Fishbowl Reviews

Pros

Fishbowl is a great asset to our company. It has been wonderful in helping us manage inventory for our warehouse and tracking errors. The customer support is always amazing. [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] our representative is one of the most helpful people. He goes above and beyond to make sure we are satisfied with the product.

Cons

Some reports cost extra, but I understand that it takes them time to write it. The turn around is usually fast.

Pros

The support & confidence of the team at fishbowl. The system is SO user friendly and high tech.

Cons

That we didn't use it sooner. We were recommended it many times but were hesitant because of the cost.

Pros

Fishbowl seems to be a comprehensive inventory management software but has some serious flaws that the company is not willing to acknowledge.

Cons

The customer support has been dismal at best. We were promised certain features during the sales process only to be told they are "still in development" once in our contract.

Pros

We can manage all of our inventory efficiently. It is much better than the system we used to use.

Cons

It would be nice if we could void a shipment. It is also a little frustrating that we can't edit a purchase order after the product has moved, eg: been committed to a sales order. Sometimes we get invoices for freight after we receive the product, and there is no way to edit the reconciliation after the product has moved. So we're forced to go in and manually re-enter each product with the new landed cost.

Pros

Absolutely amazing support for start up and look forward to going live

Cons

Nothing to mention at the moment as we're still in the start up space.

Pros

I love how hands on and easy to use the Fishbowl system is. The staff is knowledgeable and walks you step by step.

Cons

I can honestly say in the 6 months of using this software I haven't found anything I don't like.

Pros

As a basic inventory and locationing system, and for simple shipping and sales orders it works okay. Would be great for a small startup.

Cons

Complete lack of flexibility. There are a lot of workarounds that even our Onboarding expert had to use and setup for us. They do not make even the most obvious and simple improvements. You cannot update pricing from Woo to Fishbowl, and the Quickbooks integration is horrible.

Pros

Easy to use, amazing customer service with efficient and helpful assistance.

Cons

Sometimes difficult situations arise, but customer service helps walk you through those difficult situations

Pros

Knowledgeable and resourceful to solve an issue that is not everyday.

Cons

The fact I actually have to wait. When one uses FishBowl to manage their entire business and there is an issue, waiting means lost revenue.

Pros

My first impression was with the support and implementation team and they did an excellent job. After that the ease of use to get our data in and all the tools to keep our business running smoothly has been better than expected.

Cons

My only drawback so far is the interface is a bit crowded and it took me a bit to find (remember where) all the buttons were and which icon did what. I'm sure the more I use Fishbowl the less this will be an issue.

Pros

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).

Cons

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.

Alternatives Considered

GiftLogic and Trident 1

Reasons for Switching to Fishbowl

We chose Fishbowl because it the functionality and capability that they claimed to have, as well as their unique kitting feature.

Pros

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

Cons

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

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

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.

Alternatives Considered

NetSuite and SkuVault Core

Reasons for Choosing Fishbowl

To have better inventory control for eCommerce and communication between our systems

Switched From

Finale Inventory

Reasons for Switching to Fishbowl

Supposed integration with our eCommerce software that was not actually viable (which we found out after the fact)

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.

Alternatives Considered

Wherefour

Reasons for Choosing Fishbowl

It was too difficult to prepare for an audit.

Reasons for Switching to Fishbowl

Customer service and overall capabilities

Pros

It's extremely helpful to track our inventory at multiple warehouses and for planning our future inventory needs. The wide array of reports is super helpful for a growing business such as ours. It's extremely helpful for us to be able to track what's been ordered by a customer, what is left in stock, and if we have anymore stock coming in. It's truly changed the way we do our business.

Cons

It was definitely a learning curve for a lot of people on our team and some processes can be a little tricky until you fully understand exactly how it works.

Pros

Easy to use, and thorough support documentation

Cons

Cost seems high for the program when compared to other services

Alternatives Considered

Monsoon Marketplace

Reasons for Choosing Fishbowl

Built in Integrations and easier to use platform

Switched From

Denali Business

Reasons for Switching to Fishbowl

More integrations available for all of our needs

Pros

All of the pertinent information that my staff can utilize to help them be better at helping our customers.

Cons

Setting up all of the information. Although they have spreadsheets that you can fill out, it still takes a little time to gather all the information to insert it into the system like any other company.

Alternatives Considered

NetSuite and CMiC

Reasons for Switching to Fishbowl

We chose fishbowl because we felt it had everything we needed, and everything was explained to us efficiently. We also had multiple Q&A’s done with fishbowl representatives that were professional and never felt like they were just trying to sell us quickly. Also, we felt very pleased with their pricing structure.

Pros

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!

Cons

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! :)

Pros

My software implementation specialist was friendly.

Cons

I wish I would have thoroughly read these reviews before making the awful decision to give fishbowl a try. I had been in the market for this type of software for a while and had a long conversation with a fishbowl sales rep who promised me that fishbowl could do exactly what I was needing. I was hesitant, because it did not seem like this was true, but he promised me they could do a "custom build" that would address my company's specific needs. Most importantly, he assured me over and over that I could get a full refund if it turned out that the software was not a fit for my company. He promised that I would be able to go through training, implementation, and use the software for a full 30 days after the end of training to decide if it was going to work out. So I spent countless hours over the next several months in the training and implementation of the product. Throughout the training, I expressed my doubts that it would work out, but I had hopes that the "custom build" would be the solution. Training concluded, implementation began, I tried my best to make this thing work for my company, but we were approaching the money-back deadline, no custom build had been provided, and I could not see any way this software would do what I needed. So I attempted to contact my sales rep multiple times via email and phone but got no response. Miraculously, four days AFTER the deadline, I was finally able to communicate with someone who informed me that my sales rep was no longer with the company and that I had missed the deadline for a refund. So let's try that custom build now and see if that'll work. So we did, and to no one's surprise, it was still useless. I again asked for a refund at that point but was denied - "past the deadline." And all this communication was by email because they refuse to offer a phone number to actually speak with someone. So after a complete waste of $14,000 and about year of my time, I'm right back where I started, except poorer and older. I would STRONGLY advise thinking twice before entering into any relationship with fishbowl.

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

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?

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

Fishbowl works like it should and is expected to but make sure everyone who will be using it understands how it works and how things should to be set

Cons

Can't fix mistakes made once something is fulfilled
Not all feature will work for company
The reporting could be better

Pros

Fishbowl has sped up our process from ordering to sending out invoices to our customers. We used to do it by hand, and now Fishbowl automatically does it for me. It then sends it over to Quickbooks with a push of a button. It saves us so much time.

Cons

When Fishbowl goes down (doesn't happen often) it takes a long time to get help to get everything back up and running. I was recently on a phone call for 3 hours to get Fishbowl back up and running. I also wish Fishbowl could take the tracking numbers and push them over to QuickBooks. I also wish Fishbowl could use 2 or 3 email addresses instead of just 1 email. You can log more than 1 email address but not use it when sending emails or pushing over to QuickBooks. They still haven't figured out why one of my license's won't work on one of my computers. They told me after a long time I have to look into it on my end.