Sorry for putting you through the wringer again Jerome, however, I think some of the confusion, at least on my part is due to an old topic that comes up in google searches. The topic indicates that you can do guest checkout by removing the Login / Address blocks from the checkout workflow for HikaShop standard. I believe this leads to a lot of confusion. While technically it does bypass the login/registration feature, it also opens up a lot of issues due to customers not being able to provide any information about themselves when placing an order.
I upgraded my clients version of HikaShope to Essential and it is working perfectly.