Tips in lightspeed retail: best practices and what works for you?

Sussexwines · September 2019

Hello community,

I manage IT at a mid-sized wine and spirits shop in midtown Manhattan, and we just switched to Lightspeed. Deliveries to private and corporate customers are a regular part of our business, and those deliveries include tips. Currently, we have it setup as a tax-exempt inventory item, but this causes problems when it comes to counting out the register at the end of the day and rectifying our tax-exempt transactions.

How does everyone process tips?

VanessaD · September 2019

Hi there @Sussexwines !

Currently, tips are not a feature in Lightspeed Retail since tips are usually to the discretion of the customer. By example, in Lightspeed retail, if the value of the sale was 45.00 and the customer provided a 15% gratuity, or 6.75$, technically, the sales in LSRetail won't allow the person to pay above the 45$.

Ideally, you could add all of the gratuities accumulated throughout the day and include them in an Add to your till, so the value gets injected with the end of day cash totals, otherwise there's no real way to get this included by default. (integrations could also potentially work, but they would be handled by an external component)

Hope this helps!

Sussexwines · October 2019

Hi Vanessa,

Thank you for your response! Do you have any recommendations for integrations that could help us with this?

RobertC · December 2019

How do I add this as a request to the Lightspeed development team? We recently switched to Lightspeed and was told that we could process tips by using "Tip after Sale" whereby we could add it to the transaction after the sale and before the payment is batched. Now we are told this is not possible. Needless to say I have a lot of angry staff members who relied on tips in our retail area.

Heather · December 2019

Hi @RobertC

Thanks for your feedback regarding tips in Lightspeed Retail. I've passed your comment along to our Product & Development team.

I've also reached out to our Customer Success team. Someone will contact you to check in.

Best,

Heather

BrandiLee · June 2020

Has this issue been resoloved yet? How can I enter tips into the retail program? and run a report to pay out my employees Every 2 weeks. Many retail store accept tips now a days. This must be available?

VanessaD · June 2020

Hey @BrandiLee ,

The information was provided to our development team. We're often not made aware of what's on the roadmap until it's almost ready to launch, so it's tough for us to say when this will be officially implemented.

Things usually go by importance and their impacts on the software first and foremost (like fixes, updates etc). Feature enhancements usually can take a bit longer but we can assure you that it's been noted!

Thanks for your investment in making our POS software amazing!

sprocketsbicycleshop · September 2020

Hello! Is there any word on when this will be updated? We are in the process of switching from Square to Lightspeed but with tips not being available we cannot move forward and are stuck in a POS limbo.

VanessaD · September 2020

Hi @sprocketsbicycleshop ,

This is still in our enhancement request page.

Thank you for your interest!

agctech · October 2020

We're a plant nursery with a sideline serving beer, wine, food items, etc. in the store. The bartender on duty is missing out on tips due to this missing feature.

Is there any workaround for this omission? For example, creating an inventory item "Tips", marking it as tax exempt, and then having the bartender on duty ask the customer for how much they'd like to tip and having the employee enter this information.

Really, a workaround is needed now as clearly Lightspeed is not an agile company. Please describe the workaround as a set of steps we can share with employees.

VanessaD · October 2020

Hi @agctech ,

The alternatives to making tips work truly aren't ideal, so I do want to warn this before we offer it and I'll explain why:

In the retail software, if you have a sale, the payments of that sale have to equal to the amount owing on the sale before the payment is attempted or else the sale cannot be completed as it will be considered "out of balance".

So tips essentially don't play very nice with that obligation in the software, which means the workaround lies in being able to appear on the owing sale total the amount the customer wants to provide in tips before you start the payment.

Most customers who do this create a non-inventory item with 0$ cost and 0$ price and input the amount the customer wants to add in tips, but this requires the customer to communicate this amount.

Understandably, having your customer disclose their private tipping amount is a bit cringey so this is really up to you if you want to implement this.

This is already in our enhancement requests but since this functionality is available with the Resto service, maybe consider having this side by side with your retail account? It could be a better, more permanent solution.

jawn · October 2020

Hi,

We just switched to lighspeed payments and just realized there is no tip function. I just wanted to chime in and say this is a big disapointment for us, and hope that this function is prioritized soon as we rely on tips.

Tips in lightspeed retail: best practices and what works for you?

Best Answer

Answers