Fishbowl reviews

Great investment

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

Pluspunten:

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

Minpunten:

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

Great Company

Opmerkingen: Great use for us. Sometimes issues come up that can be easily resolved.

Pluspunten:

Great for a small manufacturing company.

Minpunten:

Not as robust for a large manufacture less options

Fishbowl is a scam

Opmerkingen: We paid Fishbowl $12000, for an ERP system. They never deliver anything. Our integration specialist kept charging. The service we signed for was never installed, and they refused to give us a refund. We are in the process to hire an attorney to get our money back. This company is a scam, and I dont recomend it to anyone.

Pluspunten:

Nothing, they took our money and didn't deliver any service

Minpunten:

They did deliver any service. This company is a scam

Fishbowl is AWESOME

Opmerkingen: Deciding to implement fishbowl for our company has been the best decision we have made. I am excited about all it can do and track.

Pluspunten:

Excellent onboarding and training. All the professionals I have worked with have been extremely knowledgeable and helpful.

Minpunten:

The cost per concurrent user is a little high in my opinion.

Easy to Use

Pluspunten:

Fishbowl works for our business and is easy to leanr to use.

Minpunten:

Sometimes response time can be longer being in EST time zone

Inventory module good, but other modules cumbersome to use

Opmerkingen: The inventory side is good, but the manufacturing side and the RMAs for repairs are cumbersome.

Pluspunten:

Inventory system is intuitive. Ability to assign access right to users.

Minpunten:

Manufacturing module is cumbersome Sometimes product updates disable features that were available before, such as a couple of years ago, we could be looking at a part and hit the "To Inventory" button and be able to adjust quantities. Now only those who are able to create parts have the "To Inventory" button available. I want almost everyone to be able to adjust inventory levels, but next to no one able to create parts. The "To Inventory" button should have its own permission access right.

Fishbowl Review

Opmerkingen: Overall, the system is a great tool. It does take some time to get used to navigating and understanding how to successfully fulfill each step in the operation cycle. After spending a month in the system, I am confident navigating and working in it. The system could use a new skin.

Pluspunten:

Flexibility of the platform to account for many different obstacles that can occur in operations.

Minpunten:

Navigating through the different boards in the program. There are no Tool Tips available to help the user understand what each button's function is. Also, after a user sets the what their screen preference is, the screen will default back so the next time the user goes into a specific board, they need to readjust the frame.

Good stuff

Opmerkingen: very fluid transition. The only trouble I have is when inventory finds a SN but then when I try to quick fulfill an estimate it can't find it.

Pluspunten:

It's very intuitive and not difficult to learn

Minpunten:

having to pick the parts/but that is also one of the things I like most.

Review for Fishbowl

Pluspunten:

Everything in one place and organized. also, exceptional customer service.

Minpunten:

It takes a while for the application to open.

New to Fishbowl but loving it!

Opmerkingen: So far, it is a 10! I am new to Fishbowl but have shopped lots of software before deciding to go with them. I feel I have made the right decision. The implementation has been made easy.

Pluspunten:

The Support! The people are knowledgeable, thorough, and always willing to help.

Minpunten:

I cannot find a downside to Fishbowl! So far it has been smooth sailing.

Functional but Complicated, Expensive but Unrefined, Capable but Rigid.

Opmerkingen: Overall, the Fishbowl program is decent. It is capable of doing almost all of what they claim, but the day-to-day usability is clunky and unrefined. It is as if they only stay on the development/conceptual side of things and never test their product daily. If they were to address the issues that I outlined that relate to the user experience, I would more confidently feel that this product would be more worth its large price tag. Until then, It remains difficult to recommend this product to others.

Pluspunten:

I like that this program allows your company to do a lot, as long as you know how to do it. It has also helped our company create more rigidity and procedure (Whether we wanted to or not).

Minpunten:

I do not like that we have paid over $30,000 for a program that has basic functionality issues. We experience issues with basic things like scanning products, typing in fields, synchronizing inventory with our online store, etc. Also, their kitting function is what we were originally sold on, but we have now completely stopped using the function because it has fundamental issues. They are not always detrimental, but the accumulation of these small issues results in a program that you wouldn't believe costs what it does. Quite unfortunate. Another common issue that we face is the program's habit of freezing constantly. From what I have learned from support, the program does this on purpose to protect the database from data loss, but what it results in is our Sales guys needing to restart our POS program CONSTANTLY. Literally, on almost every transaction, their "Checkout" program freezes and they need to force quit and reopen. Our purchaser has also often been in the middle of a large PO, and the program freezes, requiring a restart and loss of that whole PO. Speaking of the POS side, their "Checkout" program is not great at all. It experiences all of the aforementioned issues but is also just a program that feels like they don't work towards improving at all. On top of that, they don't even integrate with any other POS programs or companies that work for basic retail applications, so we currently don't have an alternative.

A Comprehensive Inventory Management Tool

Opmerkingen: 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.

Pluspunten:

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.

