Integrating an alternate tax solution into Lightspeed

Hyperspace has not built a solution that overrides the existing tax rules within Lightspeed.

Hyperspace would welcome the opportunity to integrate Avalara, TaxJar, Vertex and other tax solutions into Lightspeed, but unfortunately there are no tax integration ‘hooks’ available to do so.  

Here is what you can do in Lightspeed to integrate different tax rules.

1. Create a sale in Lightspeed.
2. Click a custom button in Lightspeed called ‘calculate tax’ before a payment is accepted from the customer.
3. A new tab would open in the same window and auto-calculate the tax by requesting the taxes from Avalara. A  ‘please wait...calculating tax.” message would appear on the screen for a few seconds and then auto-return the employee back to the sale in Lightspeed.
4. The Lightspeed tax on the sale would be replaced with the actual tax calculated correctly by Avalara (or similar 3rd party tax engine).

We do not have this integration available today. We are waiting for an opportunity to provide a seamless and simple integration for our clients.

In a perfect world, the employee would not need to click a button at all.  All sales from all stores would automatically use the 3rd party tax engine if configured to do so.

The client would create a Tax Name in Lightspeed called: Hyperspace

The client would assign this Tax Name to one or all of the locations in Lightspeed that should use it.

For any sale that is supposed to use the Hyperspace Sales Tax, Lightspeed would issue a web service to the Hyperspace API to pull the correct tax rate for that product and update the sale in Lightspeed. 

The web service request would include the Lightspeed Account ID and the following parameters.

1. System ID
2. Item Price
3. Store ID in Lightspeed.
4. Customer Shipping Address
5. Total Gross Sale
6. Customer Type

A simple web service would be able to pull taxes from any of the major tax engine without requiring cashiers to click a button or see a new window. From a development perspective, this would only require 1 standard API (web service) from Lightspeed to integrate to all tax providers. 3rd Party Tax Provider API updates would be supported instantly to ensure there is never an interruption in service.