Avero & Lightspeed L-Series POS
Lightspeed L-Series is supported for Sales data only.
Avero processes and presents data from your Lightspeed POS for your analysis and insight. This article details how to handle POS changes, update this data, and handle discrepancies or problems you might encounter. For some things, such as adding meal periods or categories, you must complete the action on your side in order for it to be reflected in Avero (maybe with the help of Lightspeed L-Series Support or IT), and for some changes, such as global category associations, you'll need to reach out to our support team.
Please note: Lightspeed offers multiple POS options. This article is specific to L-Series POS, if you are using Lightspeed U-Series use that POS Guide for reference. Avero does not have an integration with Lightspeed K-Series.
In this article:
- About Lightspeed L-Series POS
- Differences between Lightspeed L-Series & Avero Reporting
- Installation & Reinstallation on Lightspeed L-Series
- Regular Maintenance: Making Updates and Changes for Lightspeed L-Series
- Common Problems
- Frequently Asked Questions About Lightspeed L-Series
About Lightspeed L-Series POS
POS Type: Cloud
Avero is proud to offer Free Installation & Reinstallation for Lightspeed L-Series, and most POS systems.
Avero ingests sales data from Lightspeed L-Series using a cloud integration. This means there is no server in the restaurant and nothing Avero connects to on-site, we connect to Lightspeed L-Series's cloud and pull the data for your business. This allows for very quick connection and data capture.
Differences between Lightspeed L-Series & Avero Reporting
This guide is to help you understand the reporting approaches of Avero compared to Lightspeed L-Series to help you fully understand and harness your data. These are not bugs or errors but rather the data is correct and is reported with different approaches on Avero and Lightspeed L-Series.
All item sales in Avero with reflect the check open times and not the actual time the item was sold, this is a limitation in the Lightspeed data. Lightspeed may provide the Customer Name and Last 4 of CC in check details or in your reporting, but for consumer protection this information is not sent to Avero.
Additionally, Lightspeed may provide intraday, same day, or midday reporting, but only next-day data is available in Avero.
Lightspeed L-Series is very easy to install and in use by many customers. If you are ready to go and take the necessary steps, you can get your data connected very quickly.
Please Note: If you change your business name or information after adding the Avero Integration, but before your installation is confirmed, it may prevent the Avero team from connecting to your data. If you change your business name of information, please remove and re-add the integration so installation may proceed.
Installing Lightspeed L-Series Steps
Step 1: Confirm your POS Admin
First, you must confirm the correct POS Admin credentials for each location or outlet you want to connect to Avero.
Authorization request emails can be sent to any manager-user, however the authorization step MUST be completed using the POS Admin credentials for each outlet/location. If you are unsure which email address is associated with this privilege for each outlet, reach out to Lightspeed support to confirm.
Typically, Lightspeed has a unique email for each outlet.
Step 2: Enable Avero as a Partner
At the appointed time, Avero Support will send an authorization request to POS admin which includes a link to the Lightspeed environment to click once, this authorize's Avero access to your POS data. Once sent, the admin has 24 hours to authorize access. If access is not authorized in this time, a new request must be generated. If your request has expired, open a ticket with Avero Support to request a new authorization link.
Installation cannot proceed and no data can be gathered until this step is successfully completed.
The appointment takes less than 10 minutes - It looks like this:
The invite is sent to the POS Admin and they must accept the invitation by clicking the Connect POS Button in the email:
This will take them to an approval page and they must click to authorize:
(this will open a new pop-up window)
They will sign in and click approve, then receive the confirmation message:
Step 3: Connecting to Data (Avero does this step)
Avero will receive an alert when this task is completed. Once access is granted, we can begin connecting your data to your businesses. We will ensure data is available, map it to your businesses, and verify that everything looks good.
Step 4: Check your Data
Once Avero receives the data and has verified it, we will confirm with you that the installation is complete. Log in to Avero and review your categories and data to ensure it is complete and accurate.
Regular Maintenance: Making Updates and Changes for Lightspeed L-Series
When changes or updates are needed who is responsible? If something appears incorrect or out-of-date, how should it be updated?
