BIKE.co vs Lightspeed

Lightspeed Retail is a retail point-of-sale system that many bike shops run their whole store on. It sells bikes and parts across the counter and online, tracks serialized stock, connects to supplier catalogs, takes card-present payments on its own hardware, and has work orders built into the POS for the service department. It is a finished product with years of bike shop use behind it.

BIKE.co is not a retail POS. It is the erp.io Service module set up for bike repair, and it starts from the repair rather than the till. Today it runs quotes, work orders with visits, a week schedule, technician time, checklists with a PDF for the rider, invoicing and monthly reports. Bike records with serials, a bench board by status, parts inventory and online payments are on the Service roadmap.

If your shop is retail-first, Lightspeed is the more complete tool today. If the bench is your business and you want phones, books, hiring and training in the same login, BIKE.co is worth a trial, and the gaps are listed plainly below.

Lightspeed's bike shop pages describe service orders built into the POS, so a repair ticket and the sale at pickup live in one system. Its help center describes work orders that capture the customer, the serialized item being serviced, a date in and a due date, the assigned employee, internal notes and notes that print on the receipt. Parts added to a work order are reserved in inventory, labor can be calculated from set rates, and a warranty box zeroes out the cost of covered services.

Work orders move through default statuses of Open, Estimate, Waiting and Finished, and a shop can add its own, such as Sent to manufacturer. You can print a tag that links the bike to the ticket, print or email a quote, and request a deposit. At checkout the work order flows into the sale.

On the retail side, Lightspeed lists serial number tracking across stores, a built-in NuORDER catalog with purchase orders, ecommerce, Lightspeed Payments for card-present transactions, hardware such as an iPad stand, scanner and receipt printer, analytics, and bike-industry integrations including Ikeono for texting customers and Booxi for repair appointments. That is a lot of mature retail machinery, and BIKE.co does not try to replace it.

BIKE.co starts from the repair. In Service today, a request becomes a quote with optional lines, the approved quote becomes a job with visits assigned to mechanics, a required checklist gates each visit, and the finished job becomes an invoice without retyping. The plan adds the bike as its own record carrying serial, size, components and every past repair, rather than an item line on a sale. It is a service system first because that is the part of a shop where the day goes sideways: a bike waiting three days on a derailleur hanger, a bleed that turns into a caliper, a rider on the phone asking for an update while you have a bleed kit in your hand.

The live checklist builder is the clearest difference today. You write your own tune-up or M-check standard with eight question types, publish it as an immutable version so last year's answers still mean what they meant, and have mechanics fill it with photos and a signature. The rider gets a PDF of exactly what was checked. You can also publish a checklist at a public link, optionally behind an email code, which works as a pre-ride inspection form or a rental check-out sheet.

The other difference is the suite. BIKE.co runs on erp.io, so Phony can answer the phone, Accounting keeps the books, CFO forecasts the season, ATS helps you hire before spring, and Courses trains new mechanics on your standards. They share one login and one permission model.

Pick Lightspeed if product sales are a large share of your revenue, if you need card-present payments on proper hardware, if you order from supplier catalogs every week, or if you sell online from the same stock you sell in store. Those are mature capabilities in Lightspeed and they are not things BIKE.co offers.

Pick Lightspeed, too, if serialized bike history, printed tags and parts reserved from stock matter this season. Its work orders tie straight into the sale. BIKE.co's work orders are live, but bike records and parts inventory are on the roadmap.

BIKE.co makes more sense if the bench is the business, if you want quotes, jobs, time and invoices built around a written, versioned checklist standard, or if you want the phones, books, hiring and training that erp.io provides in one login. Some retail shops will reasonably run both: Lightspeed on the floor and Service on the bench.