The Menu section of the Back Office is where you manage your items, menus, production instructions, accounting groups, and price lists. From this section you can create and edit single items and combos, modifiers and modifier groups, notes, allergens, and menus.

Articles about menus and items

The Lightspeed Help Center contains many articles about the categories in the Back Office's Menu section. Click the links to read more in-depth information about each category.

Accounting groups

Accounting groups are mandatory categories that are used to organize items with shared settings: tax profile, accounting ID, statistic category, and production centers. For example, an Alcohol accounting group would allow a restaurant to assign incoming alcoholic beverages to always print at the bar and have the same tax attributes (VAT).

Combos

Combos allow you to group items together for a fixed price. Customers can choose from a preset group of items or a list of applicable items. For example, you can create a combo that contains a drink and a sandwich, with a choice of which drink and which sandwich.

Items

Items commonly refer to standard food and beverage products that can be added to an order. There are four Types of items: individual items, combos, groups, and sub-items. For precise descriptions about these types, visit our Using the item list article.

Menu management

Menus determine the items that are available to order on the POS. By having multiple menus, you can assign specific menus to particular POS devices, such as a Drinks menu for the bar device, or set up separate menus for different meal times or locations, which can then be shared across your multiple locations.

Order adjustments

Lightspeed offers different ways to communicate order adjustments between customers and staff, including Modifiers, Modifier groups, Production instructions, Sub-items, Notes, and Allergens.

• Modifiers and modifier groups can be created directly in the Back Office and added to items. For example, you can create a modifier group called Extra sauces and add modifiers to that group such as Extra garlic sauce, Extra hot sauce, and Extra BBQ sauce. These modifiers can be added to any item or combo.
• Production instructions provide preparation information for menu items. For example, you might create a production instruction to specify cooking levels for a main dish, like steak: rare, medium rare, well-done, etc. Production instructions and modifiers cannot be used together.
• Sub-items are items that have their own button on the POS, but are meant to be added to a related main item. For example, you can have a burger as a main item, with Add tomato, Add lettuce, and Add onion as sub-items.
• Notes let you pre-create and manage reusable notes in the Back Office and assign them to orders, courses, and seats in the Restaurant POS app during service.
• Allergens let you add and manage a reusable list of allergens in the Back Office and assign them to orders, courses, and seats in the Restaurant POS app during service.

Price lists

Price lists allow you to create preset pricing schemes, which you can then apply to menu items based on restaurant location and order profile. For example, if you have 10 locations across five cities with different prices in each city, you can set up five price lists to apply the proper pricing in each location. As another example, for your daily drink specials, you can link an order profile called Happy hour to an additional price list to automatically apply that pricing at a scheduled time. Note: Price lists are an optional feature and are not suitable for all restaurants.

Menus and items FAQ

We've compiled a list of frequently asked questions about Menu management, so you can quickly find the answers you need.

• To add, edit, or delete an Accounting group, log in to the Back Office with your Lightspeed credentials and select Menus > Accounting groups. For more information, refer to the articles Adding accounting groups and Editing and deleting Accounting groups.
• The settings for each Accounting group apply to all items in the group, unless you change the settings on the item itself. To do this, log in to the Back Office with your Lightspeed credentials and select Menus > Item list. Click the item you wish to edit. For more information, refer to the article Editing items.
• The main difference between Accounting groups and Statistics groups is that Statistics groups are not connected to taxes. This allows you more flexibility when grouping items together. For more information, refer to the article Understanding Statistics groups.
• Yes, you can customize the Items list to suit your business's needs. To do this, log in to the Back Office with your Lightspeed credentials and select Menus > Item list. Click Edit table. For more information, refer to the article Using the Items table.
• Yes, you can add multiple items at once. To do this, log in to the Back Office with your Lightspeed credentials and select Menus > Item list. Click Create > Multiple items. For more information, refer to the article Creating and editing items.
• No, price lists are an optional feature. We recommend using price lists only if your business has multiple locations, shares items between those locations, and requires a complex price structure. For more information, refer to the article About price lists.