All Fishbowl Reviews

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Billy

Verified reviewer

Facilities Services, 11-50 employees

Used daily for less than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed April 2022

Great investment

We have saved quite a bit of time with Fishbowl compared to our previous software.

PROS

Fishbowl is simple to use. Everything is easy to find. Search features work well. All facets integrate well.

CONS

It’s been a bit of a struggle to integrate all aspects of our diverse business.

Reason for choosing Fishbowl

Price

Reasons for switching to Fishbowl

Fishbowl had more to offer.

Jessi

Food & Beverages, 11-50 employees

Used daily for less than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

3

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed May 2021

Fishbowl has been great for us as a small food manufacturer

Overall, good experience - we needed a tool like this and it meets our needs for being SQF and USDA Organic.

PROS

Fishbowl helps us maintain all lot tracing records, re-order points, and sales and purchase orders. It makes audit time much simpler!

CONS

There aren't as many reports as I would like and it isn't very intuitive to setup - we had to hire an outside expert.

Reason for choosing Fishbowl

Customer service and overall capabilities

Reasons for switching to Fishbowl

It was too difficult to prepare for an audit.

Vendor Response

Thank you for taking the time to review your experience with our company, Jessi. We appreciate your feedback! We are glad to hear your experience has been satisfactory and will look into improvements based on your suggestions as well.

Replied October 2021

Mike

Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing, 2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 2 years

Review Source
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

2

EASE OF USE

1

VALUE FOR MONEY

1

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

1

FUNCTIONALITY

2

Reviewed February 2024

Dishonest, No Integrity

PROS

My software implementation specialist was friendly.

CONS

I wish I would have thoroughly read these reviews before making the awful decision to give fishbowl a try. I had been in the market for this type of software for a while and had a long conversation with a fishbowl sales rep who promised me that fishbowl could do exactly what I was needing. I was hesitant, because it did not seem like this was true, but he promised me they could do a "custom build" that would address my company's specific needs. Most importantly, he assured me over and over that I could get a full refund if it turned out that the software was not a fit for my company. He promised that I would be able to go through training, implementation, and use the software for a full 30 days after the end of training to decide if it was going to work out. So I spent countless hours over the next several months in the training and implementation of the product. Throughout the training, I expressed my doubts that it would work out, but I had hopes that the "custom build" would be the solution. Training concluded, implementation began, I tried my best to make this thing work for my company, but we were approaching the money-back deadline, no custom build had been provided, and I could not see any way this software would do what I needed. So I attempted to contact my sales rep multiple times via email and phone but got no response. Miraculously, four days AFTER the deadline, I was finally able to communicate with someone who informed me that my sales rep was no longer with the company and that I had missed the deadline for a refund. So let's try that custom build now and see if that'll work. So we did, and to no one's surprise, it was still useless. I again asked for a refund at that point but was denied - "past the deadline." And all this communication was by email because they refuse to offer a phone number to actually speak with someone. So after a complete waste of $14,000 and about year of my time, I'm right back where I started, except poorer and older. I would STRONGLY advise thinking twice before entering into any relationship with fishbowl.

Bernui

Pharmaceuticals, 51-200 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed April 2022

Fishbowl Inventory Review

PROS

Integration with our manufacturing process was easy. Purchases, Receiving, Bill of materials and Work Orders fulfilled our needs.

CONS

Reports provided are too basic, no help documentation to create your own reports. If you need a detailed or custom reports you have to purchase them apart.

Reasons for switching to Fishbowl

ERPNext didn't fulfill our needs preparing work orders.

Dasha

Medical Devices, 11-50 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

3

EASE OF USE

2

VALUE FOR MONEY

2

FUNCTIONALITY

3

Reviewed December 2020

Too Expensive, Unintuitive, and Aesthetically Unpleasing

PROS

It meets our basic needs for manufacturing and sales.

