Setting up your items and menus accurately in Lightspeed Restaurant is an essential part of running your business so that you can add your products to customers' orders. In this article, we'll guide you on how to add items to Lightspeed and compile them into menus.

Understanding items and menus

To seamlessly transition your physical restaurant menu into the digital realm of Lightspeed, you need to understand two core concepts: items and menus.

Items

Items represent products that your restaurant offers, such as food or drinks. Each item has its own details, like price, preparation, and inventory information. Advanced item features include cost price, barcodes, and ingredient tracking. Items come in three types: Single, Combos, and Item groups.

Menus

Menus are a way to categorize your items into various screens and sub-screens. They consist of two key components: screens and buttons.

Screens

Screens are your menu categories that group similar items together.

For example, you may have a screen called Coffee that, when selected, reveals a list of coffee items such as Cappuccino or Macchiato.

Buttons

Buttons typically represent different order items.

For instance, if you've set up a screen called "Brunch," selecting it would reveal a list of buttons corresponding to the menu items you've added to Back Office, such as Avocado toast, Eggs benedict, etc.

Buttons can represent items, sub-screens (like mini-sections within a main screen), discounts, production instructions, transfer operations, order profiles, or web extensions. These buttons are what you select on the POS within each main screen.

Importing your items

The quickest way to add multiple items to your Back Office is through the Manual import option, where you'll enter basic information related to your items.

If you're switching to Lightspeed from another point-of-sale system or prefer to use CSV spreadsheets to conduct your import, there are different import instructions you should follow. Or, if you prefer, you can also add items one at a time while filling it out with more detail.

1. Log in to the Back Office with your Lightspeed credentials.
2. From the navigation menu, select Menu management > Items.
3. Click Create > Multiple items.
4. Enter the item information such as Name, Price, Accounting group, Statistics group, and Screen.

   Note: Name and Accounting group are mandatory fields.

   Field	Description
   Name	The name of the item as it appears in the Back Office.
   Price	The price charged when selling the item to the customer. If an item does not have a defined price in the Back Office, it becomes an open item, and the price will be requested on the POS every time this item is added to a sale; your staff can then manually enter the price.
   Accounting group	Accounting groups sort and apply shared settings to items that share similar qualities and assign items to a specific tax profile. All accounting groups created from the Back Office in Menu management > Accounting groups are available for selection.
   Statistics group	Statistics categories offer a flexible method for sorting and reporting on items. They can be used to create customized reports by classifying items and/or accounting groups themselves.
   Screen	Filling in the Screen information controls where this item will appear on your POS menu. If left blank, the item will not be added to any screen and will need to be added manually later. If an existing screen is selected, the item will be added to that screen. If a new screen name is entered, the screen will be created with the item added to it.

   
5. Click +Add to create new fields and add more items.
6. (Optional) Toggle Create new accounting groups if you're assigning items to accounting groups that don't already exist.
7. Click Import to finish.

Creating a menu

1. Log in to the Back Office with your Lightspeed credentials.
2. Navigate to Menu management > Menus.
3. Click on Create new menu.
4. Enter the Menu Name and click Save.

On the screen that follows, you can click Add to create your first main screen. Once done, you can start adding buttons by selecting your main screens and clicking Add button.

Advanced item features

Finally, there are a few features that are closely related to items which might be useful for your restaurant operation:

• Modifiers: These allow you to customize items through modifications. For example, if your restaurant offers steak, you can specify the cooking level, such as rare, medium, or well-done.
• Barcodes: By associating items with barcodes, you can quickly add items to a sale by scanning the barcode.
• Inventory: Keeping track of your inventory is important to prevent stock-outs and overstocking. With the Lightspeed Inventory addon, you can track inventory levels, create recipes, and send purchase orders directly to your suppliers.