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Fishbowl

Simplify, automate, and elevate your inventory management

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(45)

Fishbowl Reviews

Overall rating

4.2

/5

817

Rating criteria

  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend8.13/10

Reviews by rating

Pros and cons

They have done a wonderful job in taking care of us from learning to use it to just small mistakes here and there. The support is outstanding.
Fishbowl is very user friendly, has great support, and great integrations with our other systems.
Our company evaluated about half a dozen different inventory management systems for features, support, ease of operation, price, etc. Fishbowl was the hands down winner, and remains the champion.
It is very frustrating when you are in the middle of something to have to force close the program and start over. This happens to everyone in our company so it is not user error or a computer error.
We have a repetitive problem with line items coming up as 0, which causes our orders to refuse to ship. It's time-consuming to repeatedly call to get them unstuck.
Horrible Company, they use to be good now they are just completely useless.
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817 reviews

Recommended

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Annette W.

Building Materials, 11-50 employees

Used daily for 2+ years

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Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend10/10

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Fishbowl Review

Reviewed 4 years ago

I've been using Fishbowl now for a year, and it has made a big difference in business operation. Whenever I run into problems their support team is right on it to help me. Very easy to intergrate with my online store and other selling sites.

Pros

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

Cons

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

Vendor response

Thank you so much for leaving this review, Annette. We are glad to hear that Fishbowl has been a useful tool for your business.

LC
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Louis C.

Mechanical or Industrial Engineering, 11-50 employees

Used daily for 6-12 months

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Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend9/10

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Fishbowl Manufacturing Software has proven an invaluable inventory management tool for our team.

Reviewed 3 years ago

Fishbowl Management software has offered our team a complete supply chain management and physical sales tracking system in one convenient system . In this time especially , we understand that organization and efficiency are paramount to surviving let alone prospering and we are thankful to Fishbowl for helping.

Pros

Our team found both these ease of use and relative ease of integration to be among the most attractive components of Fishbowl. The variety of modules allow close monitoring of essentially every aspect of physical asset tracking . With Fishbowl we can organize warehouse parts inventory , print labels,and organize purchase orders which organizes our supply side. Fishbowl's sales side module allows for effective tracking of lead times as well as sales item forecasting so we are never behind on available inventory .

Cons

Fishbowl Manufacturing software at this time time requires the use of a server which we had to supply . In exchange for all other features , we see this as a nominal and not inconvenient requirement as at the time we were adding new computer assets. This requirement may not suit all smaller companies.

Vendor response

Thank you for taking the time to leave this review, Louis. We appreciate your business and are happy to know that your experience has been satisfactory.

MM
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Mitch M.

Sporting Goods, 11-50 employees

Used daily for less than 6 months

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  • Ease of use
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Extremely Frustrated and Feel Violated

Reviewed a year ago

We purchased inventory software from Fishbowl and then had an exceptionally difficult time implementing the software. We paid for a number of items that we have not received months later, went weeks without receiving responses from them during the implementation process, and were verbally promised things that they have walked back or denied entirely. Worst of all, because of their lack of responsiveness,...

Pros

It appeared to be a great product before we purchased it

Cons

Point of sale software is nearly un-usable. It does not support gift cards or customer accounts in any functional way. Implementation and support from the software company are beyond poor even after paying many thousands of dollars for extra support and help with implementation.

JF
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Jessi F.

Food & Beverages, 11-50 employees

Used daily for 1-2 years

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Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend7/10

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Fishbowl has been great for us as a small food manufacturer

Reviewed 2 years ago

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.

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.

BM
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Bernui M.

Pharmaceuticals, 51-200 employees

Used daily for 2+ years

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Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend10/10

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Fishbowl Inventory Review

Reviewed a year ago
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.

MS
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Monica S.

Health, Wellness and Fitness, 1-10 employees

Used daily for 2+ years

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  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support

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There are better ERP systems out there

Reviewed 3 months ago

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

GA
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George A.

Transportation/Trucking/Railroad, 1-10 employees

Used daily for 6-12 months

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Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend9/10

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Inventory Management

Reviewed a year ago

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.

Vendor response

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

CE
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Cindy E.

Automotive, 11-50 employees

Used daily for 2+ years

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Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend9/10

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Fast and Easy to Use!

Reviewed a year ago
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.

RM
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Rosa M.

Food & Beverages, 11-50 employees

Used daily for 2+ years

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Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend7/10

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Excellent Customer Service

Reviewed a year ago

The customer service Fishbowl provides has been a great experience. They understand our process and go out their way to give us the help we need.

Pros

It's user friendly and and its ability to grow with the company.

Cons

The inability to track types of changes made automaticlly.

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Tom H.

Used daily for 2+ years

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  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend8/10

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overall good experience and easy to use once you understand the logic.

Reviewed 6 years ago

Since our business depends on inventory movement of over 4,000 items, it has helped tremendously in time, effort & accuracy.

Pros

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.

Cons

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

MF
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Miriam F.

Shipbuilding, 11-50 employees

Used daily for 2+ years

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Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend10/10

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Works great for Small Manufacturer

Reviewed 4 years ago

I love the ease of analyzing each piece of our manufacturing process.

Pros

Ease of Quickbooks Online integration, ease of cost analysis

Cons

Reports are not as easy to manipulate as some programs

Vendor response

Thank you for your review, Miriam. We appreciate your business and you taking the time to give us some feedback.

CM
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Cassie M.

Warehousing, 11-50 employees

Used daily for 2+ years

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Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend10/10

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

Reviewed 6 years ago

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...