CONS

The flow from the creation of a sales order to the fulfillment is flawed. If a customer pre-pays, we have to artificially fulfill the order, export it to QuickBooks, charge the customer through QuickBooks, then manually notify the fulfillment department to release the purchase order to UPS.

Reason for choosing Fishbowl

Allows inventory management for manufacturing purposes.

Reasons for switching to Fishbowl

Manufacturing needs were not met using InFlow.

Christopher

Retail, 11-50 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review Source
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

1

EASE OF USE

1

VALUE FOR MONEY

1

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

1

FUNCTIONALITY

1

Reviewed December 2023

Software that's 70% complete

From jump, I found out that atleast 50% of what my salesperson told me was completely fabricated or at the very least, extremely misleading. Customer service is non-existent. Earlier today I spent 2 hours on hold waiting for someone from tech support to help me. I email my rep and he doesn't email me back. I call him, he doesn't answer and he doesn't return my call.

PROS

I liked the interface, the ease of use and how it synched flawlessly with Quickbooks.

CONS

This is so close to being halfway decent software but there are just so many odd little quirks that keep it from really being a powerful tool. Just one example - if you move a piece of inventory that you've had in your warehouse for 6 months from row 1 to row 2, the aged date resets to zero. This makes it effectively impossible for you to track your aged inventory. If you want to look up a part that you don't have in stock, you need to do an advanced search, check a box that you're looking for something not in inventory and then search for the product. If you're looking up 10 products in a row that aren't in stock, you need to repeat those steps each and every time.

Reason for choosing Fishbowl

A coworker liked it and I couldn't find anything wrong with it.

George

Transportation/Trucking/Railroad, 2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed February 2022

Inventory Management

Inventory syncing with Amazon, Ebay and Shopify makes our life easier. ORder processing in Fishbowl is another winner. Great for the price...

PROS

Inventory Management syncs with Amazon, Ebay and Shopify. Order processing under one roof. Ease of use for my staff.

CONS

Data migration needs to be more hands on with your team.

Reason for choosing Fishbowl

Price was afforable for a small company

Reasons for switching to Fishbowl

Functionality and Reporting was not adequate. Support was very bad.

Vendor Response

Thank you so much for leaving this review, George. We appreciate you taking the time to tell us about your experience.

Replied March 2022

Todd

Building Materials, 11-50 employees

Used daily for less than 6 months

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

3

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

1

FUNCTIONALITY

3

Reviewed November 2022

Fishbowl Review

Based on our overall experience I would give Fishbowl a 6 out of 10, with their main issues being everything outside of the software. If you have patience then this is a good value, if not walk away quickly....

PROS

I like the ease of use with the Sales Order Side of the product. When the software is set up correctly it is almost flawless, and really makes the ordering process go much smoother. The interface is easy to use and easy to train new employees on.

CONS

The service and support are the worst I have ever dealt with. We paid dearly for the implementation of our data and if I say the words half ass that would hardly describe what they were able to accomplish. Getting someone to try and fix anything is nearly impossible, so we took it upon ourselves to correct all of their implementation mistakes. 3 months in and we still find implementation errors every day that we are correcting. When we attempt to use support their chat feature is useless, as the reps are answering multiple chats at once and it takes 5 minutes between comments for them to come back to you. If you call be prepared to sit on hold for at least an hour, and then they still wont be able to assist you most of the time.

Reasons for switching to Fishbowl

Did not have the inventory interface we needed.

Kasie

Food Production, 11-50 employees

Used daily for less than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

4

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

4

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

4

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed April 2022

Fishbowl

It is easy to use and has some great features

PROS

The ease of using and tracking our inventory

CONS

It still is not 100% accurate- there were errors in our set up -not sure if it was internal or with the software.

Reason for choosing Fishbowl

It seemed like the best software for our needs

Reasons for switching to Fishbowl

Needed something to support the growth of the company

Scott

Health, Wellness and Fitness, 51-200 employees

Used daily for less than 6 months

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

4

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

3

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed March 2022

Fishbowl Works for Us

I've implemented about five ERP/MRP systems and this was the easiest of them all. Our team has picked up on it quickly and likes to use it. Very user friendly.

