There are multiple ways to search for a customer in Retail POS, including by phone number, postal code, email, biographical information, or by using custom fields.

The search function’s terms are not case-sensitive.

To begin searching for a customer, navigate to Customers > Customers.

Your Default search field will be set to Automatic and will search automatically based on your input. To search using a specific input, click the drop-down, choose your input, and continue your search as described below.

Searching by phone number

To search by phone number, type the customer's number into the Customer field and click Search.

This search will include all Phones fields from customer accounts: Home, Work, Mobile, Pager, and Fax. Phone numbers are interpreted using dialable numbers or last-N digits (for example, the last 4 or 7 digits for North American numbers).

Dialable numbers

This type of search is triggered when the search term only contains digits, separators (spaces, hyphens, parentheses, underscores), and optionally an extension. Separators in the customer fields and the search term are ignored.

Local dialing

If the merchant and the customer are located in the same country or in different countries with the same country dialing code (e.g. Canada and the United States both use +1), then you can search for the customer by entering their phone number as it would be dialed locally. Local dialing only requires a valid area code and a subscriber number of valid length.

For example, from Canada, the number could be entered in any of these ways:

• 5145555555
• 514-555-5555
• (514) 555-5555
• 1 (514) 555-5555
• +15145555555

International dialing

If the merchant and the customer are located in different countries, then the search term must be prefixed with the + symbol, followed by the dialing code of the customer’s country (+44 for the UK) in order for the customer to be correctly matched. The area code of the number must be valid for the destination country. The international dialing prefix is optional (011 for North America).

To look up a UK customer by phone number from the United States, you can enter the number in either of these ways:

• +44 303 333 3333
• +011 44 3033333333

Matching extensions

A valid dialable local or international phone number can be further filtered by specifying an extension following the number itself. For this search parameter to function, the extension must be entered numerically:

• 51455555551123
• 514 555 5555 1123
• 514-555-5555-1123
• (514) 555-5555-1123
• (514) 555-5555 1123
• +1 514 555 5555 1123

Last-N digits

If the search term isn't recognized as a valid dialable phone number but contains only numeric digits (at least 2 digits) and separator characters, a reverse search is performed on the phone number for the last-N digits.

If an extension is provided, the lookup must contain the extension. When this form of lookup is used, local vs. international dialing is not a consideration. All numbers will be evaluated equally.

For example, if a customer has the phone number “514-444-3333 123” in their Home phone field, any of these search terms would work, regardless of the region of the merchant:

• 123
• 3333123
• 3333 123
• 3333-123
• 3-123
• 3123

Determining country codes

The merchant’s country code is determined by certain parameters. If a shop is selected and the shop’s address specifies a country, that country code is used. Or, if the current locale in the general options is not set to Rest of world, the equivalent country code is used. Otherwise, automatic geolocation is used.

The country code of a customer’s phone number is determined by certain parameters.

• If the phone number is entered in international format (prefixed with + and the country dialing code), then the number will be used as-is.
• If an address is provided for the customer and the country code field is populated, all phone numbers not specified in international format are assumed to be from the country matching the customer's address.
• Otherwise, the phone number is assumed to be in the merchant’s country code.

Searching by postal code

To search by postal code, type the customer's postal code into the Customer field and click Search. This search includes entries in the Postal code section. (This section may read Post code, ZIP, or Postal code, depending on your customer's country.)

When searching for a customer by postal code, the behavior varies depending on the merchant's country code. Search terms including only numeric characters and/or separators will be matched against customers from all countries with numeric-only postal code formats. Search terms with a combination of alphanumeric characters will match customers with a postal code from countries with a matching alphanumeric format.

For example:

• When the merchant performing the search is located in Canada, a postal code search is triggered when this format is entered: A1B 2C3 or A1B2C3.
• When the merchant performing the search is located in the United States, a ZIP code search is triggered when this format is entered: 12345.
• When the merchant performing the search is located in the UK, a postcode search is triggered when this format is entered: WC2N 5DU or WC2N5DU.

Lightspeed POS supports searches in the postal format of the following countries: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Barbados, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Panama, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Ukraine, and the United States.

Searching by email address

To search by email, type the customer's email into the Customer field and click Search. This search includes entries in the Email 1 and Email 2 sections.

Searching for customers by email address is triggered in customer search in two different ways:

• When the text entered into the customer search field contains an @ symbol and no spaces
  • Using a complete email address (abc@123.com)
  • Using the username of the email address including @ symbol (abc@)
  • Using the username of the email address with a partial hostname (abc@123)
• When the text entered into the customer search field starts with an @ symbol and contains the entire hostname (@123.com)

Hostname-only searches for common email hosting providers (@gmail.com, @hotmail.com, @yahoo.com, etc.) will not function, as these return too many results.

Searching by biographical information

To search by biographical information, type the customer's information into the Customer field and click Search. This search includes information entered into the First Name, Last Name, Title, and Company fields.

If the search term is only two alphabetic characters, only the First Name and Last Name fields are checked. If the search contains at least one word with three characters or more, the First Name, Last Name, Title, and Company fields are checked.

You can search multiple words simultaneously by separating them with spaces. A customer appears in the results if each distinct word of three or more characters is included at least once in any of these fields. Each word part in the search term will be matched from the beginning of a word in the source fields but does not need to include the entire word ("abc” matches “abcd”, but “bcd” does not).

Any non-alphanumeric characters, including spaces, hyphens, and apostrophes, is considered a word boundary. Words in the search term don't need to be presented in the same order as they appear in the source fields.

Examples

Target customer information:

• First name: Marie-Élizabeth A
• Last name: O’Neill
• Title: Writer
• Company: Lightspeed

Searching for “Jo” finds these customers (first name begins with “Jo”):

• John
• Jordan
• Josef

Searching for “el” finds these customers (last name begins with “El”):

• Ellis
• El Bahou (“Ba” will not match)
• Elliott

Searching by custom fields

To search by a custom field, type the field entry into the Customer field and click Search.

Only custom fields with numeric characters and/or separators (such as ID numbers) are searchable. Custom fields with alphabetic characters (such as favorite flavor) are not searchable.

Search terms of any length must match the end of the source value. For example, if the value being searched is 1234567890, entering 67890 will find the correct match.

Searching by tag(s)

This search includes information entered into the Tags fields.

To search for customers with a certain tag, begin typing the tag into the Tag(s) field. Your tag will appear as you type; you can click the tag or finish typing it in.

To search for multiple tags, separate them with commas. When you're done, click Search.

To exclude a certain tag, begin typing the tag into the Exclude Tag(s) field. Your tag will appear as you type; you can click the tag or finish typing it in. When you're done, click Search.

Advanced search

The Advanced search option allows you to make a more granular search to find your customers in your Back Office.

• Show Type: Show customer type in results list.
• Show Company: Show entry in Company field in results list.
• Archived: Shows Archived customers, highlighted in gray.
• Customer Created: Select a date range when a customer account was created.
• Types drop-down: Shows only customers belonging to the chosen type.
• Discounts drop-down: Shows only customers with the chosen discount applied to their transactions.
• Sales tax drop-down: Shows only customers with the chosen sales tax applied to their transactions.

What's next?