#1 inventory management software for QuickBooks
4.2/5 (609 avis)Avantages
I'm an Advanced QuickBooks Pro Advisor and I specialize in Inventory set up and management. I haven't found any program with as many capabilities at such a low cost range as Fishbowl. Netsuite can handle what Fishbowl does but can easily go into the hundreds of thousands to setup and get started and I found the process very complex. Fishbowl on the other hand, can import from QuickBooks and have you set up and running in just a few minutes, though I stress that this should be used as test only. To accurately use Fishbowl it can take months to setup and learn properly. This largely depends on your current experience with technology, accounting practices and inventory knowledge.
Inconvénients
The support isn't stable. Depending on your time zone, you'll get a different team. Some zones, depending on the day and time, will pick up your call immediately and be very knowledgeable and helpful. Others will take a day to get back to you and you'll get someone who's only been there a few months but will confidently tell you something as fact and you might find our later they don't actually know what they're talking about. However, the online wiki is very detailed so if you're someone who can figure out things on your own, this will be a huge help. Basically, I've found that most people who complain about Fishbowl are really complaining about inventory, which is hugely complex. But if you're a detail oriented company with personnel who don't cut corners, Fishbowl can be an excellent fit for you. Just don't expect it to be easy!
Being able to operate above and beyond to what we used to. We can now compete with our competitors
Avantages
I absolutely love that FB is easy to use and easy to teach. It has all the features that our company uses daily. Examples include customer pricing rules, customer "numbers" or customer sku's, Auto PO function, The import/export feature has been a God-send when we need to import products to our website or send information to our customers. The substitute feature is very helpful too. We also really love how we can create custom fields within every module. I really love how the FB team remembers our company when we call and goes above and beyond when we have a hiccup or questions. We can thank FB for some of our company's success. W/o being able to correctly track inventory and use it for daily operations, we wouldn't be operating at the level we are today.
Inconvénients
There aren't things that I like "the least" but there are things I wish FB offered/had that would help our type of business/company. This includes:
1) Since we are a product distributor, we provide a lot of our customers w/ "quotes." FB has the ability to create an "estimate" but no way to store it or look back at it for reference. Pricing rules are essentially only created in our line of operation when a customer begins buying a product. So, we have to create "quotes" on excel sheets and save them on our network folder. So it would be easier if it was all w/in FB. Or if there was a different section from pricing rules that you could make a pricing rule? If that makes sense
2) Wish we could customize reports that are staples of FB w/o paying high dollar. For ex. the packing slip should have a signature line or at least the option to include it. Or there should be options on layouts or what columns to include. Also, we've gotten feedback from customers on how they wish the item # and description where split into different columns.
3) If FB alerted a user if a sales order has been in the system for "x" amount of time. Like a dormant SO in FB
4) Be able to sort the packing slip. Ex. by Item #, customer #, item description, etc.
5) Had a UNSPSC code field. We've found that this is going to be an important code for future web sales.
I've been using Fishbowl for the past year. I bought it for a few reasons. One of the biggest reasons for me was because it can allow me to save credit card information for clients who continually order through our company. Another reason I liked it, is because I could place orders from anywhere using one of the plug ins. But the biggest reason I purchased it is because of it's accuracy in inventory, and because of the depth of the software features, I know that when I expand and have more than one location, a warehouse full of vases, ribbon, and potentially open a wholesale location for a facet of the industry in addition to the flowers, I'm not going to outgrow the software. I'm not even using all the features right now, but I can't wait until my small flower shop is big enough to have 3-4 locations, and use the reorder points! I know that sounds silly, but the software has been so nice because I can scale it for what I need now, and grow into it. And it's PAID for. That always feels nice :)
Avantages
Encrypted credit card capture to charge recurring clients
Stores pictures of the products that we sell
Easy to add parts and products
Lots and lots and lots of reports--- I don't think I've even opened half of them yet!
I like how many features it has even though I don't use them all... it makes me think "When I get that far, then I can use this software to {fill in the blank} it's nice to know I literally have no limitations
Inconvénients
I haven't found anything yet!
