Bike Index is very excited to announce a new integration with Ascend Retail, a point-of-sale retail system for cycling and outdoor retailers. Bike Index is the only bicycle registration service that has tools for bike shops to register bikes for their customers automatically at point of sale. This new Ascend integration utilizes Ascend's built-in report scheduling features to register bikes at point of sale and, along with Lightspeed, allows Bike Index to register bikes through the two retail systems most-used by bike shops here in the U.S.

Learn how to integrate your shop's Ascend and Bike Index accounts here. You can also check out Ascend's instructions. The integration is completely free for your shop, and registrations are free for your customers. Forever.

"We designed the Scheduled Report function in Ascend so our customers could easily share data with their chosen business partners," said Mark Hoggatt of Ascend. "We’re happy they can use this function to partner with Bike Index and help protect their customers’ bikes.”

Pine Mountain Sports in Bend, OR is the flagship shop for the new Ascend registration integration.

"For the last few years, Pine Mountain Sports has been working closely with our local (Bend) police department on ways to minimize the issue of bike theft in Central Oregon. Our staff works hard to educate our new bike customers on ways to not get their bike stolen in Bend," said Henry Abel of Pine Mountain Sports.

Photo courtesy of the City of Bend, OR Facebook.

"One of those ways is to register all of your bicycles with BikeIndex.com. For the last two or three years, when we sell a new bike we take the time to start a new BikeIndex account at the register for our customer. It takes a few minutes, but our customers appreciate that we're looking out for them after the sale," said Abel.

Now, instead of registering bikes by hand, Pine Mountain can register all of their bikes automatically each night through Ascend. Once a shop sets up the integration, Ascend will export the information of bikes the shop sells each day, and we will import those bikes into Bike Index. Customers just have to create a Bike Index account, and their new bike will be in there waiting for them.

"Since we're a long time Ascend user we recognized that they could probably work to make registering a bike with BikeIndex as easy as clicking a button or two at the time of the sale. It's an awesome service for our customers," said Abel. "We're working to run bike thieves out of our town, and the best way to do it is to not make it easy for them. Thanks to BikeIndex and Ascend for all that they do for cyclists!"

Congratulations to the shops that have already signed up to register bikes through Ascend:

• Pine Mountain Sports, Bend, OR
• Liberty Bicycle, Asheville, NC
• Trek Corte Madera, Corte Madera, CA
• Zippy's Bikes, Wildwood, NJ
• Trek Bikes Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
• Trek Bikes Santa Rosa, Santa Rosa, CA

We also have some new partners through Lightspeed - so if you're a Lightspeed shop, remember that you too can register each bike you sell at point of sale through Lightspeed and Bike Index.

New Lightspeed partners include:

• Turin Bicycle, Chicago, IL
• Tam Bikes, Mill Valley, CA
• Bicycle Odyssey, Sausalito, CA
• Arriving by Bike, Eugene, OR
• Tailwind Cycles, Chicago, IL
• Spoke Easy, San Francisco, CA
• Studio Velo, Mill Valley, CA
• The Hub Napa, Napa, CA
• The Cyclery by Effy, Pomona, NY

Learn more about Bike Index for bike shops.