Lightspeed Restaurant is the international benchmark: mature technology, more than 300 integrations and a dashboard that scales to hotel groups and chains with multiple venues. The problem for an independent restaurant in Spain is that this power comes at a price built for the North American market.

The Starter plan (~€65/month) doesn’t include real inventory or multi-venue management. Essential — the plan an operating restaurant actually needs — costs around €175/month per venue. Add a kitchen KDS screen and it’s already €203/month. All billed in dollars. When the dollar rises, your invoice rises with it.

For a single venue with two terminals and one kitchen screen, you’re paying around €2,400–€2,900/year on POS software alone — not counting the recommended proprietary hardware (€800–1,500 per venue) or the additional stock or bookings modules. And Verifactu, mandatory for most restaurants from January 2027, is available on Lightspeed only through certified partners at extra cost.

The question isn’t whether it’s worth evaluating the switch — the numbers almost always justify it — but how to do it without disrupting service and without losing your business’s history.

What data you can export from Lightspeed (and what you can’t)

Before planning the migration, you need to know exactly what comes with you and what stays behind.

What you can export:

The full product catalogue: from Lightspeed Restaurant → Menu → Export menu you get a CSV with all your items, prices, categories and modifiers. This is the most valuable data in the migration — it saves you rebuilding the menu from scratch on the new system.
Sales history: available from the Reports section with date-range filters, as CSV or PDF. It isn’t directly importable into the destination system (every POS has its own database schema), but it’s your tax record and your reference for comparing pre/post-migration metrics.
Customer data: if you use Lightspeed Loyalty or capture emails from bookings, you can export the CRM from the Customers → Export section. Lightspeed is one of the few hospitality POS systems that does collect diners’ emails in structured form.
Historical receipts: keep the PDFs for at least the last tax year. Your Verifactu hash chain on the new system will start from zero — that’s correct and legal: Lightspeed and your new POS are two separate IT systems as far as the AEAT (Spanish tax agency) is concerned, each with its own independent registration number.

What doesn’t carry over:

Floor plan: Lightspeed’s table layout has no standard export format. You’ll need to recreate it on the new system, but with a typical restaurant’s dimensions (8–20 tables) it takes no more than 15 minutes.
Lightspeed Payments integrations: if you use Lightspeed’s built-in payment processor, you’ll need to activate a new provider when you switch POS. Stripe — which Bouzon uses — has competitive European rates (~1.4% + €0.25 for European cards) and no fixed monthly cost.
Lightspeed hardware: the iPads you use as terminals are standard and work with any web-based POS. Your existing ESC/POS kitchen printer is also fully reusable — only Lightspeed’s proprietary stands and mounts go unused.

The three-phase migration plan

Phase 1 — Preparation (1–2 weeks before cutover)

Don’t cancel Lightspeed yet. You need the system active to export data and as a safety net during the transition.

What to do in this phase:

Export the catalogue from Lightspeed (Menu → Export menu) and review the CSV line by line. Check that prices are current and that each product’s modifiers (meat doneness, sides, extras) are named correctly. Errors in the CSV carry over to the new system if you don’t fix them before importing.
Activate the new POS in parallel. If you’re migrating to Bouzon POS, onboarding imports the catalogue from the Lightspeed CSV or directly from a photo of your physical menu using AI — useful if the CSV has disordered categories or inconsistent names. The system is 100% web-based: no app to install on terminals, it runs from any browser on the iPad, Android device or PC you already have.
Check kitchen printer compatibility. If your printer is network-connected (most have a local IP), setup on the new system is immediate: you enter the IP and test with a sample receipt. If it’s connected via USB through the Lightspeed app, you’ll need to switch to a network connection or install the local printing agent — a 10–15 minute process.
Train the team during a quiet shift. Monday lunchtime is the best moment. The workflow they need to master is simple: open table → add items with modifiers → send the order to the kitchen → take payment. With 30–45 minutes of pressure-free practice, the team has enough for cutover day.

Phase 2 — Running in parallel (1–2 weeks)

This is the step most migrations skip, and it causes the most problems when it’s missing.

During this phase, use the new POS for one specific shift — for example, only Monday-to-Wednesday lunches — while Lightspeed stays active for the rest of service. This lets you:

Spot catalogue items that didn’t import correctly (prices, modifiers, categories).
Confirm the kitchen printer receives well-formatted orders from the new system.
Verify the card payment flow works through the new payment provider.
Build the team’s confidence without the pressure of a full service.

The criterion for moving to phase 3 is clear: when staff choose to use the new system even when it isn’t mandatory, you’re ready.

Phase 3 — Cutover day

The final switch should happen on a quiet day — Monday or Tuesday, never a Friday or Saturday, and never in high season. The day’s process:

Close every open ticket in Lightspeed before shutting the system down. No pending orders and no open tabs.
Run the end-of-day cash close in Lightspeed and save the PDF alongside the sales history exported during the preparation phase.
Activate Verifactu on the new POS. The first receipt issued starts the hash chain that gets logged with the AEAT. There’s no need to migrate Lightspeed’s previous chain — they’re independent records.
Issue a test receipt and verify the PDF includes the Verifactu QR code, the correct sequential number and your establishment’s tax details. Scan the QR code with your phone: it should redirect you to the AEAT’s validation page.
Cancel your Lightspeed subscription. Check the terms before cutover: some Lightspeed plans require 30 days’ notice to avoid being charged an extra month. Do it once you have 48 hours of normal service on the new system.

How long it takes and how much you save

The full migration across the three phases takes 3 to 5 weeks. Doing it in a single day is technically possible, but the operational risk isn’t worth it for venues doing more than 30 covers per service.

Real cost comparison for a venue with 1 active terminal, kitchen printer and inventory module:

	Lightspeed Essential + 1 KDS	Lightspeed Starter	Bouzon POS + Stock & Recetas
Monthly fee	~€203/month (€175 + €28 KDS)	~€65/month	€49.98/month
Minimum hardware	~€800–1,500 (proprietary recommended)	~€800–1,500	Any ESC/POS (≈ €80–250)
Cost over 24 months	~€5,872 + hardware	~€2,560 + hardware	~€1,450
Support in Spanish	No (mainly English)	No (mainly English)	Yes, <24h response
Verifactu	Via partner (extra cost)	Via partner (extra cost)	Included in the base fee
Stock with cost breakdown (escandallo)	Separate module	Not available	Included in the bundle

Versus Lightspeed Essential with KDS, the software saving is more than €4,400 over 24 months. Versus Starter, the saving is ~€1,100.

If your restaurant also manages bookings via TheFork or online orders via Glovo, replacing that entire stack with Bouzon — website + bookings + shop + POS + Stock & Recetas under a single account — scales the saving to €15,000–€20,000 over 24 months versus the typical “Lightspeed + TheFork + Glovo + agency website” model.

To see how it works on your current device without installing anything, try the POS demo →