We are a Head Start agency that uses FishBowl to purchase, track, and issue inventory to 60 Head Start classrooms and agency departments. Our system uses SharePoint, which is accessed by each classroom/dept. to place their order which is in turn sent to the approving supervisor. Once it is approved, it goes to the Purchasing office were it is imported into FishBowl (all done electronically within the magic of computer land...and the IT department).
We started looking for new inventory software when the software we had did not support the Windows 7 that we were upgrading to. We needed a fully integrated inventory software program that not only supported our classrooms, but would provide the Finance dept. with the information they needed.
One of the features I like about FishBowl is that as soon as Purchasing processes the classroom/dept. request, an email is sent to the requestor letting them know Purchasing has received their order and it is in the process of being filled. When the order has been shipped, another e-mail is sent to let the requestor know the order is on it's way. This email feature has greatly reduced the number of calls received from our classrooms requesting status on their order and when it will be sent to them (I really, really like it).
We have set up reorder points and default vendors, which makes placing orders to replenish warehouse stock easy and nearly effortless. Each vendor has their own part unit of measure and unit of measure conversion, which makes processing receipts magic (well almost). The tracking feature on a warehouse part has helped to track expiration dates on food (milk, yogurt, cheese, etc.). The expiration dates are printed on the packing slip that goes out with each order and helps us resolve expiration date issues. FishBowl will also let us know an item is nearing its expiration date prior to processing the shipment.
Another feature of FishBowl that has come in handy is the ability to monitor specific warehouse stock. I use the feature to monitor our milk products (Soy, Lactaid, Rice Milk, Goats Milk, etc.) to make sure we have enough on hand at all times to ensure we receive Federal reimbursement for meals served. These items are monitored on a daily basis due to their sensitive nature. The Dashboard tab provides a quick synopsis of sales, purchase orders, RMA,s etc. The first two FishBowl tabls I look at are the Monitor and DashBoard tab that will let me know the health of our inventory and status of orders. Thumbs up to the programmers that wrote these features into the system.
Sales orders and back orders are easily maintained and monitored. I can process order requests, and hold them until such time as I need them to be processes for shipment.
FishBowl provides us with reports on classroom expenditures (food/supplies or combination). We maintain two warehouse identifyiers to identify our supply items from our food items. There are custom fields that can be added to input processing that can further help in processing specific types of reports and tracking data.
Prior to using FishBowl we had trainers from FishBowl give us module by module training and help us set up and transfer data from our old inventory system to FishBowl. I cannot say enough good things about the help we received. Note: The online help and training is a great resource also.
FishBowl provideds many features which we are utilizing and others that we will grow into. FishBowl has a different look and feel from the software we were using, but once we started FishBowl, it has become second nature. There is so much more about FishBowl than there is space to write this review. If you need more information please contact me.
North Park is a 3rd Party Logistics and Contract Packaging business, specializing in light manufacturing, warehousing, and B2C shipping services. We provide each customer the service and attention only the 'big guys' get at other fulfillment houses.
Our search for a new Inventory/Manufacturing software solution was prompted by our move away from a warehouse operation towards a 3rd party solution for small to medium-sized businesses, that are outgrowing their current warehousing capabilities.
Prior to using Fishbowl Inventory, we used 'MS Dynamics AX' (think 'GP' on steroids). Our management team has had decades of experience using everything from BaAn and SAP to high-end custom systems, and even home-grown customized solutions.
We chose Fishbowl Inventory primarily based on value, integration w/Quickbooks, and ease-of-use.
We've been running for more than 3 years, currently running ver 13.2 Manufacturing, Salespoint and Mobile Warehouse. We highly recommend staying updated with the current version, as improvements and features are continually being added.
Initial install and implementation took us less than a full day, including import of Customer, Item, BOM, etc. from QB. User training took a week or so for all our team to be up and running well enough to use it in live production. (Only one of us spent any time in the demo.)
For the most part, Fishbowl is simple and intuitive to use. There are very few places or processes where the desired next step isn't obvious. However, we've found many useful tips & tricks that we benefit from greatly, and most would have been learned with onsite training, but we declined initially because of our extensive background with other systems.