DM
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Dave M.

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  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
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This reviewer only left a rating

Reviewed 10 years ago

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...

Pros

No pros were added to this review

Cons

No cons were added to this review

TB
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Tommy B.

Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing, 1-10 employees

Used daily for 2+ years

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Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend10/10

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The Perfect Solution for Small & Large Businesses

Reviewed a year ago

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?

LA
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Leanne A.

11-50 employees

Used daily for 1-2 years

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Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend8/10

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

Reviewed 5 years ago
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...

YY
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Yosef Y.

Construction, 11-50 employees

Used daily for less than 6 months

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  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
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STOP HERE!! Be careful!

Reviewed 2 years ago

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...

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.

DD
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Dallas D.

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Not Recommended - Please Read

Reviewed 11 years ago

During the planning stage, we identified a key shortcoming in Fishbowl's capabilities, for which we devised a work-around. That was a sign of things to come, as Fishbowl's limitations have since forced us to develop cumbersome operational procedures in order to avoid abandoning our investment in the software. The alternative would have been, and still is, to invest in costly custom development. You may read and hear that Fishbowl can do things. The best response to such a claim is "Show me exactly how it's done."

Pros

About Me: 10+ years of programming, web development, database design, jack-of-all-trades IT. Fishbowl Use: 7 months total, including full implementation and continuing support, now delving into internal custom development Before you even try Fishbowl's software, make VERY detailed flowcharts of your existing and ideal processes. Then, locate and read every single page of their forums. Then,...

Cons

It is telling that one of Fishbowl's developers, Israel Lopez, co-founded a company called FishBooksPro, which provides support and custom programming services for Fishbowl and QuickBooks. Fishbowl allows you to take payment via credit card, interfacing with QuickBooks Merchant Services, but there is no way to associate a payment with an order. This example of a nearly-complete feature set is representative...

RD
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Ron D.

Logistics and Supply Chain, 1-10 employees

Used daily for 2+ years

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Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend9/10

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Fishbowl Inventory. Thank you Support

Reviewed 5 years ago

When I purchased Fishbowl there were many issues and I was very frustrated. After several attempts I met one of the CSR and can I say what a breath of fresh air he was and is. It is nice to meet someone who has your concerns on his mind when he approaches you and the way he handles matters is the way any company owner appreciates. He has been above the call of duty every time he handles my concerns. I...

Pros

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.

Cons

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

LT
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Leilani T.

Food & Beverages,

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  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend5/10

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The updates are killing me

Reviewed 7 years ago
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...

DE
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David E.

Consumer Goods, 11-50 employees

Used daily for 2+ years

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  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend10/10

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The Way Software Should Work

Reviewed 4 years ago

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.

BW
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Bo W.

Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing, 11-50 employees

Used daily for 1-2 years

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Essentially no support unless you complain to your sales rep

Reviewed 6 years ago

If you are going to charge this much for a product it should look like it was made in this century, it should have all of the modern data interchange features expected from a modern application, and support should be fantastic. We have started looking at alternatives and will NOT be renewing.

Pros

Decent product. The interface is a little dated, and some standard thing you would expect in functionality are missing or difficult to use. But, overall, it is a decent product if your goal is to have an inventory and order management system that integrates with Quickbooks.

Cons

You will get no support unless you complain. We just updated our license, paid for a year of support. Still waiting 48 hours later for a call back from support. This is normal. When you do get the support you will most likely start with the lowest level support and have to either speak to the real support people through an intermediary or have to wait another day or two for the next level of support to call you back. Repeat that process until you finally get to someone who knows what they are talking about. Support this expensive should be fantastic. Instead, I am not certain what they could do to make this any worse.

MA
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Marla A.

Used daily for 2+ years

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

Reviewed 5 years ago
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.

AR
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Verified reviewer

Public Safety, 11-50 employees

Used daily for 1-2 years

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Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend3/10

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Unstable, unreliable and inefficient

Reviewed 4 years ago

Very poor overall experience. We were sold on a promise that one year later, has yet to be delivered, and has caused a lot of damage to the company. Would not recommend this software

Pros

Part and product searchability is excellent for companies with lots of sku's POS functionality is OK, but not super.

Cons

Instability: Crashes several times a week - usually have to have a call with support at least once a week Poor accounting integration - QB integration is not as seamless as advertised. Very inefficient: Simple tasks take a long time. all the needed information on a part/product is stored in three separate tabs. For example: you cannot find, List price, cost price, and current inventory in one place....

CD
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Cindy D.

Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing,

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Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend9/10

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Great Customer Service to help navigate the software

Reviewed 8 years ago
Pros

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...

Cons

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.

CK
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Charley K.

Retail, 11-50 employees

Used daily for 2+ years

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Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend10/10

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Great Inventory Software for blending eCommerce and wholesale orders

Reviewed 7 years ago

We have used Fishbowl in our corporate warehouse for over 5 years. Fishbowl makes processing both eCommerce and wholesale orders easy and organized. It also makes purchasing inventory a breeze with in depth historical reporting and sales forecasting. I would also highly recommend investing in the Janam handheld scanner running Fishbowl mobile software; makes cycle counts hassle-free. There is a slight learning curve, but is still much easier than other inventory systems we've used in the past.

Pros

Best part of Fishbowl is their reporting. Being able to analyze past purchasing and sales reports to better forecast inventory movement is crucial and Fishbowl nails it. I also like that they have a direct import and export function to link with our eCommerce site.

Cons

The menu and navigation can seem a bit convoluted, but I'm convinced this is the case with any software boasting so much functionality.