If reporting discrepancies in Lightspeed Restaurant seem confusing at first, there’s usually a simple reason for these differences. This article explains common discrepancies you may notice in sales, payments, and tax reporting. You’ll get a closer look at how Lightspeed reports work, empowering you to navigate your data more confidently.

Sales and payments discrepancies

This section will help you identify and fix inconsistencies in your reporting related to sales and payments. If you find your reported and actual earnings aren't matching up, continue below for advice.

• Sales and takings amounts are often different due to fundamental differences in how each is defined. In Lightspeed reporting, sales refers to the total value of orders started on a previous day, and takings are the payments you accept at the POS for orders.

  When your sales and takings differ, it's usually due to having open, transitory, or lost orders. Click the tabs below to learn how to check your account for each type of order.

  • Open orders

    Open orders are orders that were started on the current day and still waiting to be closed. You can check for open orders directly from the POS or in the Back Office.

    Open orders visible in the POS app may differ from those in the Back Office. This can occur if the app hasn't yet synced with the Back Office, or you have lost some orders.

    • In the Restaurant POS app, access the Order management screen as a manager for a list of dine-in, pickup, and delivery orders that are currently open.     
      
    • In the Back Office, access the Open Accounts report for a list of all orders that have synced to the Back Office and are currently open. 
      

  • Transitory orders

    Transitory orders are those that were started on a previous day, left open, and carried over to the next day. To check for transitory orders, visit the Business Report in your Back Office.

    1. In the Back Office, access the Business Report.
    2. If viewing the report from Europe or Australia, select Condensed under Display view at the top.
    3. Look for transitory order totals in the E. Takings section.

       Row	Definition
       Carried over	Unpaid orders from the current reporting day that will be moved over to the next day. This lowers the current day's takings.
       Carried forward	Unpaid orders from the previous reporting day that were moved over and paid on the current reporting day. This adds to the current day's takings.
       Total transitory	The sum of Carried over and Carried forward. If positive, it shows how much the day's earnings grew from transitory orders. If negative, it's the potential earnings for the next day once those orders are paid.

       

  • Lost orders

    Lost orders are transactions that were initiated at the POS but didn't successfully sync with the Back Office and now cannot be closed. If you suspect you have missing orders, 

    1. Follow the steps in the Open orders tab above to check for open orders.
    2. Note any orders that are missing from the POS Order management screen but present on the Back Office Open Accounts report. These orders are likely to be lost.
    3. Contact Support to request help clearing the lost orders.

• If Lightspeed's reporting on your takings differs from and the actual payments you receive, start by double-checking some numbers in the Back Office.

  1. In the Back Office, access the Business Report.
  2. If viewing the report from Europe or Australia, select Condensed under Display view at the top.
  3. Review the breakdown in the E. Takings section to ensure you are including all card payments in your calculations.  

     Depending on how your account is set up, card payments might be represented by multiple payment methods. For example, Lightspeed Payments and American Express. 

     

  If there still seems to be a discrepancy, it may be due to a mistake at the POS or a missing order. Click the tabs below to learn how to investigate and resolve each possible cause.

  • Resolving a POS mistake

    If an order was processed to the wrong payment method at the POS, that could explain why your card payments seem higher or lower than expected.  

    1. In the Back Office, access the Receipt Report. 
    2. Search for individual orders that may have been processed incorrectly. 

       For example, a credit sale that should've been tendered to Cash.

    For any order with an incorrect payment method, you can change the payment method used directly from this report.

    Editing receipts from the Back Office will invalidate reports already printed at the POS since those reports will no longer match the back-end data. Changing a receipt's payment method is for record keeping and doesn't support payment processing.
    
    This feature is not available to Lightspeed Restaurant accounts based in Germany.

    1. Click a sale row on the Receipt Report to view the relevant receipt. 
    2. Perform the Change payment type receipt action to select the correct payment method for the receipt. 
       

  • Recreating missing orders

    If you process standalone payments, either through Lightspeed Payments or a third-party processor, you must record those transactions in Lightspeed Restaurant for them to appear in reporting. To do this after the fact, add a new receipt in the Back Office.

    Adding receipts from the Back Office will invalidate reports already printed at the POS since those reports will no longer match the back-end data. Adding a transaction is for record-keeping and doesn't support payment processing.
    
    This feature is not available to Lightspeed Restaurant accounts based in Germany.

    1. In the Back Office, access the Receipt Report. 
    2. Create a new transaction with the Description, Amount, Payment method, and other details of the transaction. 
       

Tax discrepancies

In this section, you'll learn how to resolve mismatches in your tax reporting. If historical and current tax rates aren't aligning, or if your tax calculations seem off, we can help.

• If you're looking at a wide range of historical reporting, consider that your tax settings may have changed at some point. In that case, you could expect tax on more recent transactions to be different.

  It's also possible that your tax settings may not be configured correctly. Items, accounting groups, and tax profiles all influence how tax gets calculated. You can verify and update any of these setting from within the Back Office.

  1. In the Back Office, access the Receipt Report. 
  2. Find and click on an order with a tax issue. 
  3. Make note of the items listed on the order receipt.
     
  4. Export your items from the Back Office.
  5. On the export spreadsheet, ensure that each item from step 2 is assigned to the correct accounting group. 

     If not, edit the items to select the correct accounting group for each.

     
  6. In the Back Office, go to Menu management > Accounting groups.
  7. Ensure that each accounting group from step 5 is assigned the correct tax profile.

     If not, edit the accounting groups to select the correct tax profile for each.

     
  8. If located in North America, also ensure the settings for your tax rates and tax profiles are correct.  

• Some reports, such as the Business report, display tax differently as compared with reports like the Fiscal report. Those differences are due to rounding, often necessary to present tax information in a certain context.

  For example, the Product mix report calculates and rounds tax for each item because it needs to show per-item sales information. This is different from how the Restaurant POS calculates tax at the order-level. 

  To view the total tax actually charged to customers at the POS, visit the Fiscal summary or Transactions report.