Fishbowl Inventory vs. Lightspeed Retail

The purchasing function is very good - tracking and linking parts to sales orders, shortage reports, and part summaries.

Incentivized

It is perfect for any small business looking for inventory control, Tracking purchase history, and just an all round easy to use software for retail and beyond. I would not use it if I have only a few hundred items or was a larger company that can afford to build my own POS software.

Incentivized

• Inventory Management.
• Ingredient and Recipe Management.
• Cost Control and Variation.

Incentivized

• Very very user friendly.
• Easy iPad interface that is easy to upgrade to new hardware if an iPad breaks, etc.
• On the Advanced plan the reporting is outstanding.
• Very easy to train new employees, especially younger employees raised on phones and tablets.
• We use their payments system and it's a very easy integration. I believe Stripe is their payment provider.

• Reporting: Many of the reports that are provided for free with Fishbowl are useless in the context of everyday manufacturing and production planning. Some reports provide inaccurate information. In order to use get useful and correct reports, outside developers must be paid (a new or modified report may cost anywhere from $150 to $2000)
• Customer service can be hit or miss. In our experience, a knowledgeable person is rarely available, but for the most part customer service has no idea how real manufacturing works to provide reasonable answers to fix Fishbowl shortfalls.

Incentivized

• They have not had major updates to their system in years. The inventory system is stagnant. Although their inventory system is robust, it is outdated.
• They do have 24-hour support, however, wait times are excessive and representatives have challenges understanding your issues.
• Trying to get issues resolved can take months or never at all. Management is non-existent. Trying to reach a supervisor is impossible.
• They have a culture of telling you what you want to hear but have no intentions of actually following through.
• Lightspeed is a great solution if you are a small business just getting started. But if you are intending to grow and expand, Lightspeed will become detrimental to your growth.
• The reporting/analytics is basic at best. They do offer paid options that are very expensive, but it is very robust. The basic reporting is very minimal.

Very easy to use and figure out without calling customer support which is also very responsive and helpful.

Incentivized

Originally the support for Fishbowl was very poor. It was hard to get anyone to help. In the last 12 - 14 months, it has greatly improved and if it continues this way I would certainly rate it higher.

Incentivized

I gave the rating of a 9 because ninety percent of the time when I talk to their support they're very helpful. One of the only real issues I have is there are times where the queue will be 7-9 people deep. When you have an error you don't know how to fix, sometimes this is very troubling. But overall their support is usually quick and friendly.

Incentivized

Fishbowl could be tailored to accommodate our needs and to integrate with other providers to offer the seamless work flow. Others that I investigated were much more expensive or couldn't do the tasks we were requiring. The final analysis was that Fishbowl offered a cost effective way for us to manage our business

Incentivized

We used Microsoft Retail Management System before this and this was in a whole other league of its own with features and ease of use. I really like using Macs also. They are much more reliable and longer lasting than IBM or Similar computers. The cloud based system is great also so you do not have to have another unit to store you database on

Incentivized

• Intuitive functionality
• unified dashboards
• better integration

Incentivized

• I have to spend a lot less time training my employees because Lightspeed is so easy to use!
• Keeping track of our inventory is as simple as clicking a few buttons.
• Our online sales have grown tremendously since changing to Lightspeed

Incentivized