows. I seem to be one of the few people expressing concern hence wondering if people really weren't connecting LS to Xero/QBs etc.

I still have lots of issues and they don't seem to be addressed and no one there really seriously wants to engage.

Kind regards,

Nick

Fuzzy_Melon

Yes

What's killing us is that Lightspeed Payments does not send transaction fees into Quickbooks and therefore leaves a gap between sales and deposited funds. It appears that we will have to make a manually QBO entry for the expense?

NickS

Yes

I'm not familiar with Lightspeed Payments - I assume this is some sort of payment gateway? We take several payment types that result in fees to the payment gateway - Stripe, PayPal and a regular credit card company (Payment Sense). With Stripe and PayPal they take a percentage of the transaction (and in the case of Stripe a few pennies extra 'processing fees') - both then only pay over the net amount after deduction of fees. The only way to deal with this is to look at PayPal / Stripe for each payout and match the receipts to those expected from Lightspeed for that day. I have control accounts set up in Xero, our accounting package, for each type of Lightspeed payment. I simply book each receipt against the relevant control account (so they should always zero out give or take a day of timing difference or an error which then has to be investigated) and as part of that process book the fees to a separate 'bank fees' account in our Profit and Loss Account. Fortunately for Payment Sense they remit the gross takings and then take a monthly fee by direct debit from our bank account (I wish the others did that).

Every time I process a PayPal I can't helping thinking 'no wonder Elon Musk is so rich' - as they do absolutely nothing to earn huge amounts of fees....

VanessaD

Hey @Fuzzy_Melon ,

I'm creating an internal ticket with your request! We're actively looking into implementing this, so I wanted to keep you updated on an automated basis.

cornellfarm

No

@VanessaD I'm having a similar issue as @Fuzzy_Melon. The sooner this can be fixed, the better.

VanessaD

Hey @cornellfarm

I've opened a ticket in your name and have set it on hold as well.

If anyone else wants to do this, feel free to call-in to support so we can handle each request individually.