Getting started guide
In this article, learn about different types of users, their roles, and permissions per role. Create new users and adjust their permissions as needed. Navigate to other articles in the guide using the carousel below.
Understanding users and user roles
Users in Retail POS are the individual accounts associated with your staff members. Each user has an assigned user role that determines their permissions for tasks specific to their user role.
Three user roles can be assigned to a user in Retail POS:
-
Cashier
- For non-management sales staff.
- Can process sales, transfer stock, and close registers.
- Restricted from management functions like adding and editing products or accessing reports.
-
Manager
- Represents management staff.
- Includes the same permissions as the cashier user role.
- Can create new employee accounts, including cashiers and managers.
- Has access to their assigned store's reporting.
- Can add or edit products.
-
Admin
- For the store owner or the head office account.
- Full access to view and change all stores within the Retail POS account.
- Multiple admin users can be created.
Every Retail POS account has an Account owner. The credentials used when signing up for Retail POS grant access to the Account owner role. The Account owner has the highest level of access, above an Admin user, which allows them to update billing contact details, change subscription payment details or plans, cancel the account, export critical data, or edit or transfer the Account owner role to another user. The Account owner has the authority to grant limited administrative rights to other users of the Retail POS account, including Admin-level users, and to give Lightspeed instructions about the Retail POS Account.
By default, accounts subscribed to Lite and Pro plans, and Lean, Standard, and Advanced plans, will only have access to the Cashier, Manager, and Admin user roles. Accounts subscribed to an Enterprise plan can create additional custom user roles.
Creating a user (staff member)
By default, only Manager and Admin users can create or manage users. Once logged in, all users can edit their own profile and security information.
- Navigate to Setup > Users and click Add user.
- Enter the user details:
- Username: The name used to log in to Retail POS as the user.
- Display name: The name that will appear on customer receipts, reports, and elsewhere in Retail POS.
- Email address: The user's email address used for verification purposes.
- Profile picture: The image that appears on login pages and user profiles.
- Outlets: Select the outlet you want the user to have access to. If you'd like the user to access all outlets, click Select all outlets.
- Role: This dictates what permissions the user will have.
- Security and ID: Specify a password for the user. They will enter this password when signing in to your Retail POS store. The user can change this themselves later by navigating to Setup > Users when they're signed in.
Add a further layer of security to Admin users by enabling multi-factor authentication once created. It is mandatory for all Retail POS accounts in Australia integrated with Xero to use multi-factor authentication for Admin users including the Account owner, in order to comply with Xero's global security standards. A new Admin user will be prompted to set up multi-factor authentication when logging in and can't access the Retail POS store until completed.
- Click Save.
Adjusting user role permissions
User permissions can be edited for the cashier and manager roles to enable or deactivate certain capabilities within Retail POS. The Admin user role has fixed permissions and can't be edited.
- Navigate to Setup > Users and click the Roles tab.
- You will see the three available user roles. Click on Cashier or Manager to view the permissions enabled and disabled for that user role.
Enterprise plans may have additional custom roles that can be edited.
On the roles page, you can adjust the following permissions:
Product costs
Allows Cashiers or Managers to view and calculate product costs and markups on the sell screen, in the product catalog, in reporting, and in stock control. This is turned on by default for Managers and off by default for Cashiers.
Labels
By default, Cashiers and Managers are allowed to print product labels. You can deselect this option if you would like to prevent your Cashiers or Managers from printing labels.
Discounts
Allow permissions to apply discounts on line items or to the entire sale. You can also set a discount limit to control how much discounting different roles can do. By default, discounts are turned on and maximum discounts are set to 100% for Managers and Cashiers. Admins can change these permissions as needed.
Sell
Customize the permissions for sale-related activities such as performing On account and layby sales, parking a sale, manually issuing store credit, processing returns and exchanges, editing and voiding sales, and register and cash operations. By default, all these options will be enabled for Managers. Issue manual store credit, Void sales on sales ledger and sales history, and Edit sales on sales ledger and sales history will be turned off by default for Cashiers.
The sell permission can also be disabled entirely for non-sales roles within your organization. Once the sell permission is disabled, that user role will no longer have access to the sell screen or eCom, if applicable. They have access to seeing sales history by default, but this permission can be turned off by deselecting View sales history of assigned outlets.
Customers
By default, Cashiers only have permissions to add new customers in Retail POS. They aren't allowed to remove a customer or add one to a customer group. Managers have full permissions for changing, editing, and removing customers.
In this section, you can also customize whether Cashiers and Managers have the ability to export customer lists as a CSV and allow and edit customer On account limits.
A tick (✔) or cross (X) next to a permission in the Other permissions section means that it isn't customizable. This is a quick way to reference if a permission is or isn't available per role.
Products
Customize whether Cashiers and Managers can create, edit, and delete products, manually adjust inventory, create price books, and perform inventory counts, stock orders, and returns. By default, Managers will have all product-related permissions enabled. Cashiers will have inventory counts, stock orders and returns, and stock transfers enabled.
Admin roles can additionally select if a user can manually adjust inventory.
Reporting
Specify which reports your users have access to. Select or deselect to allow users to view reports on sales they made or all sales made at assigned outlets, register closures reports, or inventory reports.
- By deselecting View Lightspeed Payments reports, the user won't have access to the LS Payments reports.
- Managers can view these reports only for their assigned outlets if granted permission.
- Cashiers won't have access, regardless of permissions.
- By deselecting View sales reports, your user won't see the sales report in the Reporting section. The sales target and sales will no longer be available in the Home dashboard.
- Deselecting the View inventory report removes access to the Inventory report. Your user can access other reports.
- Deselecting the View register closures report allows the user to open and close their register and see the summary of that specific opening or closure. They won't see the summaries of register openings or closures from previous days. This provides you with more control over the data shared with your sales users.
Setup
All setup options are locked for Cashiers and can't be changed. Managers have limited access to most setup options but can add and edit other Cashiers and Managers, and manage quick keys. If you want managers to have permission to add other managers, ensure the Add managers checkbox is selected.
Creating custom user roles
Merchants on Enterprise plans can create custom user roles to suit their needs.
- Navigate to Setup > Users > Roles.
- Click Add role.
- Choose a name and whether you'd like the new role to have Cashier or Manager default permissions.
- Customize the permissions for the new role. For information on setting permissions, refer to the Adjusting user role permissions section of this article.
- Click Save.
Restricting user log in access
By restricting log in access, you'll prevent employees from accessing your Retail POS store remotely. Restricted users will only be able to log in from a device already logged in by an unrestricted user, like an Admin.
- Log in to Retail POS as an Account Owner or Admin user.
- Navigate to Setup > Security.
- Under Log in access, select Only has access to log in through user switching.
- Under Role specific settings, configure roles that require log in access by clicking the Log in access dropdown and selecting Has access to log in.
Once enabled, restricted users can't access Retail POS using login credentials. Restricted users must use user switching from an already logged-in device.
Users must re-identify themselves after each sale by selecting their username or entering their username and password to prevent unauthorized access.
What's next?
Configuring your general settings and contact information
Customize your settings and add contact information.
Learn more