Customer support has been absolutely fantastic for us! We use the Live Chat option as first contact, and only rarely need to resort to phone calls. Despite the recorded phone tree that is standard today, Fishbowl's is about as short as it can be and still direct your call to the right group. Once there, it's always leave a message and wait for a call-back; but I've always gotten a call within 2 hours (usually less). For truly urgent needs, I've always been able to call back, get the operator and get in touch with Support that can at least identify the issue and suggest some troubleshooting I can do while awaiting Technical help.
In 3 years we've only had 1 instance of down-time due to system failure and that was resolved and we were up and running in 2hrs.
Biggest benefits of using Fishbowl for us are ease of implementation and use; power/reliability of the system; manufacturing capabilities (only shortcoming there is full MRP/CRP/ERP modules for planning, but for our size and complexity it does surpisingly well).
The biggest shortfall of Fishbowl for us is Reporting. The nature of our business doesn't lend itself well to many of the standard informational reports (operational reports are fine). However, Fishbowl is ODBC compliant, their reporting platform is open source (similar to Crystal Reports, but a bit steeper learning curve), and if you're not comfortable with SQL there are several 3rd party options for customizing reports.
Avantages
The customer support is great. It's just hard to get a hold of them when you need to speak to a live person on the phone. The people who work there are the nicest and most helpful when you do get to talk to them and they do resolve the day to day issues that pop up. ie, inventory getting stuck in committed status is a pretty quick fix, but then again, should it really happen in the first place?. Bigger problems take more time to fix, but they seem to keep working on it until its resolved. The people they have providing training are excellent.
The wikis are pretty easy to access and are pretty good
Inconvénients
This year the updates seem to break something that's had been working. Then it takes hours with customer support to fix and get going again.
The phone support team could use more staff because it does take hours to get a call back. The reports are difficult to customize, you have to know programming. There is no simple report writer function or a reports that can be customized.
If you have to pick inventory from two locations for one sales order, it will create two invoices. There is no way around that in Fishbowl. The calendar is pretty basic, could use enhancements. The inventory export CSV file does not use FIFO, but average costing. So if you use FIFO or any other method other than average costing, you have to use a different report instead of getting the data in CSV format.
The shipping module is frustrating and the way it is set up does not allow us to use carton count efficiently, so we have to change the packing list after it's printed. If you want Fishbowl to count the cartons for you, you have to add each carton manually. And if you do that, it will not total or summarize the number of cartons you have, it will list each one individually. So you could have a packing list that could be several pages long.
The UPS integration used to be great and then UPS updated, Fishbowl did not support the updated software and we had to change to UPS Worldship. Definitely a step backwards because the old integration worked beautifully. Now it's more manual and cumbersome.
Inventory management is a breeze, great for warehousing and manufacturing bigger build products, the modules, and UI is well thought out, and very logical, they did a great job with it. They have great eCommerce integrations they added on for magento and amazon which makes it more powerful. The fact that you buy the product up front (with a year of support that can be renewed) makes it seem like you are saving money by owning the software, but you'll need to upgrade every year until the software does what you want it.
Avantages
It's great if you are manufacturing the same thing over and over, so you need 500 or 1000 widgets made the same way. It's a pretty powerful tool for warehousing and inventory. It costs for just the warehousing, plus users and add-ons. They'll give you a discount if you ask them, but you almost should just go with a saas program you'll get quicker updates. fishbowl you can save lots of money down the road if you don't buy there support package. They have a pretty good product development team, but it takes them at least a year it seems like to roll out any useful new features you talk to them about.
Inconvénients
Very challenging to set up, learning curve is huge in my opinion. The BOM stages work for the most part, but you'll spend a lot of time in a sandbox database seeing if what you want works (if your doing multi stage builds) If your doing 1 to 100 of anything, and what your making varies order to order, I'd recommend some other software like ordoo, shopvox, or corbridge. They are alot quicker to set up on the
Avantages
Search function is amazing! Really like Fishbowl for the most part. Ordering, inventory tracking, automatic updating, etc.
Inconvénients
1) Can't look at a part and see how many times it was ordered easily. Have to go in and out of the purchase orders. Would like to look at a part, see how often it was ordered and from whom, how many were ordered and how much we paid in a simple list form. Right now I only see the PO/Vendor without any of the important details like quantity ordered and cost.