Change or Add a Meal Period in Lightspeed L-Series
Whenever meal periods in Lightspeed L-Series are changed or updated they should be reflected in the next nightly load we pull from Lightspeed L-Series. Note that changes reflect data going forward.
Important to note - Meal Period changes/additions will not automatically update your logbook or saved reports.
Categories & Items in Lightspeed L-Series
Avero provides the following Global categories: Beverage, Food, Misc., Other, and Retail. The major and minor categories come from your POS. When pulling the data from Lightspeed L-Series, there is only one category level—this is unique to Lightspeed L-Series.
To make changes to items you'll need to update Lightspeed L-Series - changing an item name, price, or moving it between categories.
To make changes to categories you'll need to update Lightspeed L-Series - changing category names, updating which items are in a category, making categories more specific. Note that Lightspeed L-Series has 'Sales Categories' and 'Menus' - Menus and groups relate to how your items are displayed for use when ordering in the POS and not to how revenue is captured and recorded. Avero's Category Sales Report does not take Menus into account, only Sales Categories.
To make changes to global categories, you'll need to open a ticket and request Avero makes the change. For example, if Appetizers are appearing under Beverage and need to be moved to Food.
When creating new Categories, they may default to Other and require a ticket to update this mapping.
To read more see: Categories
Common Problems
Cover Count Change Requests
If there is an error in the number of guests reported on a check, this can be fixed.
First, correct the check in Lightspeed L-Series. Then, open a ticket with Avero Support and request the reload data for the date of the check you have adjusted. Avero support will load the new data and the check will be reloaded with the changed cover count.
Lightspeed L-Series Missing Data
Missing data happens. We invest ourselves continuously into making this process faster and more reliable, but it is not, and will never be, error-proof. For Lightspeed L-Series systems, we automatically attempt to recover data when it is missing. If you notice data is missing, open a ticket with Avero Support and we will recover it as quickly as we can.
If you are missing data from an emailed report, it may be related to the email settings, see our troubleshooting guide: Troubleshooting Email Reports with Missing or Incomplete Data
Data Discrepancies - Avero's sales data is not matching Lightspeed L-Series
If you notice your sales data is not matching up with your Lightspeed L-Series reports, there are three actions you need to complete:
- Make sure the data discrepancy exists in Avero by logging in and running a sales report. If you notice incorrect data in an emailed report, it may be related to email settings and not the data itself. See our troubleshooting guide: Troubleshooting Email Reports with Missing or Incomplete Data
- Review the Differences between Lightspeed L-Series & Avero Reporting to make sure this isn't the discrepancy you are noticing.
- Run a Daily Sales Report from Lightspeed L-Series for the date in question, Open a Data Ticket, attach the report and explain the discrepancy. Make sure to include the report, the date, and location if you have access to several, as well as any examples you can provide.
Our team investigates all data discrepancies - due to the nature of our daily data extraction, a single date and single-day sales report must be provided. We cannot investigate date ranges, but it is helpful to know if the issue is recurring and you can provide multiple dates.
Frequently Asked Questions About Lightspeed L-Series
Why don't Avero's sales look the same as my Lightspeed L-Series reports?
See our above explanation on Differences between Lightspeed L-Series & Avero Reporting.
Is there any information Lightspeed L-Series doesn't send to Avero?
There are some data limitations you may notice based on what we receive from Simphony Cloud.
Lightspeed L-Series does not send the following data points:
- Transferred Check Information - Lightspeed does not provide any information on Transferred Checks - this means that you will not see what was transferred on or off checks nor the checks it was transferred to or received from. This can limit Loss Prevention reporting and can cause discrepancies if checks are transferred between outlets or business days.
- "Cashier" - if checks are frequently closed by a cashier position, this additional information will not be available
- Item Transaction Time - Lightspeed only provides the Check Open Time for all check details, and not the actual time each item on a check was sold, therefore, Avero cannot display accurate item sales times, only the check open times for items sold.
- Authorizing Employee for voids/promos
- Employee Class - this field is not present in the data Avero pulls from Lightspeed.
- Customer Name & Last 4 of CC for credit card payments - Lightspeed does not provide this reference information.
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