Fishbowl Reviews

Powerful, Affordable Inventory and Order Management Software

Comments: Stated simply, Fishbowl is the best in it's class, period! Easy to use, incredibly effective and affordable Inventory and Order Management Software.

Pros:

Fishbowl offers and unparalleled ease of use. Our whole team was trained and up and running in hours. You simply won't find another software package with the range of features and reliability at this price range. It easily bests other software packages costing 3 times what Fishbowl costs!

Cons:

Their call back support could be a little faster, but it's still likely better than most software companies.

A Comprehensive Inventory Management Tool

Comments: I have been using Fishbowl for several months now and I am very happy with the results. It's a comprehensive inventory management tool with a wide range of features and options. The user interface is intuitive and easy to use, and customer support is quick and helpful when needed. The pricing structure can be a bit complex, but overall, Fishbowl is an excellent choice for inventory management.

Pros:

Fishbowl is an incredibly comprehensive inventory management tool. It has a wide range of features and options that make it easy to keep track of all the items in your inventory. The user interface is intuitive and easy to use, and the customer support is top-notch. I highly recommend Fishbowl for anyone looking for a reliable inventory management solution.

Cons:

Fishbowl's pricing structure can be a bit confusing, and it can be hard to determine what the best option is for your particular situation. Additionally, the customer support could be improved, as there is sometimes a long wait time for help. Overall, though, Fishbowl is a great option for anyone looking for a reliable inventory management solution.

There are better ERP systems out there

Comments: I wish I never paid over $11k dollars for this crappy software.

Pros:

The reporting feature is the only good part of this whole system

Cons:

Everything. It constantly has bugs and needs updates. The inventory is always off no matter what. Their support is extremely costly. And their employees have the worst customer service

Fishbowl Review

Comments: 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.

best platform for inventory management

Comments: There correspondence with general society is excellent and amicable local area. Likewise, have a huge reach to animal varieties and creatures to work with. The group in this store is extremely simple to work its and they are understanding and such a local area little shop which is exceptionally great.

Pros:

Ongoing stock following: Fishbowl gives a precise and forward-thinking image of stock levels, which can assist organisations with staying away from stockout's and overloading.

Cons:

Restricted portable help: Fishbowl's versatile help is restricted, which may not address the issues of organisations that need to get to their stock information in a hurry.

Helps finding the job profile network

Comments: I enjoyed connecting with some peers from my background in education who happened to share with me some other platforms like Linkedin but here, it was less formal and more productive to discuss. I would recommend using it at least once to check the status of your work network.

Pros:

There is minimum self-promotion. People drive the conversations about jobs, experience, and new opportunities. You might bump into a peer in your company or in the same company but in a different country. It is interesting to find new people as well.

Cons:

Some fields like IT, tech, blockchain, AI, etc are very popular but information and conversations about professions like mine - ie education are less and hence I could not use it for more than a few months.

High Powered Inventory Management Software

Comments: Fishbowl is a powerful and complete inventory management software which help us to manage our inventory, sales, purchasing, and manufacturing processes easily. It will also allows you integrate third-party applications to produce effective solution in inventory management.

Pros:

It's a very efficient to provides features that helps businesses to manage their inventory effortlessly. The software is very easy to use and offers great features like Inventory management, Sales and purchasing, Manufacturing management, etc.

Cons:

It's little bit hard to fix problems without having support from their team. Other than this I didn't have any issue with the software.

Good place for Job reviews & queries

Comments: It has been a decent experience using Fishbowl till date.

Pros:

The feature I like best is that you can post work related queries and job reviews and get genuine responses instantly.

Cons:

It has a very basic user interface, I think they can work on making it better

Good application to know the whereabouts of any company

Comments: It was good. I used it during my job hunt process. I wanted to know some insights about a few companies and got actual information from real employees working in those companies.

Pros:

I liked the portal because everybody genuinely was asking relevant questions and people were responding to them in a professional manner. It was quite transparent.

Cons:

Faced no problem as such.The goal I had got accomplished while using the software.

Great option

Pros:

I helped set up fishbowl for one of my accounting clients for online inventory management and he loves how easy it is to use and how much it has helped him manage his online inventory. It's a great option and I will help other clients use as well.

Cons:

Haven't had an opportunity to observe cons.

Inventory Management

Comments: 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.

Fast and Easy to Use!

Pros:

Integration with our accounting software. Able to save documents to the drive for later recall. Multiple users in the system without slow down. Get ship quotes while staying in the sales order. Able to email customer estimates from sales order.

Cons:

Updates sometimes cause issues with the software and need to be addressed by customer service. Customer service is only open 8-6 mountain time. Our third party forms are easily broken when major updates are needed. This slows our processes down.

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.

FB has abled our business to grow from a home based co. to a 10,000ft fully functioning warehouse

Comments: Being able to operate above and beyond to what we used to. We can now compete with our competitors

Pros:

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.

Cons:

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.