2) I also think the Revision for an item should follow the part. It does not. There is a revision field that shows up on the purchase order, but doesn't print anywhere AND is not the same field from the Part Detail screen. In a manufacturing environment the revision for any given part should follow the part around the database, including onto purchase orders so the vendor knows what to fabricate. Right now I have to manually enter the revision on the vendor screen. The revision from the Part Detail screen should automatically populate on the Vendor screen for said part so that when the item is ordered, it appears on the purchase order .
3) I find the documentation sometimes lacking detail.
4) I'd also like to be able to create custom reports myself and without turning back the hands of time and forcing Java to use an old revision (required for iReport). A report creation function in Fishbowl would be awesome! Even my archaic old Parts & Vendors software allowed me to do create custom reports.
If you are considering Fishbowl for your business, you will be making a wise choice. Let me tell you a little about our business, what we were using before Fishbowl, and why we decided to go with them instead of the many choices you will have.
We are a manufactures rep agency servicing the HVAC and plumbing industry. We work directly with the wholesale market and warehouse about 750 - 1000 sku's. Before Fishbowl, we had no inventory program in place - other than notebooks and getting up to check the shelf. As our business continued to grow, we quickly realized the need for some sort of help in managing our inventory and purchasing. In the 2 + years since full line integration, we are very satisfied with our decision and continue to find tools and reports that we didn't even know exisited. It's a very complete system.
Our decision to go with Fishbowl wasn't an easy one. There are a lot of programs out there that will do the same thing Fishbowl can and at stagering range of costs. We looked at over a half a dozen systems, ranging from the 6 figure programs to the custom coded excel based from the local starving student. The decision was made based on the following facts - Fishbowl works directly with Quickbooks, our current accounting program. It works with excel which makes updating prices and importing product lines very easy. The other deciding factor was their support and training.
Training was a huge concern for all of our associates. Since most of us had only been working out of notebooks or memory of inventory levels for years, and with varying levels of comfort with any computer program, going to any inventory software program was a very scary thought. We made the decision to invest into the on-site training they offered and it was the best decision we could have made. There is a learning curve, no doubt about it and it can be steep depending your level of comfort and savy with a computer. But rest assured, the support and training got us the answers and assistance we needed.
The only thing I could say about Fishbowl in a negative light, is it's a little bit of a "one size fits all" program. There are some feature/functions that in our business just aren't needed. However, as a growing small business we like the idea of having tools at our disposal even if they are left in the tool box. It's nice to know we have them.
We are very happy with Fishbowl. It has helped us grow our warehouse business and find loose ends in sales, stocking levels, and purchasing practices which all means at the end of the day we have become more profitable because of it. The more time we put behind us the more valuable the data has become. We are now even doing credit card transactions right out of Fishbowl!
Trust Fishbowl. They will be there for you, provide an inventory program that will work and help you grow the business.
It provided a decent ERP for the price but is definitely geared to low transaction volumes.
Avantages
Fishbowl is relatively easy to use (by nature, ERP systems are complex) and is relatively reliable for companies whose transactions number in the low hundreds per day. Their support is quite effective but may be slower than you like -- if your business is effectively down due to an ERP issue, the last thing you want to get when you call support is voicemail. Unless things have changed in recent (2017) releases, one must update the local client with each system update, and that can be problematic for small shops that do have centralized software management and have restricted local rights on their PCs. They did change from FireDB to MySQL late last year, which improved performance drastically, but the database still requires a lot of optimization, care and feeding in order to get peak performance. Eventually, the company I worked for decided that it had outgrown FBI and migrated to NetSuite.
Inconvénients
* Slow support response
* Relatively slow performance
* Cannot cancel running batch jobs
* They recommend(ed) running Quickbooks and Fishbowl on the same server, which meant an extremely expensive server was required. The alternative was to split the two apps onto different machines and experience super-slow batch updates (some ran hours)
Avantages
Fishbowl is a great company to work with! They are a solutions based company that strives to take the input of their customer. When we first implemented Fishbowl Inventory Software three years ago, we utilized their on site training to help assist with the setup and initial training. They don't just provide a cookie cutter approach to their support and training, they realize they work with all types of industry and have been able to adapt their software to work in nearly every need for inventory related purposes. Their software is easy to use, better than a DOS based system, and has great user interface for easy training of employees.