PROS

The software is easy to use and intuitive. Unlike SAP and others, a new person can jump in and start using the software day one. Things are easy to find and the learning curve is days not months. A system the people won't use is worthless.

CONS

Can't think of anything...does what we need it to do.

Reason for choosing Fishbowl

One of our senior leadership had implemented it before and liked it at a previous company. The others liked the simplicity of the system, and its ability to work with our already existing Quickbooks.

Lynzey

Executive Office, 2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 6 months

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

4

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

4

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

4

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed May 2022

Fishbowl

Overall the software seems to manage most of our needs. I am frustrated with the lack of nesting capabilities for parts and products. My understanding of the product tree was that it solved those issues.

PROS

Haven't used it enough to say, but it was very essay to cycle our inventory numbers.

CONS

The login process isn't reliable. Havening to purchase multiple users. That seems very impractical as our company grows. The appearance of the software itself seems a bit dated.

Reason for choosing Fishbowl

Functionality, accessibility, market standards

Reasons for switching to Fishbowl

We needed a more in depth system.

Conrad

Business Supplies and Equipment, 11-50 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

4

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

4

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed May 2022

Quality Software for Small to Mid-Size Businesses

We have been using Fishbowl Inventory since 2011 and while it has been quite an eventful journey we have seen definite improvements over the years in stability and ease of use.

PROS

QuickBooks integration is probably the feature I appreciate the most about Fishbowl. Any small to mid sized business that is outgrowing QuickBooks inventory management features but doesn't want to pay the price of an all-inclusive ERP program targeted for larger corporations should consider Fishbowl Inventory. The ability to track inventory by location, assign multiple vendors to one item, create intuitive bill of materials items that are as simple or complex as you wish, add multitudes of pricing rules for your products and customers, assign reorder points and order up to levels for your parts to quickly reorder items that are low, Fishbowl plugins that connect to a wide range of third party programs, I could go on for a long time about what there is to like about this program. Their support has definitely improved over the years as well, with a response to a support ticket usually within the hour.

CONS

One inherent weakness with Fishbowl is the QuickBooks export connection. Fishbowl has made tremendous improvements in this area since we first started using it, but there are still multiple times that we need to restart the connection before running an export. To be fair, this may be as much QuickBooks' problem as Fishbowl's. The software also tends to be buggy after new releases. Again, they have improved lightyears over what they were 8 years ago, but still be prepared to have some weird things happen occasionally when a software update is released. Also, Fishbowl only has rudimentary accounting functions and leaves the majority of accounting related tasks to QuickBooks. This can create accounting headaches and even nightmares if the wrong QuickBooks accounts are assigned to items in Fishbowl. I do miss the QuickBooks ability to map transactions directly to expense accounts. In Fishbowl, you must create an item and then map it to the correct QuickBooks expense account, which again asks for accountant's nightmares.

Vinko

Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing

Used less than 6 months

OVERALL RATING:

3

EASE OF USE

3

VALUE FOR MONEY

4

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

1

FUNCTIONALITY

2

Reviewed September 2016

Could be a good fit/value for some with a few significant caveats

PROS

We run FB 2016.11 with QuickBooks Premier 2015. FB handles quoting, sales orders, your basic pick/pack/ship, purchase orders and inventory. It has BOM capability but we find this limited. The price was right for us, esp. compared to our previous Sage software. Prepare to spend 3 to 4x the cost of the software in customization, support and initial set-up. Find other companies doing what you do (or more importantly the way you do it) and see FB in action. The software continues to have limitations and I have continued reservations about that. Some previous reviews bring this up: one's requests aren't really acknowledged or their sort of pooh-poohed. That doesn't make for a good feeling. Despite all the frustrations, limitations, and problems, Fishbowl has helped us. We'd purchase it again. We're at a point where we are again growing, and I think FB can grow with us.

