Fishbowl Reviews

Fishbowl is easy to use and affordable. Outstanding customer support.

There really isn't anything I don't like about Fishbowl. It's been a great software for our company.

Controlling inventory and sales management

Creating customized reports can be cumbersome

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

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.

It is powerful inventory tracking software that can be built out to your needs

It can be expensive to build out custom reporting and features with fishbowl

Ease of use. Seem to make updates from requested ideas.

They don't currently have an online version, only through hosted.

The software is basic at best. We should have done more due diligence before purchasing.

I am writing this review solely on the poor customer service we received once our initial onboarding was done. You can never get a live person when you call the company, voicemails, and emails to your account manager are never returned, and it took calling technical support and having them reach out to my account manager to get him to finally contact me. My issue is still not resolved.

Nice looking interface and very easy to use. The REST API is very easy to work with.

It would be a great feature to allow 3PL to bill their customers from Fishbowl.

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

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.

Logical progression of activity and inventory movement. System is reliable and like anything else if it is used properly, you can rely on the results for inventory verification, PO status and exporting to QuickBooks.

the reports feature needs work to better assimilate data as I find the need to get outside help to write reports that I like to see but is nice to see that it assimilates in the system

I loved that this made me look at tracking my inventory in a new way

I thought there were a lot of features I ended up not using very much

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

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

Ease of Quickbooks Online integration, ease of cost analysis

Reports are not as easy to manipulate as some programs

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.

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 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.

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?

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

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.

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.

- 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.

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.

Set up was a little time consuming. It took some effort to get everything in properly and just adapting to the new software functionality.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ease of use but especially the customer service. the employees are very knowledgeable of the product and how it should be used.

I really do not have one . If there is a problem I can always count on customer service to assist.

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.

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.

A knowledgeable support team and a WMS with many advanced features needed if an inventory management system.

Overall, all good. But, plugins could be a bit more affordable to purchase.

Simpler than many like MRP software. Fairly reasonable learning curve, good documentation and help files.
Good price points.
A progressive company that does seem to make a number of improvements regularly.
Great customer service and support.

Does not have a manufacturing scheduling system. There is no way, once an order is entered, to have cycle times of processes calculated for planning, logistics and proper coordination of multiple product paths for manufacturing.
Does not integrate with other common accounting software.
Some of the elements of the GUI could be learned easier by staff if there were some wizard guides and tutorials that one could turn on.
If you are already running Fishbowl and want to integrate with a "new to the company" compatible finance software, it is not too clear how to do and there is a lack of set-up help from the Fishbowl on this. Requires a fair amount of high technical skill to do; not too smooth.