Lightspeed Analytics acquires its sales and inventory data from Retail POS. However, many of the reports in Analytics illustrate action points and trends differently from the built-in Retail reports. When attempting to balance reports in Analytics and in Retail POS, it's important to make sure the reports are equivalent.
Understanding data syncing
Retail POS is a live service, so its data is always up to date. Lightspeed Analytics synchronizes with Retail POS every 2-3 hours, meaning current data in Analytics doesn't include up to the past 2-3 hours' worth of data.
This is important to keep in mind when specifying a date range for a report, but it's also important to note that Retail POS data's end date is inclusive, while Analytics' end date is exclusive. To run a report for the entire month of January, specify the date range of Jan. 1 to Jan. 31 in Retail, and Jan. 1 to Feb. 1 in Analytics.
Understanding report terminology
When comparing reports between Retail POS and Analytics, it's important to understand what each report is doing with the data, and what data is included, and what data is not included.
Sales reports
Terminology used in Retail POS and Analytics is not always synonymous, and there isn't always a one-to-one correspondence between metrics:
Retail POS
- Subtotal: Sales total before Discounts are removed and before Taxes are added.
- Discounts: Dollar amount deducted.
- Total: Sales total after discounts are removed and after taxes are added.
- QOH: Quantity on hand remaining in your inventory.
Analytics
- Total: Sales total after Discounts are removed but before Taxes are added.
- QOH: Quantity on hand remaining in your inventory for items that have had sales (items in a category that have not sold in the specified date range are not included).
Costs, Profit, and Margins are the same in Retail POS and Analytics.
Inventory reports
One of the more popular reports in Analytics is the Dusty Inventory report, which helps you identify the items in your inventory that have not sold recently. If your Retail POS account has multiple shops, the Dusty Inventory report will show you items that have not sold recently at any shop.
If you'd like to isolate dusty items from a particular shop, you can add the Store dimension to the report to check at which location items have not been selling. You can also filter the report by store location to check the results for that shop alone.
Inventory reports do not report on the sale quantity of non-inventory items. This is important to remember if you're comparing an inventory valuation report with sales included in it with a sales report from Retail POS.
Through the Configuration section of Analytics, it's possible to hide select top-level categories from inventory reports. It's important to be aware of which categories are hidden when comparing reports.
Comparing reports
Retail POS reports prepare data differently than Lightspeed Analytics reports. You can adjust your settings to make the reports match, if desired.
- Time zones: The default time zone (PST) can be changed per report or in your account settings.
- Negative inventory: Retail POS reports exclude negative inventory, Analytics reports include it. Filtering items with quantity under 0 will remove negative values in Analytics reports.
- Discounts and totals: Analytics reports show totals after discounts have been applied, Retail POS reports show totals before discounts. You can add a calculation in your Retail POS report to include discounts.
- Report conventions: The report model you choose (Sales, Items, Payments, Taxes etc), all have similar data but slightly different expectations.
If you are comparing reports and find the data doesn't match, consider whether or not this is expected given the differences in terminology and what the included data means. If you want to see matching numbers in Analytics and Retail POS, you can add Calculations to an Analytics report to create metrics that will align with the reports in Retail POS.
Retail POS
Analytics