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Fishbowl Inventory Software
 | 21 Reviews (4.4/5) |
Fishbowl Inventory is designed for small to mid-sized companies looking for a complete inventory management system without replacing QuickBooks for accounting. We hear from lots of companies using a combination of QuickBooks and Excel who say they need a more robust solution but are not ready for an enterprise-level ERP system. These companies typically want a low-cost system that will not require them to replace QuickBooks. We recommend Fishbowl to these types of firms.
Fishbowl Inventory is easy to implement and affordable, yet flexible enough to meet the needs of companies that require more streamlined inventory control, material requirements planning (MRP), and job shop floor control / manufacturing execution. It takes an inventory-centric approach, providing features for barcoding, asset management, raw materials management, cycle counting, and customized reporting. The system also automates the quoting, ordering, and purchasing processes.
Fishbowl Inventory is used in just about every industry by companies earning up to $100 million in annual revenue. It offers extensive training and support resources through its training videos, online tutorials, in-house specialists and more. Fishbowl’s seamless integration with QuickBooks makes it easy for users to integrate manufacturing, sales, and distribution processes with back office accounting.
For nearly 10 years, Fishbowl has held Intuit’s Gold Partner status, the highest level of service third-party integrators can achieve.
21 Reviews of Fishbowl Inventory
Overall rating
Plastic Kegs America has been using the Fishbowl inventory management software for two years. We still do not use all of the functions in the entirety. Last spring we had 2 trainers come out and provide 2 days of training for new hires and management staff. This was very beneficial and helped us better understand the software. The phone support has also been very strong. We do leave a message, but in most cases we have received not only a call back but a resolution with in 24 hours. As the sales manager, I use the software more for tracking orders and customers. Exporting and importing data is fairly streamline. Having the ability to email the customer's sales orders and receipt straight from the database saves time. At the end or beginning of each year, I will have customers ask for complete details of all their sales orders. This is easy to provide with Fishbowl.
Overall rating
We are a small wholesale company that warehouses and sells anywhere form 3,400 to 4,500 different items. We needed a system to track our purchases as will as our sales. Before purchasing Fishbowl, we used a system that was not as user friendly and did not work with a scanner. Fishbowl allows us to do product locations and print pick tickets with the locations, which makes pulling our orders so much quicker. It works beautifully with scanners and allows us to be more accurate with our sales order.
Fishbowl has an excellent support team to help with questions that you might have!!
Fishbowl has an excellent support team to help with questions that you might have!!
Overall rating
When I started at Largo Tank & Equipment in 2006, our inventory system was very outdated and complicated. Something about having to take seven steps to print a pick ticket did not sit well with me! Fishbowl was the first new system we looked at and I was hooked (no pun intended). We purchased the 5.0 version and began the setup. It was very easy to import the data from the old system, and was completed without any training necessary on my part. I simply looked through the help options already in Fishbowl and within a month we were ready to go live - no regrets and no looking back! We are a truck body/vacuum tank manufacturer and deal with many parts and raw material. The bill of materials module is extremely helpful and can streamline any manufacturing process. The customer support is awesome, from simple questions to custom reports, the staff can do it all. Response time from them is immediate and friendly. Benefits? Let's just say within a year of implementing Fishbowl we had the best inventory we've ever had! If you are looking for an inventory system with all the answers give Fishbowl a try - you will be very glad you did!
Overall rating
We are a promotional marketing company and a fulfillment house. There are two aspects to our company, and we have found that Fishbowl Inventory software handles them both beautifully.
For our promotional marketing side, we use Fishbowl Inventory to create purchase orders to our vendors, link the purchase orders to sales orders, then export to Quickbooks for billing clients and paying our vendors. In addition, by linking our purchase orders to sales orders, Fishbowl Inventory's reports make it easy to track profitability. We also use many of the other reports to track things like sales by customer, sales by sales person, sales by date, etc.
For the fulfillment house side of our company, we use Fishbowl Inventory to track all incoming and outgoing inventory, and provide weekly or monthly reports to our clients.