Inconvénients
Fishbowl is very good at answering your questions and their tech support. Sometimes you have to leave a message and they have to return a phone call, however it is in a timely manner, and they generally have a solution prior to calling you back, getting your issue resolved in a timely manner. Their "live chat" on their website is a good alternative if they are unavailable by phone and your question just can't wait.
When I purchased Fishbowl there were many issues and I was very frustrated. After several attempts I met one of the CSR and can I say what a breath of fresh air he was and is. It is nice to meet someone who has your concerns on his mind when he approaches you and the way he handles matters is the way any company owner appreciates. He has been above the call of duty every time he handles my concerns.
I must say my hand goes out to him and would shake his hand any time he is the room and give a smile and acknowledge him with the same respect he gives to me as a business owner running a company smoother thanks to his help and encouragement.
As a business owner we are challenged every day and with the daily grind you feel at times lost and alone. After meeting him and having a person in your corner with you striving to ensure you have little challenges is beyond a relief it is a dream instead of a nightmare.
Thanks for being part of LEW and making me feel like I have support instead of pressure!
Avantages
Inventory Tracking is the biggest thing. Easy of use with Sales Order and Purchase Orders. It sends my accounting info to Quickbooks automatically at the end of the day.
Inconvénients
Set up was a little time consuming. It took some effort to get everything in properly and just adapting to the new software functionality.
Helps the various departments of our company work together better.
Avantages
One of the team members was my point of contact for our recent issue. We started upgrade at close of business and ran into issue late in the night. The upgrade process had been test driven successfully on the new target servers prior but something in the tag data at the moment of upgrade caused a failure. We opened for business the next AM dead in the water. They were excellent in his handling of the issue and giving it the attention we needed as our business was on hold due to the issue. The DB Tech that worked on the problem was also on point in the solving of the issue.
Inconvénients
Only cure for bugs is full upgrade. Given that we have many custom reports it does not make it an easy option. Would like to also see support for iReport as it is bundled with your product but discontinued on it's own. Lastly, would like to see a solution that would create true "Admin" level accounts. We have in house admins that get all rights but cannot affect "Company" (and other misc) settings without using the factory "Admin" account.
It replaced a very old and unreliable product. By integrating with QuickBooks, we greatly expanded the candidate pool for our accounting department. We were able to grow our business with lower growth in staff.
Avantages
The user interface allows new users to become proficient quickly. The ability to incorporate bar codes and product images is helpful. It is a great substitute for the Inventory module of QuickBooks if you need to do a lot of kitting and assemblies as well as calculating landed costs for imports.
Inconvénients
Report writing/modifying is cumbersome. End user is captive to Fishbowl or 3rd party authors. There should be more flexibility akin to Quickbooks for users to add/subtract columns of data as well as filtering by multiple criteria. Most filters are all/everything or just one Customer, Vendor, Part Number, etc. We also had to have custom reports created for some very basic inventory management reports - FB's main purpose. More end user input should have been/should be sought
EDI implementation is possible, but through 3rd party providers and automating order processing is limited.
Avantages
Fishbowl has been a good fit for our company so far. Learning a new software is almost like learning a new language, so it does take time to get to know all the features and understand how this software was designed to "think". This is where Customer Service comes in... and this is where Fishbowl shines. They have GREAT people on staff that are always willing to make the time to give you the training or the help you need. On rare occasions, they don't have an answer right away and will have to get back to me, but they always get back to me with an answer to my questions.
We also had a problem with a glitch in the software, and after letting our Fishbowl rep know, it was fixed with the next upgrade. Woo! Hoo!
Our main purpose is getting Fishbowl was to have the ability to track lot numbers, and Fishbowl has given us that ability.
We like that we are able to track multiple delivery dates on a single PO as well. We've not been able to do that in the past.
My biggest brag on Fishbowl though is their outstanding Customer Service. They don't sell their product then leave you on your own to figure it all out. They've been with us every step of the way and have taught us much.