Minpunten:

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.

I truly don't know how we functioned without it

Opmerkingen: It's been great. Anytime I've had an issue, the support team has been incredibly helpful in helping me out (shoutout [sensitive content hidden]).

Pluspunten:

Fishbowl has been an absolute lifesaver as our business has grown. Our processes before were incredibly manual and analog, and therefore susceptible to a lot more human error. The time we're saving not having to manually comb through printed sales estimates to and then walk around the warehouse to see if we have the inventory on hand to fulfill it them is absolutely immeasurable. So many processes are automated which has drastically improved our accuracy and efficiency, and therefore our bottom line. If we weren't using Fishbowl, I'm certain our business would not have been able to grow at the rate it has, so I firmly believe the investment has more than paid for itself, and as far as I'm aware, we're barely even scratching the surface with its capabilities.

Minpunten:

It's software, so it's going to have its bugs now and then. Fortunately any I've noticed have been a minor inconvenience at worst; nothing has caused our data to be inaccurate in any way. Otherwise, I wish modifying reports was a little more user-friendly. If I could easily add a specific filter to a report, I could be substantially more efficient.

Extremely Frustrated and Feel Violated

Opmerkingen: 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, they claim that we are not eligible for a refund on the software because we are past the time limit for the satisfaction guarantee. Integrations, services, implementation support, and custom reports were paid for and never received. The server has been down for long time periods (days at a time), credit card systems won't integrate properly and the software crashes regularly on our machines. Rather than try to do what is right and work things through, they have opted to take a hard line on this issue with no flexibility at all. We are now currently pursuing legal action. If you are considering using their products or services I would recommend in the strongest of language possible to not do any business with this company.

Pluspunten:

It appeared to be a great product before we purchased it

Minpunten:

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.

A Very Good Manufacturing Inventory and Order Management System!

Opmerkingen: The service has been very good! Overall it is a very good great option for manufacturers as well as distributors!

Pluspunten:

It handles sales order entry well throughout the manufacturing and shipping process. It also handles the purchasing of parts from different vendors extremely well. The Bill of Materials handles multiple levels of assemblies within assemblies very well.

Minpunten:

It has a lot of good pricing rules for all kinds of occasions. But it lacks last cost pricing for manufactured products.

Software that's 70% complete

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

Pluspunten:

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

Minpunten:

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

3PL - Great for Small Businesses

Opmerkingen: At first it took some time getting used to as my company used a far simpler version of FishBowl. However, after using this system, it only took a week or so to get used to the functionality. But, there’s always something new to learn as FishBowl has so many feautures that we haven’t come across. It’s a great WMS to use for smaller businesses such as ourselves.

Pluspunten:

I love having the sales order summary for end of month reports. It can be easily reviewed as the sales order numbers can be clicked and it brings you to that specific sales order to be easily reviewed.

Minpunten:

I don’t like how the sales orders and pick reports do not show the total quantity of the units or cartons being picked. That would help greatly.

Fishbowl Inventory Review

Pluspunten:

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

Minpunten:

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.

Review after 7 years

Opmerkingen: Overall has been good, as long as willing to spend significant time learning thier system without any help

Pluspunten:

Migration to SQL database allowing integration with other systems.

Minpunten:

After selling to a larger company, support is almost non existant, if your small thet dont seem to care. Have tried to book many support sessions and never any availability unless you want to wait 2+ months. Good luck getting them on the phone, the chat works and will waste an entire day trying to explain any issues

With the amount of time I've spent trying to get it to work, I might actually have been able to program better.

Opmerkingen: My experience has been pretty garbage, overall, to be completely honest. As a system, it works okay. Many, many aspects, such as the import/export function, are some of the worst examples of programming/knowledge I have seen in decades.

Pluspunten:

It does 85% of what it should. Its functions are organized very well, looking past its archaic functions.

Minpunten:

Bugs, bugs, bugs. But most of all - Never getting resolution to deep technical issues. Surface-level issues of data entry are clearly support's bread and butter, but anything beyond that is guided out to a pasture to die of old age instead of being addressed.

We totally regret the purchase!

Pluspunten:

The Part & Product feature works fine. The Calendar function is good. This guy (can't say his name) was the ONLY PERSON that should not take the blame for a bad customer support. He was excellent and I am very thankful to him!