We also have created online ordering sites for many of our fulfillment clients. By adding EZ Connector software with Fishbowl Inventory, many of our clients go online, select the inventory they need shipped, see the quantity available, and enter where it is to ship to. When the online ordering sites sync with Fishbowl Inventory via EZ Connector software, sales orders are automatically created in Fishbowl Inventory.
We have been using Fishbowl Inventory software since 2003 and hve found that it is easy to learn, easy to use, and by far has the BEST customer support I have ever used.
For our promotional marketing side, we use Fishbowl Inventory to create purchase orders to our vendors, link the purchase orders to sales orders, then export to Quickbooks for billing clients and paying our vendors. In addition, by linking our purchase orders to sales orders, Fishbowl Inventory's reports make it easy to track profitability. We also use many of the other reports to track things like sales by customer, sales by sales person, sales by date, etc.
For the fulfillment house side of our company, we use Fishbowl Inventory to track all incoming and outgoing inventory, and provide weekly or monthly reports to our clients.
We also have created online ordering sites for many of our fulfillment clients. By adding EZ Connector software with Fishbowl Inventory, many of our clients go online, select the inventory they need shipped, see the quantity available, and enter where it is to ship to. When the online ordering sites sync with Fishbowl Inventory via EZ Connector software, sales orders are automatically created in Fishbowl Inventory.
We have been using Fishbowl Inventory software since 2003 and hve found that it is easy to learn, easy to use, and by far has the BEST customer support I have ever used.
Overall rating
We have been using Fishbowl Inventory since 2005 and it has worked flawlessly for us. Makes it easy to track inventory and serials numbers with locations and saves a lot of time with the Quickbooks integration with the Purchase Order and receiving modules, sales and shipping modules, etc. I would recommend it to anyone who needs a powerful inventory management program to integrate with Quickbooks.
Overall rating
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.
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.
Overall rating
We have been using Fishbowl here at Cascade Winery for nearly 3 years now. Fishbowl has eliminated so many issues that plagued us when using Quickbooks for inventory control and manufacturing. There was a small learning curve, maybe 3 to 6 months, but it was nothing in relationship to using QB. We like Fishbowl and wouldn't live without it now. For a small to medium size business, Fishbowl is the perfect way to control inventory and manufacturing.
Overall rating
We are a small parts supply business that inventories a large amount of parts with very similar part numbers. We used Quickbooks as our software for a few years and had issues with inventory control. We switched to Fishbowl as our inventory control software around 2 years ago. The support from Fishbowl during the initial install and startup was excellent. They have one of the best support teams I have found anywhere. Since changing over to Fishbowl we have corrected our inventory and been able to keep it accurate. It turned out to be an excellent addition for our company.
Overall rating
Thermo Electric is a manufacturer of temperature sensors. We are located around the globe and use FishBowl Inventory to handle our global operations.
The product is easy to use, versatile and customer support always comes through with a solution when you have a problem. For the money, you can't find a better product. By using FishBowl, we have drastically reduced our systems overhead and increased efficiency. We have been using FishBowl since 2008/09 and are currently using the latest version. Each release is better than the last, so I can honestly say that FishBowl is heading steadily in the right direction.
The product is easy to use, versatile and customer support always comes through with a solution when you have a problem. For the money, you can't find a better product. By using FishBowl, we have drastically reduced our systems overhead and increased efficiency. We have been using FishBowl since 2008/09 and are currently using the latest version. Each release is better than the last, so I can honestly say that FishBowl is heading steadily in the right direction.
Overall rating
Our company was in desperate need of an inventory program that would not only allow us to buy in cases and sell in other units of measure, but also be able to do this accurately and efficiently. Additionally, we needed to be able to track lot numbers and expiration dates on not just cases ordered but also on items we assembled here.
Fishbowl has done that for us. Since using Fishbowl our inventory is always accurate. This has saved us lots of money, from extra inventory sitting in our warehouse to lost orders due to shortages. The inventory monitor is great tool to calculate how much inventory we need to keep on hand.
Fishbowl has done that for us. Since using Fishbowl our inventory is always accurate. This has saved us lots of money, from extra inventory sitting in our warehouse to lost orders due to shortages. The inventory monitor is great tool to calculate how much inventory we need to keep on hand.
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