Fishbowl
Inventory management and manufacturing software for QuickBooks users
What it does
Fishbowl is inventory management + light manufacturing/warehouse operations built to sit on top of QuickBooks. It fills the gap between "QuickBooks alone" and "buy NetSuite." Multi-warehouse tracking, serial/lot numbers, kits/BOMs, work orders, purchase orders, sales orders, barcode scanning, and a native two-way QuickBooks Online and Desktop sync. Two product lines: Fishbowl Drive (cloud-native, simpler, mobile) and Fishbowl Advanced (traditionally on-prem, now cloud-hosted, includes Warehouse and Manufacturing modules). This is the tool small-to-mid manufacturers, distributors, and wholesalers use to stop juggling spreadsheets against QuickBooks.
Free tier
No
Starts at
$329/mo
Setup
hard
Key features
Integrates with
QuickBooks, Xero, Shopify, Amazon
Who this fits
- Small-to-mid manufacturers and distributors (5-200 employees) running QuickBooks
- Multi-warehouse ecommerce brands past the point where Shopify/Amazon inventory alone is enough
- Businesses needing serial number, lot, or expiration tracking (food, medical devices, cosmetics)
- Shops making assembled products from raw components (BOMs, work orders)
- Companies that want ownership of their data via on-prem or hybrid deployment
Who it does NOT fit
- Solo, service businesses, or anyone without physical inventory
- Very small ecommerce (Shopify + built-in inventory + a simple app is enough)
- Enterprises needing full ERP with financials, HR, CRM in one system (NetSuite, Acumatica, SAP)
- Teams comfortable in a modern cloud-only workflow (Katana, Cin7, Zoho Inventory feel newer)
Pricing
Real gotchas
- Implementation is not optional and is a real line item. Any quote without an implementation cost is incomplete (Source: PricingNow: https://pricingnow.com/question/fishbowl-inventory-cost/)
- Old sources on the internet quote perpetual-license pricing ($4,300-6,500 one-time). That model is gone as of the 2022-2023 shift to subscription. Anyone quoting that is out of date
- QuickBooks Desktop sync has always been the gold path — QuickBooks Online sync works but has more edge cases and delays
- Fishbowl Drive and Fishbowl Advanced are different products with different feature sets, not tiers of the same product. Do not pick blindly
- The interface shows its age; users switching from cloud-native tools notice
- Multi-currency and multi-entity support is limited vs a real ERP
- The published user counts are hard caps — going over triggers an upgrade
Integrations that matter
Otto’s take on this tool
Recommend Fishbowl when: business has physical inventory, is on QuickBooks, business_size is 5-200, and the pain is "our inventory is out of sync with QuickBooks / we're outgrowing spreadsheets." Highest fit for small-to-mid manufacturers, distributors, and multi-warehouse ecommerce. Do NOT recommend for service businesses, tiny ecommerce, or enterprises that need real ERP. If comparing to Katana: Katana is cloud-native, simpler, better for small D2C manufacturers; Fishbowl is deeper on warehouse ops and QB-native. If comparing to Cin7 or NetSuite: Cin7 is more ecommerce/channel-heavy; NetSuite is a full ERP jump. Always surface implementation cost in the recommendation — it is the #1 sticker shock.
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