Minpunten:

Everything, or pretty much everything. Customer service is TERRIBLE, really, I am not exaggerating, it is the W O R S T P A I D customer service I've ever seen, looks like that they are your customer instead. Glitches, you will find MANY glitches! After 7 months using it and having issues with my inventory quantities day after day, month after month, I came across to a discrepancy in my inventory numbers that I was sure that wasn't a human error, got (miracle) on hold with their support team and what happened? "This is a glitch in your database that we can't solve, what YOU(yes, we, the customers) will have to do is to start a NEW database, from ZERO" And guess what? "Oh, by the way, you CAN'T import SO's that were already fulfilled/shipped(that means that we LOST our HISTORY of everything that we sold from the past 7 MONTHS!)" Do you think they helped me to import data to the new DB? No they did not, they simply stated that this is unlawful and they would not be helping me on the process. Plus, but not least, you CAN'T, as well, import fulfilled PO's, meaning that you also loses the history of your purchases! (like, dude, seriously?) Everything above is part of my recent issues, pretty much all that had happened around 09-01-2016 - 09-15-2016 _____________________________________________________________________________________________ Let's talk about scanning (yes we also did the mistake of purchasing the scanner and Fishbowl GO). Mind you that I am not even going to talk about the promises that were made in terms of fulfilling our needs and stuff, so you can assume that everything I am concerned about, it's just because we've spoke about it before purchasing it. Scanning(Fishbowl GO) is SIMPLE, that's the word. If you need to scan order's(doesn't a matter if it's a SO or PO) by boxes, FORGET ABOUT IT, the system will bring over the total amount of pieces/boxes that you are supposed to receive right after the first scanned bar code. What I want to say with that is that you ARE NOT ABLE to scan orders by boxes, having the sum of everything at the end, and THEN matching with the order. Police actions Pretty much everything in the system can be changed, when comes to dates, memos, SO's, PO's, etc. But Fishbowl won't hold a tracking of who has changed it, it simply won't. That's a big deal for us, and I believe for the majority as well. UOM - Conversions Be careful when setting UOM's and Conversions, this can REALLY screw up with your inventory! Training DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND TAKE NOTES ABOUT THAT - IT'S REALLY IMPORTANT! They will usually provide you with a 12h (the basic package) support, which will be also used to train you. Along the way with Fishbowl, pieces of information were given to me in a monthly basis. Meaning that I did not have someone that would come to me, study our needs deeply and work with it. Instead, I had to "play with it(as per what they told me to do)" and find errors, problems, situations where I'd need support with, in order to get an answer. YOU MUST KNOW exactly what you need, you must let them know it, and you must BOTHER them in order to get information. They will simply careless if you have a big issue. It took me about 6 months to fully (if I really do understand it) understand the software, and it was VERY painful. I don't even remember how many times I took the blame for errors that I came to realize that weren't my fault, but fishbowl's lack of information (or misleading information). I would not be writing all that if I was even a bit happy with the purchase, my life has been a nightmare since we bought it, mind you it was 7 months ago. The software isn't that bad, Fishbowl's consultants are the problem, or it's company's culture. Do yourself another favor, look trough all the bad reviews in here, it's very easy to manipulate good reviews, but the bad ones you cant. Make sure you have everything explained, and PLEASE, use the 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE to dig into the software, even if you have to create fake SO's and PO's to test it, even if you have to spend 8h/day during the whole month working on it, but DO IT, I assure you that it will help A LOT to really find out if that works or not for your company. I hope that you understand that this is a review of a very, very, VERY disappointed customer, and that in any situation I'd dispose myself to screw a company like that if I wasn't right. I hope you read it all and wish you better luck than what we had! :)

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

Opmerkingen: 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.

Pluspunten:

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.

Minpunten:

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

Absolute Ripoff

Opmerkingen: Ignore any of the positive reviews they are clearly lies placed by the company. Notice how only the negative reviews mention any specifics. If you can adopt this software to fit your business needs, you will quickly find it is not a scalable solution whatsoever. The software allows for minimal to zero customization and requires to follow every step of their preset workflows. The product is essentially an open-source, i.e. free, database packaged with a one size fits all schema and a slow and clunky front-end. They include an open-source reporting platform (iReports) and market it as having fully customizable reporting. Yet they do not support this free reporting platform and barely support getting it connected if you're patient and don't mind waiting up to a week for answers. They also sale a completely impractical mobile interface that will quickly make anyone prefer to run over to a computer before trying to navigate their handheld device software. It could NEVER be used by someone operating a forklift. This product is a complete RIPOFF targeting a great group of suckers, i.e. businesses without the financial or technical acumen to move beyond the world of QuickBooks. Before you spend $50,000 on a bad, bad, solution think about return on investment and whether your business plas to grow. Then find one of the many scalable ERP systems that can be implemented for the same price, even if it takes a little longer to get setup. Better to get by with spreadsheets for 6 months and have a real solution down the road then waste time and resources in solution that if you're lucky enough to get to work, you will outgrow in a year. THIS SOFTWARE SUCKS A !!

Pluspunten:

The 2016 front end looks slick. There is an API, but it will cost you more to hire a progammer to figure out how to integrate with it than to just get better softwate that plays better.

Minpunten:

THE SUPPORT IS HIDEOUS, THE MOBILE APP IS USELESS, SALESPEOPLE ARE LIARS

STOP HERE!! Be careful!

Opmerkingen: 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.

Pluspunten:

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.

Minpunten:

- 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.

Not Recommended - Please Read

Opmerkingen: 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."

Pluspunten:

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.

Minpunten:

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.