"Eat out to help out" discount

JamesTrewern · July 2020

Uk government has launched a scheme, to go live at the beginning of August, to provide 50% discount, per diner, on hot food items to eat in, up to a max of £10 per diner, Monday to Wednesday. This discount is governement funded and applies to all UK restaurants taking part, almost all of which will.

Currently, as far as I can work out, lightspeed in unable to implement this discount. Given the massive likely takeup, is there any guidance as to how to set up such a discount, or can a special discount category be created to cover this? All UK restaurants using lightspeed will need this very soon.

George2k · July 2020

Please Lightspeed, create this button as it would make our life easier to administer this discount.

edcc1974 · July 2020

This is a very critical feature. It would be very helpful to get some guidance on how to manage this without excessive administration. Pease Lightspeed provide some feedback.

AzT · July 2020

Calling support directly will be the quickest way to get an answer on this

rsharma · July 2020

Just spoke to Lightspeed Support. Support staff received an e-mail today advising of a new 'reporting feature'. However, this is related to us being able to view the discount on our End of Day Report. But, they have not developed anything to assist us in implementing the Scheme. I really hope they release something soon, otherwise it's going to create a lot of extra work and errors on the way!

Katherine_Welford · July 2020

Hi gang,

The steps you need to implement are as follows:

Here are the steps in order to setup, use and report on the Eat Out to Help Out Scheme.

SETTING UP THE DISCOUNT (Restaurant Manager)

Table Service mode needs to be enabled (Devices > Restaurant App Settings > select your Profile)
The Enable number of customers popup needs to be enabled to enter the number of customers (Settings > App Settings)
If you have not done so before, create a Discounts category
Create a 50% Reduction ticket % discount named Eat Out to Help Out (50%) and link it to food & non-alcoholic categories.
If there are service charges or alcohol in the categories with food and non-alcoholic beverages, either move them to a different category, or create a Reduction specific product % discount. The latter will require it to be manually applied to each discountable item
Create a £10 receipt discount named Eat Out to Help Out (£10) and link it to the food & non-alcoholic categories
Ensure user permission Allow add discount is active for users to apply discounts on the POS

USING THE DISCOUNT (POS)

On Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays only
Select a table to start a dine-in order and specify the number of diners included on each order (important for the reporting!)
Choose which discount to apply (This needs to be calculated manually):
If the amount of food & non-alcoholic is less than £10 per diner, apply the Eat Out to Help Out (50%) discount
If the amount of food & non-alcoholic is more than £10 per diner, apply the Eat Out to Help Out (£10) discount

REPORTING

The improved Discount Reporting has been enabled on all accounts. This means that in general, discounts with be distributed properly.
In the Sales Summary Report, we are adding extra fields for the necessary data
Amount of diners
Total value of transactions
Total discount
The latter has not yet been released but will be by the end of July

Hope that helps!

JamesTrewern · August 2020

Thanks guys for your work so far - this is a useful workaround which will do for now. There are still a few fixes which we need (unless I just can't figure out how to do these, which TBH is likely!):

There is still much scope for human error here (transcription mistakes, errors calculating the permissable discount etc)
The discount must be manually deleted from the order before payment is taken, which gives scope for large discrepancies in the final payment amount. This can be missed during particularly busy times and generates additional scope for significant losses
There are multiple steps to applying this discount at POS which slows us down significantly
It is easy to input the number of customers incorrectly meaning this number doesn't tally with the actual number of customers and therefore the value of the applied discount. This makes it very easy to lose money, especially in a fast-moving environment
It is very easy to duplicate discounts on the bill (i.e. the 'Eat out to Help Out' discount can easily be applied twice to the same bill)
It is very difficult to make amendments to bills split by seat - only the first seat can be amended (e.g. to remove the discount, which can't be moved to other seats) unless the bill is recombined.
With the above point in mind, the discount can't easily be applied to individual seats such that one customer does not end up subsidising another customer who has breached the maximum £10 cap. E.g. customer 1 orders a starter. Customer 2 orders a £30 main. Customer 1 is due £5 discount, customer 2 is due £10. This can only be calculated by applying the discount to a bill prior to splitting it, after which it can't simply be removed from seats 2 and above as specified in the workaround
Attempting to combine two bills split by seat (so that one person pays for two seats) only duplicates the discount on one seat.
Recombining orders moves the full value of the discount to seat 1 so it has to manually be moved back to the table to be reapplied to all seats

Do you have any timescales for a full implementation?

Katherine_Welford · August 2020

Hello James,

Given that the Eat Out to Help Out plan is only short-term for the month of August, Lightspeed will not be altering the product to automate this process. And you are correct. Given that the UK gov't is collecting tax on the full, non-discounted value, we're only using the 50% discount to establish whether the discounted amount is less or more than £10 per head.

If the amount is less than £10 per head, we take note of this amount, remove the discount, proceed to the payment page and use the Eat Out to Help Out payment button to "pay" for this amount, and the remaining amount is what is paid by the customers.

If the amount is more than £10 per head, we again remove the discount and simply use the Eat Out to Help Out payment button to "pay" £10 X the number of heads.

With regards to the other issues Product is aware of these and your comments have been forwarded to them.

I hope this helps.

sachmo · August 2020

Hi,

which reports are best to get the data needed for HMRC?

i used 2 to get all the info.

reports - export data - receipts

reports - export data - payments

is there an easier way?

thanks

Sach

Katherine_Welford · August 2020

Hi Sachmo,

There is indeed a much easier way to do this, given that we are now using a "Eat Out to Help Out" payment button to record the use of the discount. This can be seen in the Payments & Tips section of the Day Reports, Week Reports, Month Reports and also Summary Reports.

The only thing to be mindful of however is the number of Customers in the totals section. The reason for this is if you've got a table for 4 people and the Eat Out to Help Out payment is just used once, the count of Eat Out to Help Out payments only gives you part of the picutre.

Does that help?

"Eat out to help out" discount

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