Getting started guide
In this article, learn how to configure your tax, business, printing, and other configuration settings to control how orders will be processed at the POS. Navigate to other articles in the guide using the carousel below.
In Lightspeed Restaurant, tax, business, and configuration settings play important roles. They determine how your POS will function and interact with other business variables, such as taxation and business details. In this article, we'll provide an overview of these important groups of settings.
Tax settings
Tax settings in Lightspeed are composed of tax rates and tax profiles. These settings are important because they determine the tax that will be applied to each accounting group full of items.
You were prompted to configure tax settings the first time you logged into the Back Office but may have skipped this step. Review your work to ensure everything is set up properly for your first live transaction.
Tax rates and profiles
| Tax settings | Description |
| Tax rates | Tax rates are individual tax percentages. For example, a 5% tax rate could represent the sales tax in your state or value-added tax (VAT) in your country. |
| Tax profiles | Tax profiles contain the rules for when each tax rate or combination of rates will apply. For example, a tax profile could apply a tax rate to all orders or only to orders totaling over a certain amount. |
US and Canadian businesses must manually add tax rates and profiles to their Back Office. In other countries, tax rates and profiles are automatically set during account creation. In both cases, you still need to assign the relevant tax profile to each accounting group of items.
Tax profiles and accounting groups
Each accounting group must be assigned a tax profile when it is created. For example, an accounting group called Alcohol could be assigned a tax profile that charges a specific tax rate on alcoholic drinks.
- Assign the correct tax profile to each accounting group to ensure tax will be precisely calculated on its items.
- To learn more about how taxes work in Lightspeed, visit Understanding taxes.
Business settings
Business settings encompass important details of your business that ensure the correct information about your business is properly exported to financial authorities when necessary.
You were prompted to enter some business details the first time you logged into the Back Office. Review your work to ensure everything is set up, and configure any additional settings that apply. Business settings include:
- Business details (internal business name, trade details, company details, and fiscal details)
- Basic settings (time tracking for monitoring employee hours and margin calculation for toggling tax computations in reports).
- Log in to Back Office with your Lightspeed credentials.
- From the navigation menu, go to Configuration > Settings > Business settings.
- Adjust your Business details and Basic settings as needed.
- Business Details: Such as internal business name, trade details, company details, and fiscal details.
- Basic Settings: Like Time tracking, which allows you to track employee hours, and Margin calculation, which will allow you to toggle tax calculations in your reports.
- If located in Quebec, enable WEB-SRM via the Mandatory Billing tab.
Configuration settings
A POS configuration is a set of printing, table management, payments, and user permissions that controls how specific Lightspeed Restaurant POS devices function.
By default, a basic configuration called Fixed POS will already be set up in your account based on the business profile you selected when signing in to the Back Office. However, you can make changes to suit your specific standards and workflows. If you have different POS stations that require unique settings, such as a bar area with its own workflows, you can create additional configurations to accommodate other POS devices.
Notable configuration settings
| Configuration setting | Description |
| Enabling / Disabling table support | These settings control table service. Enabling table support means you offer sit-down dining while disabling it suits takeaway or quick-service restaurants. |
| Setting your payment methods | You can define accepted payment types like cash, credit/debit cards, mobile payments, or gift cards to manage transactions and sales tracking. |
| Allowing refunds | This setting determines whether staff can process refunds. |
Editing POS configurations
- Log in to Back Office with your Lightspeed credentials.
- From the navigation menu, go to Configuration > Configurations.
- Click the configuration name, Fixed POS, to edit the default configuration. Alternatively, you can Create a new configuration.
Printing settings
Printing settings control how receipts and order tickets are printed in your Lightspeed Restaurant POS system. After physically setting up your printers, configure printer profiles and production centers to ensure the right commands are sent to the right printers.
Printer profiles
Printer profiles determine the behavior of a printer, such as whether it will print copies of receipts or production tickets for the kitchen or bar.
Production centers
Production centers are the destinations for printing jobs (like the kitchen or the bar).