Quality Software for Small to Mid-Size Businesses

Comments: 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.

Don't buy Fishbowl

Comments: I paid a lot of money for this software for my small and growing business. Training was expensive and took many weeks. Integrations with Quickbooks and my Sales channels were buggy and resulted in hours of extra work to edit changed sales orders and sift through garbage data sent to QB. A few months ago I uncovered a bug with how data was sent to Quickbooks that totally screwed up my books. Two different support people logged on and watched my workflow, confirmed I did everything correctly, and verified it was a program bug. A ticket was created and then....crickets. Nothing. I followed up repeatedly for weeks. For a while I got assurances that the "best people" were working on it. Eventually no one would reply to my emails, not even my account rep. They completely abandoned me so I switched to Katana which has been awesome for my needs. I've never been treated so poorly by a software company EVER. Maybe they have chosen to abandon their smaller clients in favor of bigger ones.

Pros:

At first the customer support was great. You could call and a human would answer the phone and log into your screen and help you quickly. Those days are over apparently.

Cons:

Fishbowl support has gone in the toilet. The phone menu you get for support doesn't even have an option for just solving a workflow problem or explaining an unexpected error or problem. They have the call back feature, which can take hours, if they actually call back. They promise to look into problems and then don't.

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

Comments: 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

Very tough start, but once up and running, seems much more friendly.

Pros:

Search function is amazing! Really like Fishbowl for the most part. Ordering, inventory tracking, automatic updating, etc.

Cons:

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.

STOP HERE!! Be careful!

Comments: Im warning any business here. PLEASE STOP HERE and listen to this. I’ll put the list of things that I experienced with fishbowl, after that make your decision. 1) The experience with the salesperson was very tough. The guy was very inpatient and didn’t answer my questions.
I was exhausted from work and the search for inventory software and decided eventually to go with them even though I had the red flag in here already. 2) when I started to set up my account (and of course before that too) I was explaining about the way my business operating and the fact that I’m only a service company who doesn’t charge my client taxes (like many home service companies in California) but paying the taxes to the distributor as am the last materials purchaser, but they didn’t really listen to me.
After realized that when RECEIVING I can’t add sales tax I was asking fro solution.
It was few days before the end of my 30 days refund. 3) Here everything started, I told Fishbowl that the software will not work for me and from this moment they ignored my messages, my calls, my email. As soon as something happen guys you won’t hear from them. Tip:
- DON’T use them
- you have other alternatives like Inflow & Finale which are way better and cheaper.
If YES:
- ask for at least 120 days for refund. make sure you read the contract many times and ask for changes before you and them are signing for it.
It will take you a while to set up the software.
120 DAYS MUST.

Pros:

The app is looking ok and easy to use, actually the only good thing I found and it took me a while to think about something.

Cons:

- Software looks from the 90’s - CUSTOMER SERVICE IS DANGEROUS to this country. We all need to make sure companies like that are not existing in AMERICA. - software is really hard to use - not enough barcode sizes - the set up guys are very unprofessional and doesn’t think out of the box - the software is very square and can’t be customized AT ALL. - TOO EXPENSIVE - they really don’t care about their clients. But really. You can’t even imagine.

Needed Database tech support for failing upgrade

Comments: 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.

In the knick of time!

Comments: 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!

Pros:

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.

Cons:

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.

Results of Request for Customized Pick Ticket Report

Comments: 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.

Top Notch Support

Comments: Our company has used FB for many years now and rely heavy on its capabilities to run our business. From a support standpoint I rate it A+

Pros:

Fishbowl is a simple but robust solution and meets our requirements from order entry and order fulfillment at our Headquarters and manufacturing facilities. It integrates with Salesforce via a API and is continually improving. The Fishbowl Plug-in team specifically Jacobi Sardoni is great to work with as they focus on the problem, help you resolve it and educate you on the way. Over all very professional in their efforts. Thank you!

Cons:

From a sales perspective, the Salesforce API was initially limited but has gone through some major revisions to become a more robust API we can trust. Their are still some features that need to be improved relative to fulfillment.

Using Fishbowl for a year

Comments: 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 :)

Pros:

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

Cons:

I haven't found anything yet!

Daily Fishbowl User

Comments: The best thing about Fishbowl is the Customer Service! Everyone is so knowledgeable and helpful.
I can usually get a response from someone within the hour. The Reps I have worked with will keep digging until we figure out the situation. They have been instrumental in my successfully implementing Fishbowl.

Pros:

I really like the Icons and the separate modules. Our company outsources manufacturing and also uses Consignment options. I use the manufacturing order to follow the product through the process and land costs. This has been very helpful when figuring COGS. I like the options for transfer orders to move the product between warehouses. There are many ways to pull reports, to track data as well. I have not had to create custom reports because of all the choices offered by Fishbowl.

Cons:

This is complicated software for someone new to the manufacturing process. You have to be very careful not to complete a process until you are sure everything is correct. There are times that you cannot delete or void once you have completed/Fulfilled a process.