How Fishbowl Works with QuickBooks Financial Software

From the very first version of the product, the developers of Fishbowl Inventory have always relied on QuickBooks for all aspects of the accounting cycle other than those directly related to inventory management. The table below shows which functions of the accounting cycle you manage in Fishbowl and which you manage in QuickBooks. The table below uses QuickBooks terminology for both columns - so QuickBooks users who are considering Fishbowl Inventory can quickly understand the features in QuickBooks that they will begin to manage in Fishbowl Inventory instead. It is important to note that the list of inventory functions in Fishbowl Inventory is not all inclusive. Only the functions that are available in both Fishbowl and QuickBooks show on the table below - and you can assume the Fishbowl features to be much more robust.

 

 

 

 

What You Do in Fishbowl Inventory	What You Do in QuickBooks
Sales Orders (with sales tax if applicable)	Invoices, Customer Payments, Credit Memos and Customer Statements*
Purchase Orders	Bills, Bill Payments and Bill Credits
Estimates (Quotes and/or Work Orders)	Financial Reporting (e.g. Balance Sheet and Profit & Loss)
Inventory Items (Parts and/or Products)	Payroll (all functions) and Time Tracking
Assembly Items (Bills of Materials	Banking, Check Printing, Credit Card Purchases and Bank Reconciliation
Inventory Adjustments (Cycle Counts)	Credit Card Processing (e.g. Intuit Merchant Services)*
Inventory Tracking (e.g. quantities on hand)	Sales Tax Payments and Sales Tax Reporting
Inventory Valuation (e.g. average cost, LIFO, FIFO)	1099 and 1096 Processing
Sales Receipts (Point of Sale and/or Quick Ship with Payments)	Management Reporting for Accounting Activities Other Than Inventory
Sales Order Fulfillment Worksheet (Picking and Packing)
Shipping Manager (Shipping)
Vendor Center (Vendors) - Updates Vendor List in QB
Customer Center (Customers) - Updates Customer List in QB

 

*If you prefer, you can print invoices and receive customer payments using Fishbowl Inventory. You can also use Fishbowl as a Point of Sale program to sell products or services over the counter - including tracking payments from customers and processing credit cards. It is also possible to use Fishbowl Inventory for wholesale activities and a separate QuickBooks integrated Point of Sale application (e.g. QuickBooks Point of Sale) at the same time - with both application connected to the same QuickBooks data file. This is our recommended way to handle retail sales if retail sales are a primary, high volume activity for your company. If you sell to an occasional walk in customer or if you have consistent but very low volume walk in customers, the point of sale feature in Fishbowl Inventory is more than capable of handling that activity - including calculating the difference in price for retail and wholesale customers using the same item codes.

What is Fishbowl Inventory?

Fishbowl Inventory is a robust inventory management application designed for small businesses with advanced warehouse management.

Watch the Video

"Key Features of Fishbowl Inventory"

Presented by Joe Woodard, President - Creative Financial Software

Do You Need Fishbowl Inventory?

Typically, good candidates for Fishbowl Inventory users are small businesses that have:

• Annual Revenues of 5 Million or More

• Advanced Warehouse Management Needs Not Available in QuickBooks like Like Multi-Location Tracking, Bar Code Scanning, Serialized Inventory Tracking, and LIFO/FIFO Inventory Valuation (just to name a few)

• Manufacturers who cannot manage the manufacturing process using QuickBooks Assembly Items

• More than 20 Simultaneous Users (Including Sales Reps)

• Very Large QuickBooks Data Files with Annual File Size Growth of 500MB or more.