bike.tools

bike.tools help

Getting started

Sign up, connect Lightspeed, install the extension, and pick any add-ons you want.

Free toolsWhat every shop gets in Lightspeed for free: Bike Archive data, QR codes on printed tags, status buttons, presets and more, and the Phone tools. Online booking and status pagesHow a booking becomes a workorder, daily limits, turnaround, and what customers see. Running the dayDashboard, receiving bikes, workorders, the ticket, the schedule, bays, Quick Book and reports. The Lightspeed extensionbike.tools for Lightspeed: install it, sign in, and use its tools on workorders, customers and printed tags. Add-ons and pricingThe five monthly add-ons, what each one opens up and includes, and how billing works. IntegrationsLightspeed, Bike Archive, email, Stripe, AI models, your website and your own booking address. Recommended setupHow shops get the most from bike.tools: statuses, the extension, presets, roles and limits. TroubleshootingBookings that stay pending, a Lightspeed connection that needs attention, the extension, printed tags and more. For ridersBooking a service, your status link, changing details, cancelling and adding photos. Get helpWhere to ask, what to include, and what bike.tools does with your data.

What bike.tools does

bike.tools is a service-counter toolkit for bike shops on Lightspeed Retail (R-Series). Its Chrome extension adds tools to Lightspeed's own workorder and customer pages, free with every shop: Bike Archive data (the bike picker, and the mechanic's bike card with torque specs, hanger and frame standards), a QR code on the tags Lightspeed prints, your statuses as buttons, job presets, workorder tidy-ups, a customer panel and a catch for duplicate customers. See Free tools.

On top of that you can add, each by the month: the Phone tools (photos, part barcodes and serial numbers from your phone), Status pages for your customers, Custom branding (your logo, colour and own address on them), a Booking page that turns online bookings into Lightspeed workorders, and AI integration (AI Quick Book: type the job in a sentence and check a drafted workorder). Status pages include the Phone tools, the Booking page includes everything before it, and AI integration includes everything. See Add-ons and pricing. Workorders stay in Lightspeed; bike.tools works alongside it.

It is a service of Hank Bicycle Company, and the add-on subscriptions help fund Bike Archive, the free bike database.

Create your shop

Choose Sign up and enter your work email. We email a six-digit code, which makes your account; then you set a password, since you'll be the shop's owner, and fill in Create your shop: the shop's name, its address (bike.tools/admin/your-shop; blank uses the name), the time zone, and the business's email, phone, website and address. There's no application and no approval: the shop is ready straight away, and its dashboard opens with Get started: connect Lightspeed, install the extension, choose any add-ons and, with the Booking page, turn on booking for a location. The details you gave are under Settings → General → Business details, where admins can change them. One account can own up to three shops.

Want to look first? The demo shop is a made-up shop you can click around without signing in; nothing in it can be changed.

If your shop already exists, ask its owner or an admin to add you under Settings → Employees → Who can sign in. You'll get an email saying how to sign in.

Sign in

  1. Go to Shop sign-in and enter your work email.
  2. Owners and admins sign in with their password. A six-digit code is emailed as well unless you turn that off under Your account.
  3. Staff who aren't admins anywhere sign in with the emailed code alone. There is no password to forget.

Forgot your password? Choose the reset link on the password step; the emailed code lets you set a new one.

Connect Lightspeed

  1. Open Settings and press Connect Lightspeed. Lightspeed asks you to sign in and allow bike.tools to work with your workorders, customers, inventory and register.
  2. Back in bike.tools, your Lightspeed shops arrive as locations, your workorder statuses appear under Statuses, and your employees under Settings → Employees.
  3. Added a status, a shop or an employee in Lightspeed later? Press Refresh from Lightspeed on the dashboard or in Settings.
Lightspeed's connection can expire or be revoked on their side. When that happens the dashboard shows a Reconnect notice. See Troubleshooting.

Install the extension

Under Settings → Lightspeed extension, press Download the extension and load it in Chrome on each shop computer (how). It uses your bike.tools sign-in in that Chrome, so there's nothing to connect. Open a workorder in Lightspeed and the free tools are there. Owners and admins choose which tools run for the whole shop under Settings → Lightspeed extension → Modules.

Choose add-ons

The free tools need none. When you want one, the owner turns it on under Add-ons and pays by card through Stripe; it works at once and can be turned off any time. See Add-ons and pricing.

Map your statuses

Under Statuses, match each of your Lightspeed workorder statuses to what customers should see: Booked, Checked in, In progress, Waiting for your OK, Waiting on parts, Ready for pickup, Complete or Cancelled. You can give any of them your own wording and a colour for your team. Then choose the status a bike moves to when it's received at the counter.

The colours show on the status buttons in Lightspeed and on the Workorders page; the mapping drives the status page and the reports. Recommended setup has a suggested mapping.

Add your people

Settings → Employees lists everyone on your Lightspeed account. Give each person a role (service writer, mechanic, sales, or your own): a role that takes work can be given bookings by their hours, and one that writes service is listed first wherever someone picks a person. Roles describe the job; who can sign in and change settings is set separately under Who can sign in, as staff or admin.

Hours and days off live on the Schedule page. Each person edits their own; admins edit anyone's.

If you take bookings online

With the Booking page add-on:

  • Each location (Settings → Locations) has its booking settings: turn on Online booking, pick the Lightspeed status new bookings go in (most shops use an "Appointment" status; add one in Lightspeed if you don't have it, then refresh), and set Daily limits, When customers can book and Turnaround and reminders. See Online booking and status pages.
  • Services is what customers can book: a tune-up, a brake bleed, a flat fix. For each, search Lightspeed for the labor and parts it's made of, and booking it adds those lines to the workorder. A service with no Lightspeed items adds one labor line with its own name, price and minutes instead. Minutes count toward each day's booked-minutes limit and each mechanic's time, and the price is shown to customers as "from".
  • Settings → Share your booking page has your booking page's link and a one-line snippet that embeds the form on your own website. Under Settings → Branding, set your accent colour, logo and a short note for customers, and under Settings → Your own booking address, an address of your own like book.yourshop.com: the Booking page includes Custom branding.

Where to go next