Fishbowl Inventory 4.0 Enhancements

Fishbowl Inventory has recently added several new enhancements into their software that continue to make it a great QuickBooks add-on for inventory.

One enhancement that the Sleeter Group recommended was to change how they transfer information into QuickBooks. Previously, Fishbowl Inventory posted journal entries in QuickBooks for every inventory change made.. This did not help clients whose QuickBooks databases were reaching a critical size and beginning to experience performance issues. Fishbowl Inventory 4.0 addresses this issue, sending journal entry totals so that QuickBooks database sizes don’t get out of control.

Other improvements found in the new version of 4.0 are to benefit manufacturers. Some of the enhancements include an Auto Work Order Wizard. This feature helps manufacturers plan for how many finished good products they need to manufacture at any given time. It is based on reorder points and order up to levels (minimums. and maximums). Fishbowl already automatically determines what these levels should be and reorders parts based on this, but now this same process is carried over to the manufacturing arm of the company to determine the optimal quantities to build.

The ability to do staging is also a new addition to Fishbowl. Now users can define an infinite amount of manufacturing stages the build process requires. This could include outsourcing and an infinite amount of sub-assemblies. Another advance in the system is that as soon as a finished good is started, Fishbowl automatically determines if the sub-assemblies are in stock. If they aren’t, it asks if you want to create them for the finished good.

For example if you were building a bicycle, and you had two sub-assemblies, a brake assembly and the pedal assembly, the program would determine if you had those in stock. If you didn’t it would ask you if you wanted to create work orders for them. If you chose to do so, it would keep the association of the work orders together, and you could even see the current stages of those on a report.

Another new feature of version 4.0 includes the ability to create work orders for item disassembly and for repairs. This solidifies Fishbowls position in the remanufacture market. Examples would be form companies in the medical equipment and cell phone refurbishing fields.

Fishbowl has also simplified the way people receive inventory. It used to be that inventory could only be received line by line off of the purchase order. Now you can receive everything off of a Purchase order at once.

Fishbowl is continuing to ramp up there enhancements based on customer feedback. They have two more major releases coming out this year alone. Each one promises as many new innovations as we’ve seen in release 4.0. For more information on Fishbowl, go to http://www.fishbowlinventory.com, or call 1-800-774-7085, ext 2.