Lightspeed Retail + Stripe order flow for a US specialty store
A unified order flow for a specialty retailer running Lightspeed Retail in-store and Stripe for online and custom orders. Stock, sales and customer history live in one place regardless of channel.
What was breaking.
In-store sales went through Lightspeed; online and custom orders went through a Stripe-powered checkout that didn't talk to Lightspeed. Stock counts drifted constantly. Customer A buying online and customer A walking into the store looked like two different customers. Refunds processed in one system never reflected in the other, and the owner was reconciling weekly by hand.
How I built it.
- Built a Stripe → Lightspeed bridge: every charge.succeeded creates a Lightspeed sale tied to the matching customer record (or creates the customer if new).
- Stock decrements happen in Lightspeed regardless of channel — Lightspeed remains the single source of inventory truth.
- Refund flow: Stripe refund → Lightspeed sale void or partial credit, with the same audit trail visible in either system.
- Customer dedupe: matched email plus phone across systems so the customer profile shows full purchase history regardless of where they bought.
- Built a small operations dashboard for the owner: real-time stock vs sales, channel mix, slow movers, top customers — everything pulled from Lightspeed's API.
What makes it tick.
- Single inventory source — no more "online says we have it, store says we don't".
- Customer history merged across channels — staff in store can see what a customer bought online.
- Reorder thresholds calculated against combined channel velocity, not just in-store.
- Stripe metadata carries the Lightspeed sale ID so any payment can be traced back to its retail record.
What changed.
Stock variance at quarterly counts dropped to under 1% from around 6%. Online refunds stopped requiring manual ledger entry. Owner cut roughly 3 hours per week of cross-system reconciliation. In-store staff started recommending products based on online history, lifting basket size on returning customers.
Tools used.
- Lightspeed Retail API
- Stripe API
- PHP
- MySQL
- Webhooks
- Custom dashboard
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