Fishbowl Reviews

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.

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.

Alternatives Considered

BatchMaster ERP

Reasons for Choosing Fishbowl

ERPNext didn't fulfill our needs preparing work orders.

Switched From

ERPNext

Pros

Nothing-System setup is not even complete nor can we get assistance

Cons

While "trying" to set up our Fishbowl the service was horrible. We tried to explain certain aspects and was ultimately ignored and those were not taken into consideration. They had a script and that was that.

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.

Alternatives Considered

Sage Intacct and NetSuite

Reasons for Choosing Fishbowl

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

Reasons for Switching to Fishbowl

Price was afforable for a small company

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.

Pros

We thought it was a long term solution, NOPE !

Cons

Takes us 10 minutes to load a part inventory. Excruciatingly slow with zero answers from anyone at FB how to improve speed. They're only response is start over with a new database. Complete and utter disaster. We have used for several years and speed has steadily declined to now its almost impossible to use, is delaying ability to complete task.

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.

Pros

Controlling inventory and sales management

Cons

Creating customized reports can be cumbersome

Alternatives Considered

QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise

Reasons for Switching to Fishbowl

The ability to create complex bills of materials and maintenance of all inventory. In addition the ability to talk to Quickbooks for all billing.

Pros

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

Cons

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

Alternatives Considered

Agiliron

Reasons for Switching to Fishbowl

Agiliron support is horrible. Worst company I have ever dealt with.

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.

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.

Alternatives Considered

inFlow Inventory

Reasons for Choosing Fishbowl

Manufacturing needs were not met using InFlow.

Switched From

inFlow Inventory

Reasons for Switching to Fishbowl

Allows inventory management for manufacturing purposes.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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, read every page of their Wiki. I'm serious; it isn't that long, and the internet doesn't contain much information about Fishbowl, for reasons unknown. As you read, compare the available options VERY carefully to your list of requirements. If none of those pages tells you that you CAN do a certain thing in Fishbowl, then you CANNOT do it. Fishbowl's marketing mentions what it can do in no uncertain terms.

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 of the shortcomings that you will encounter when using Fishbowl.

Our Fishbowl server software began freezing several times each day, after upgrading from v11.7 to 12.2. "Reinstall" was FB tech support's first response. How do you suppose upper management in my company will receive that 'solution'? My next step will be to find out how to clear Java caches manually (outside of Control Panel), which I'll try before reinstalling.

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.

Pros

The user interface allows new users to become proficient quickly. The ability to incorporate bar codes and product images is helpful. It is a great substitute for the Inventory module of QuickBooks if you need to do a lot of kitting and assemblies as well as calculating landed costs for imports.

Cons

Report writing/modifying is cumbersome. End user is captive to Fishbowl or 3rd party authors. There should be more flexibility akin to Quickbooks for users to add/subtract columns of data as well as filtering by multiple criteria. Most filters are all/everything or just one Customer, Vendor, Part Number, etc. We also had to have custom reports created for some very basic inventory management reports - FB's main purpose. More end user input should have been/should be sought
EDI implementation is possible, but through 3rd party providers and automating order processing is limited.

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.

Pros

If you do simple wholesale, this is fine if you don't need their support.

Cons

1) Constantly crashing and supports wants money for bunch of error codes when doing export to Quickbook
2) Tons of data always didn't get exported and FB is no where for help
3) Can't pull accurate report on inventory valuation summary, excel export is garbage and hard to sort, can't sort valuation summary by date, and all reporting feature are just bad
4) They will ask for a lot of money when their software constantly crashes and hard to reach anyone to help
5) Very difficult to use for manufacturing such as selecting bill of material and etc.

Pros

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

Cons

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

Alternatives Considered

NetSuite

Reasons for Switching to Fishbowl

Price

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.

Pros

For a wholesale / retail business, this is a feature packed program that handles most day to day operations and is accurate. Being PC / Server based, you don't have lag time or glitches. It's a good solid program. Integration with QBO is seamless... one button updates or create a schedule. Unlike other software companies, the service package is affordable, and the support staff is top notch.

Cons

This program is great for start up and smaller businesses, but the downside is the upfront initial cost. After using Fishbowl Inventory, you will find that the benefits outweight the cost.