CONS

I read through all the reviews (at this time 126 of them) and agree with the many that indicate that support is very difficult to get a hold of. I also echo the complaints about the need for A LOT of custom reports for simple things. And the fact that the software has bugs and that you WILL be resetting your server to complete end-of-day export to Quickbooks. Maybe more often if you export more frequently. But it is getting BETTER with every release. Still, there is no "user accountability" (again, to echo another review) with SO, PO, etc. Nor is there accountability with inventory entry. You simply have very few opportunities to have documented the ways in which your users interact with Fishbowl. And this lack is serious and can have consequences for your business. Further: be prepared for the result of the lack of customer support: Fishbowl relies on a network of consultants. You've got to get a good one to help you with bugs, problems, fixes, custom reports. And that can be expensive. There's some good consultants and bad consultants. The best consultants I've worked with admit Fishbowl's shortcomings but see the *potential* I can understand the criticisms of FB's sales staff in previous reviews. But these have to be put into context. I guess it's like a lot of sales people who promise you things. But what I would add is the sales people at the beginning of the process are so attentive than when you arrive to the post-sale status, it's just a little jarring how non-attentive the customer support staff are. So that might be the source of that criticism. From what I understand, you've got a lot of sales people, very few support people, and a lot of earnest, hardworking (and overworked) developers and programmers. I think they want to do good work and make a good product. I could speculate why the difficulties are present here but I don't have a full enough understanding to say anything more useful beyond my initial impressions and conversations with Fishbowl people. Finally: speaking of *potential*, I really do think Fishbowl has been good us and has the potential to be even better. But the number one problem may be the corporate culture. And I think I'm being fair in my assessment here. For the culture is a circle-the-wagons mentality. And it lacks transparency. Sure, there are customers who express their frustrations, but one must put those frustrations and the way the users express them into *context*. I think to its own detriment, Fishbowl does not do this. I'm not sure if I were purchasing today (and without having had the experience with Fishbowl that I now do and seeing what I now see it can do for us) that I would purchase it. One small example: Fishbowl used to have a user support forum where users could interact and sometimes FB employees would participate. That forum allowed us to see ways in which people were using Fishbowl. Apparently, some people were badmouthing the company (sometimes rightly), so FB canned the forum. (I think you can still see a google cache of it). I can think of dozens of user support forums from big (Apple) to small (smaller software) where users proffer all sorts of opinions. This doesn't stop them from allowing the community a voice. Or from users helping one another and building a supporting (and supportive) community that can benefit users. But again, the corporate culture is such that transparency appears to have little value. Perhaps FB wants to "control their narrative" from a centralized place. Many of its users would, I'm sure, defend Fishbowl from silly or inane comments and yet let the substantive comments stand as beneficial. For example: case studies. It's important for the potential buyer to get a full view of what and how FB is serving a particular customer with particular needs. That can influence a purchasing decision. You're not going to get serious help with understanding whether FB is right for you with these with facile, superficial "case studies" not generated by real users themselves but rather downloaded from the company website. These types of things often lack substance. They are more marketing material and than informed aids for purchasing decisions. We were approached to participate in such a study and we said no. In that context, we didn't think it wasn't the right thing to do and it didn't feel like a good fit with our values.

Dave

Used free trial

OVERALL RATING:

4

EASE OF USE

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed April 2013

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.

Tommy

Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing, 2-10 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed June 2022

The Perfect Solution for Small & Large Businesses

We've been successfully using Fishbowl now for at least five years and it's allowed our company to process orders and control our inventory to a point where everything runs smoothly between our manufacturing team and our front of house team. Fishbowl has helped turned our "mom and pop" business into a streamlined operation with customers all over the world.

PROS

I have used other CRM/inventory management applications over the years and Fishbowl is by far one of the most robust, all-in-one solutions for our business. It's ease of use, stability, and accessibility has helped run our business for the past several years in terms of POS operations, inventory control, and handling purchase orders.