Inconvénients
The most difficult part of Fishbowl has been using the Reports. We haven't quite figured out how to utilize them to pull the information we need. But I believe this is because the needs of our particular business aren't the needs of most companies. We also have the option to have custom reports made for those particular needs.
Some of the formatted reports do not include grand totals.
Fishbowl Inventory was a great success in our first year of utilization. The biggest and easiest improvement was the vast reduction of manual order duplication, as we were able to have orders submitted from our website directly into Fishbowl, and then have sales orders pushed directly into Quick Books on the back end of the system. As we learn to better use Fishbowl, we are more accurate with reporting to our customer's accurate data, and also keep our sales representatives up to date with inventory levels, pricing, and order tracking on behalf of their customers.
For the record - our small seed company grew with the help of Fishbowl Inventory!
Avantages
We really like the data transfer capabilities with an API interface from our website order platform, and the data push into Quick books on the back end. So much time has been saved from manual data entry duplication. The ability to have multiple users from all over with remote hosting allows sales reps from TX to MT to place orders and see inventory availability prior to order placing. Having the opportunity to write our own I-reports to meet our specifications.
Inconvénients
We haven't been able to make mobile applications work yet for our systems. We still have challenges with the real time tracking of inventory between locations with using bar-codes, scanners and mobile devices.
If you are a small business manufacturer, this is the system for you. Don't even question the price. It is 1/10 the price of "enterprise" systems with all the features you need. If it sounds like I'm a fan-boy, I am. I love it when software works the way it should.
Avantages
The program is intuitive and extremely in depth. We a food manufacturer (coffee roaster) and we invoice through Fishbowl. We are not yet using the mobile app, so I can't talk about that. Unlike our accounting system (brand Q), one module smoothly integrates with the next. It is easy to administer and our users just get it. It is the standard by which other database systems should be measured. The integration with Quickbooks is painless. Fully automated and has never, never failed. I have not had one single
Inconvénients
Their chat support isn't the most knowledgeable. They do have the option of custom fields, but there isn't the option to make some fields visible/invisible. The server occasionally locks up, however, all you need to do is restart. No fuss.
Avantages
Fishbowl software allows my company to always be in the know of our inventory position.
It is EASY to learn and easy to use.
This week I am adding 7 more users and having All my "on-the-road" salesmen use FISHBOWL directly. For Sales processing, for Inventory stocking orders, for Creating customers etc... Its that easy to use!!
A big shout out to my EASTERN Support team for the great support through CHAT, and to Jordan Boyce as he currently has been really taking care of my issues for my immediate upgrading of my use with Fishbowl. Adding FISHBOWL HOSTING to my affiliation with FB to secure that my Mobile Salesmen are using a STABLE environment!
Inconvénients
Some REPORTS are not in the nicest format, nor have the best "filters" to navigate.
As well Little features [like spell check in email body templates] are missing, but Fishbowl does often upgrade their platform with new releases which often has these fixes.
Downloaded the demo (most current version) and found most feature impressive and easily configurable. Minor little things bothered me, such as a non-standard DB, no easily accessible hooks, and limited printer support (we use BarTender Labels, and wanted to tap into printing them within FB, but had no luck). For me, this is a not a show stopper, but I've been spoiled with other ERPS, LIMS, PIMS, and MRPs.
Overall - it works with QuickBooks - which is great if you have to use Quickbooks, and it covers about 90% of your business rules out of the box. Again, flexible, but not perfect.
Avantages
The interface is slick and looks fun to use. The dashboards will keep even your most attention-deficit workers accountable with the easy to understand graphical display. For the price, it will get your small to medium sized business working with proper ISO practices without too many issues. I love that it's all encompassing and covers all the areas needed to properly control your finances within the manufacturing sector. Not too big, not too small. Comfortable.
Inconvénients
Understand that I've been doing informatics systems for a few years, so I'm used to having 'options', or at least access to an SDK so that I find some ways to trigger events. I'm also a Microsoft fan, so foreign databases and java scripts leave me a little intimidated. I'm also a cheap SOB, so if I can't do it, I'll be damned to pay a consultant to make my reports for me. That being said, if you like the generic reports and labels, this is a no-brainer, but if you're picky, it's slightly annoying.
