With sales sync on, WooCommerce orders are recorded as sales in your Lightspeed Retail R-Series store, on the register and under the employee you choose. Sales only go one way: sales made in Lightspeed are never brought into WooCommerce. Finish Set up Lightspeed R-Series first, because only products linked to Lightspeed appear on the sale.
Syncing sales with compound or inclusive tax rates isn’t supported.
When you’d use this
- Report on online and in-store sales together in Lightspeed.
- Keep Lightspeed customer records for online buyers.
- Reflect WooCommerce refunds and cancellations in Lightspeed.
Turn on sales sync
1. Enable sales sync
Go to Lightspeed » Settings » WooCommerce sales sync, tick Enable sales sync and click Save changes. The rest of the sales settings appear once it’s saved.
2. Choose the employee and register
Choose an Employee and a Register. Both are required: orders don’t sync without them. The Store field shows your primary inventory store, where sales are recorded. A register used only for your online store keeps online sales apart from in-store ones.
3. Choose when and how orders sync
- Order statuses: the statuses that create the sale. The default, Processing and Completed, syncs paid orders.
- WooCommerce customers: Do not sync, or attach the customer using their shipping or billing address.
Click Save changes.
4. Export your tax rates
Click Export tax rates under Export tax rates to Lightspeed. The plugin creates a matching Lightspeed tax category for each WooCommerce tax rate, and for each combination of rates, in the background. Without them, sales sync without tax. Export again whenever you change your WooCommerce tax rates.
5. Place a test order
Place an order for a linked product and let it reach one of your Order statuses. Its order notes show "Order synced to Lightspeed (Sale ID: …)". Find the sale in Lightspeed.
How sales sync works
An order syncs once, the first time it reaches one of your Order statuses, on any checkout and for orders you create in the admin. Each order gets one sale.
What’s in the sale
- One sale line per linked product, with its quantity, the Lightspeed item, and its discount from sale prices and coupons.
- The Lightspeed tax category matching the order’s tax rates, from your exported rates.
- One payment, of a Lightspeed payment type named "Woocommerce" that the plugin finds or creates, for the order total less shipping and fees.
- The customer, when WooCommerce customers is set to sync. Customers are matched by billing email to the Lightspeed customers the plugin reads each day, and created in Lightspeed when there’s no match ("Customer ‘…’ has been created in Lightspeed.").
Shipping and fees aren’t sent by default. Developers can add them as sale lines with code snippets; see the developer reference.
Products that aren’t linked
Products not linked to Lightspeed are left off the sale, and the rest of the order still syncs. If no product in the order is linked, nothing syncs and the order gets the note "Not synced to Lightspeed: no products in this order are linked to a Lightspeed item". Because the payment still covers the whole order, a partly linked order can make the Lightspeed sale and its payment differ. To skip such orders entirely, see the snippets in the developer reference.
Refunds and cancellations
- Full refund or cancellation: the sale is refunded in Lightspeed ("Order refund synced to Lightspeed (Sale ID: …)"). If earlier partial refunds already covered part of the order, only the remaining items are refunded.
- Partial refund: the refunded items are returned in Lightspeed ("Partial refund synced to Lightspeed (Sale ID: …)").
- When you refund without restocking in WooCommerce, the plugin corrects the Lightspeed stock so it matches ("Refunded items were not restocked in WooCommerce: correcting the Lightspeed stock to match").
If a refund can’t sync, the order note ends with "Reconcile this refund in Lightspeed manually"; record it in Lightspeed yourself.
When a sync fails
If Lightspeed is busy or temporarily down, the plugin tries again on its own at growing intervals for up to an hour, noting each try ("Lightspeed sync failed: … Retrying at …"). Other errors get the note "Lightspeed sync failed:" with the reason and aren’t retried. Details go to the wclsi-errors-log log under WooCommerce » Status » Logs.
Common issues
Sales aren’t being created in Lightspeed
- Enable sales sync is ticked and saved, and an Employee and Register are chosen. Without them, orders fail with "Employee not selected" or "Register not selected" in the
wclsi-errors-loglog. - The order reached one of your Order statuses.
- At least one product in the order is linked to Lightspeed.
- The order notes say why a sync failed.
The Employee and Register fields don’t appear
They appear after Enable sales sync is saved. Tick it, click Save changes, and reload the tab.
Sales sync without tax
Your tax rates weren’t exported, or the order uses a combination of rates that wasn’t exported. Click Export tax rates, wait for the background job, then check the next order. The log shows "No matching lightspeed tax category for woocommerce combined rate" for each order that synced without a tax category.
The Lightspeed sale total doesn’t match the order
Shipping and fees aren’t sent, and products not linked to Lightspeed are left off. Link all products, or add shipping and fees with the snippets in the developer reference.
Changing an order’s status didn’t create another sale
Each order syncs once. Later status changes don’t create another sale, apart from refunds and cancellations.