CONS

My only complaints are that, under the customer tab, the SAVE and DELETE buttons are next to each other. Also under the customer tab, the check balance is next to the history button (which we have to utilize constantly throughout the day). If we accidentally hit CHECK BALANCE, the process runs and holds up Fishbowl for upwards towards a minute. Since this is not something that we utilize, is there a way to possibly disable that button?

Reason for choosing Fishbowl

The overall ease of use was the definitive selling point, along with the support offered. I foresee that we will be sticking with Fishbowl for years to come!

Reasons for switching to Fishbowl

Having worked with MSCRM in the past, it always felt bulky and did not really suit our back of house needs.

Dan

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

3

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

3

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed May 2017

Fishbowl Inventory & Manufacturing: Not great for custom manufacturers...

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.

PROS

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.

CONS

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

Chris

Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing

Used less than 6 months

OVERALL RATING:

1

EASE OF USE

1

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

1

FUNCTIONALITY

1

Reviewed April 2016

Did not work out

PROS

Customer support is thorough when you are able to reach them. Software was very easy to understand and implement. There are a few valuable stock reports. Data module allows you to write your own SQL queries.

CONS

1. IT issues a. Having to reset company server every Sunday. As per IT department, this is a known issue on Fishbowl’s end with no plans to fix b. Having to reset fishbowl server every day due to export failures. Again, known issue. c. The client stalls on our staff daily. Just this past week, collectively we've had to kill the application 40 times due to random lock-ups. This is not an issue on our IT department's end. d. Our quickbook's database has increased tenfold due to the amount of exports fishbowl has made over the last three years. Manuvering in Quickbook's is now a nightmare here in Canada since users are unable to compress the database anymore. 2. Internal Control a. No audit trail as it relates to changes to SKUs, POs, SOs, changes to inventory valuations b. Inability to lock down PO and SO items after they are issued c. Inability to police SKU creation. We need users to be able to create SKUs and submit to management for approval. Once approved, the SKU details are locked down. Fishbowl's user account control is VERY limited. 3. Reporting a. Poor inventory reporting – not able to view listing at a specific date. Fishbook’s workaround does not reconcile to the quickbooks ledger since the report is only a snapshot and not an actual valuation at that date. b. Not able to customize views on reports such as POs, SOs, etc. c. Inventory days aging calculation is flawed. If I move inventory to another location, it resets to zero. That is not how days in inventory is properly calculated. Fishbowl can’t calculate this measure since historical values are not stored. Same with GMROII. d. Inability to create custom reports to track measures such as inventory performance and turnover. Historical carrying cost data is not stored. 4. Poor integration with Quickbooks a. If SKUs accounts were not correctly mapped, a change must be made in both fishbowl and quickbooks after the fact. If we were able to police SKU creation properly, this would rarely be an issue. b. Live inventory valuation in Fishbowl almost never agrees with ledger and I can’t figure out why.

Michael

Automotive, 11-50 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

4

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

4

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

4

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed June 2018

Needed Database tech support for failing upgrade

Helps the various departments of our company work together better.

PROS

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.

CONS

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.

Nathan

Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing, 11-50 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

4

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed January 2020

Fishbowl Is a Highly Functional Software Service

We currently use Fishbowl to manage our inventory, process payments, and manage customer accounts. We are looking to expand and utilize many other integrations for web store and asset tracking capabilities.

PROS

The support team is always ready to dive into your database file and find the root cause of issues in your environment. Serialization and product tracking is very functional and allows us to obtain important history on each item sold Reports have high customization options and with a little SQL programming knowledge you can virtually get any information you are looking for out of the database.

CONS

Growing pains in the earlier years of Fishbowl was a little difficult but many of these have gone away after they switched from Firebird to MySQL platform. It is a little expensive.

Reason for choosing Fishbowl

We chose Fishbowl due to cost and functionality.