Fishbowl is a good, solid warehouse management system. It has all the functionality needed to manage our inventory and warehouse (over 1500 bin locations and 5000 sku's in a 25,000sq ft whse) . Customer support is always helpful and friendly.
Avantages
Cycle Counting Functionality, Lot Traceability, Can track customer specific fields like Country of Origin, Carton Quantity, any specific as needed. The activity report is very detailed to track parts and what user touched them last. We import and are able to easily hold the product in our inventory for dollar value but as 'in-transit' (not sellable or pickable) once it sails until it actually hits the door. Inventory dollars between FB and Quickbooks are very accurate.
Inconvénients
Does not have an EASY way to handle 'outside processing'; It can be done with transfer orders, but it is a bit time consuming.
Currently, the Activity Report is losing user ids.
This is a great start-up and small business POS program. It is robust and will allow your company to grow with out paying out for additional software upgrades. The inventory controls, vendor and receiving modules work great together. You don't have any limiitations when creating new part numbers. Custom pricing is easily learned.
Avantages
For a wholesale / retail business, this is a feature packed program that handles most day to day operations and is accurate. Being PC / Server based, you don't have lag time or glitches. It's a good solid program. Integration with QBO is seamless... one button updates or create a schedule. Unlike other software companies, the service package is affordable, and the support staff is top notch.
Inconvénients
This program is great for start up and smaller businesses, but the downside is the upfront initial cost. After using Fishbowl Inventory, you will find that the benefits outweight the cost.
We have used Fishbowl in our corporate warehouse for over 5 years. Fishbowl makes processing both eCommerce and wholesale orders easy and organized. It also makes purchasing inventory a breeze with in depth historical reporting and sales forecasting. I would also highly recommend investing in the Janam handheld scanner running Fishbowl mobile software; makes cycle counts hassle-free. There is a slight learning curve, but is still much easier than other inventory systems we've used in the past.
Avantages
Best part of Fishbowl is their reporting. Being able to analyze past purchasing and sales reports to better forecast inventory movement is crucial and Fishbowl nails it. I also like that they have a direct import and export function to link with our eCommerce site.
Inconvénients
The menu and navigation can seem a bit convoluted, but I'm convinced this is the case with any software boasting so much functionality.
One thing that I am most grateful for is that we chose a software package that is actively being improved... constantly... that is a real plus.
Avantages
The company is continuously improving the product. They listen to their customer's suggestions... and also keep abreast of changing ways in which businesses function in our changing world. When they detect 'bugs'... they fix them!
Inconvénients
As with most all software packages... the reports are not the most robust... However, there are 3rd party programmers who partner with Fishbowl. I run our entire business relying on reports that I have designed and then paid the 3rd party programmers to produce... the cost is very reasonable. This isn't really a 'con'... as almost all software has generic reports due to the fact that there is such a diverse user group.
CSR in Customer Support saved the day with her patience, total understanding of Fishbowl, and being able to get us up and running again so quickly. She is very good at seeing the big picture of what needs to be done, and then pull in database techs and use her own expertise to quickly fix a complicated software problem! Thank you so much, CSR! You are awesome!
Avantages
We had to have a total reload, upgrade and re-enter inventory and parts for our entire company. We are a small company and do not have the breadth of experience to handle IT and software issues quickly. Thanks to Fishbowl and their support team, they filled the gap for us!
Inconvénients
instruction manual rather cumbersome, much easier to just call customer support. Hard to figure out solutions from the manual for non-IT oriented people.
Avantages
Ease of use, it hasn't taken more that a day or so to get new users up and running in their departments. WE have several Fishbowl subject matter experts that have picked up the more advanced stuff in a few weeks.
I've never had to wait more that 24 hours for a support issue, and if its urgent I can usually get support that day.
Our integration partner has been fantastic and Fishbowl is working flawlessly with our Quickbooks and website, we've even had a few custom reports made to expand our inventory control.
Inconvénients
The one feature i would really like to see is a "make from" function. So I can use raw material, make parts from it, and have Fishbowl consume the raw material and add in the parts made from it. I know I can get around this with a bill of materials but it can consume a lot of time for a simple procedure.