Configuring your essential settings in Lightspeed Retail involves the following four areas of your account:

1. Welcome page

2. Locations

3. General Options

4. Optional Modules

Welcome page

When you log in to your Lightspeed Retail account for the first time, you're greeted with the Welcome page. It contains two easy steps that will lay down the foundation of your account settings:

1. Entering your Location details
2. Entering your Tax settings 

Once you've completed the Welcome page, you'll have entered your first location's information and set up your account's sales taxes. Should you need to make changes to these settings, you can do so in Settings > Locations and Settings > Sales Taxes.

If you need to add tax classes for items, labor or customers that are taxed differently, please see our Creating tax classes and Setting labor taxes and labor rates articles.

Locations

If you're a Retailer with multiple registers or multiple locations, you can add registers and locations from the Settings > Locations section.

For detailed instructions on how to do so, please see our Adding registers and Adding locations.

General Options

Under Settings > General Options, you have the choice between two cost methods:

1. Average Cost:
2. First-In First-Out (FIFO) 

The cost method you select will determine the cost calculations your account will make for your inventory's quantity on-hand and your sold items (cost of goods sold). Because the results of these cost calculations are involved in many other calculations in your account (e.g. margins, markups and profits), the cost method you select will consequently affect your reports. For this reason, we recommend confirming your cost method before you start adding and selling your items. If you're unsure on which cost method to select, we also recommend discussing it further with your bookeeper so that your Lightspeed Retail account is aligned.

Optional Modules

For some of our Retailers (e.g. bicycle or jewelry shops), servicing items is just as important as selling them. If work orders and labor charges are an essential part of your shop's everyday functioning:

1. From the main menu, click Settings > Optional Modules.
2. Enable Service.
3. Click Save Changes.
4. Sign out and sign back in to see Service in the main menu of your account and the Labor menu button in your register.

For more information on work orders, please see our Creating work orders article. If you also need to set a labor tax and a labor rate per hour, please see our Setting labor taxes and labor rates article.