Vendor Response

Thank you for leaving us this review, Nathan. We appreciate you taking the time to give us some feedback on your experience here at Fishbowl. We are happy to hear that it has been satisfactory for your company.

Replied October 2021

Leilani

Food & Beverages

Used less than 6 months

OVERALL RATING:

3

EASE OF USE

3

VALUE FOR MONEY

2

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

2

Reviewed September 2016

The updates are killing me

PROS

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

CONS

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.

David

Consumer Goods, 11-50 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

4

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed February 2019

The Way Software Should Work

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.

PROS

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

CONS

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.

Dave

Medical Devices, 11-50 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

4

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed January 2020

Results of Request for Customized Pick Ticket Report

We were all extremely impressed with the talent and expertise of the Fishbowl Reports team. They were genuinely interested in helping us improve our processes by designing a report that met our specific needs. They were in constant communication with us throughout the design, installation, test and acceptance phases of our project and truly exceeded our expectations!

PROS

Although we requested a relatively minor modification to the resident Pick Ticket report, we were extremely pleased as to the quality and speed at which the modified report was provided to us by the Fishbowl Reports team. Specifically, we had requested our applicable lot numbers of each of our respective products be visible on the new report, and it indeed operates just as advertised and is a big time-saver for our team.

CONS

We had absolutely no issues with the design, installation or testing of our custom report.

Vendor Response

Thank you so much for this review, Dave. We appreciate your feedback and are happy to hear that our reports team has met your expectations.

Replied January 2022

Marla

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed December 2017

Super satisfied with the Support I receive - Yeah Eastern Team!

PROS

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!

CONS

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.

Cristian

Logistics and Supply Chain, 51-200 employees

Used daily for less than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

3

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed March 2022

Outstanding Logistic management Software

Fishbowl has been outstanding for our business special with to manage stock and inventory it helps us to have a better management better stock control, we are happy with our experience with Fishbowl.

PROS

All the features for the stock control, to tack the stock the full range of reports the customize dashboard. The purchasing and sales has great functionalities that make the management easy also it is easy for the user.

CONS

When i have stock take i find difficult to note have some feature to support or make it easy, the only option is the cycle count file export and import.

Justin

Building Materials, 2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 6 months

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

1

EASE OF USE

2

VALUE FOR MONEY

1

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

1

FUNCTIONALITY

3

Reviewed March 2024

Terrible Decision - Worst Customer Service - Try Anyone else!

Not only did Fishbowl fail to provide adequate communication during the entire process, but they also refused to give me a refund. It's outrageous that they charge such exorbitant fees for subpar service. I highly recommend avoiding this company at all costs and switching to Netsuite instead. If anyone is considering switching to Netsuite, please reach out to me. I will do everything in my power to help others avoid the mistake I made by signing up with Fishbowl. Shame on this company for their unethical practices and shame on [sensitive content hidden] for being a liar and thief. Stay away from him at all costs if you want any chance of success with Fishbowl.

PROS

The only pro is that its an ERP system that can integrate with your existing QuickBooks, but its not worth it. So please go to someone else.

CONS

I had the unfortunate experience of working with [sensitive content hidden] as my account manager from Fishbowl. From day one, he boasted about being the best in the industry, but I can confidently say that I've never encountered a worse representation of a company. During our implementation process, it would take [sensitive content hidden] 48-72 hours to respond to my inquiries. This delay not only hindered our progress but also showed his lack of dedication and professionalism. He lied about his capabilities from the start, painting himself as a competent account manager when in reality, he's no better than a shady used car salesman. Despite expressing my concerns about the importance of timely communication for my business, [sensitive content hidden] continued to ignore me. It was clear that he had no regard for my needs and only cared about making a quick sale. As a result, I decided not to continue with Fishbowl and switched to a more professional ERP service like Netsuite.

Reason for choosing Fishbowl

I made a big mistake. I ended up switching to Netsuite.

Reasons for switching to Fishbowl

Big Mistake I wish I stayed with quickbooks online, but I eventually switched to Netsuite.

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