Outgrowing your accounting software

Don’t start from scratch,

JUST add to it!

Are you reached the limit of your existing business software?

Do you like your Accounting software, but now it is just not offering enough to meet your needs?

Are you relying on Excel for complex inventory, quoting, and manufacturing situations?

Don’t start from scratch and don’t reinvent the wheel. Instead add Fishbowl Inventory alongside your Accounting package and let Fishbowl take care of all the inventory and order management, and leave your Accounting system to be exactly that, an Accounting system.

Accounting systems like Xero, QuickBooks Online, and Reckon Accounts are fantastic, but they are designed with financial control in mind and not inventory management. While they offer basic inventory tracking functions, we are constantly talking with companies that have reached the limit with these functions and still need more.

So, what are the options?

Well you could start from scratch and move to a platform that offers Accounting and Inventory management as an all inclusive package … this will set you back tens of thousands of dollars, need staff training across ALL elements of your business operations which is a huge risk, and you may end up compromising both the inventory and financial control functions with a “Jack of all trades” solution … we hear this a lot.

Or, you can continue to use the Accounting system that you already know and trust, and simply add to it with a purpose built Inventory and Manufacturing management system.

What can Fishbowl do that your accounting software cannot?

1. Manage Backorders!

That’s right, with Fishbowl you can take orders for items that are out of stock. These orders will sit in Fishbowl as a backorder, and you can use this demand to raise Purchase Orders.

Once the items arrive and are received into Fishbowl, you are able to dispatch these customer orders and convert them into Tax Invoices.

This is a huge limitation for a number of the accounting systems, and it is a highly requested feature for those looking at Fishbowl as the solution for their business.

2. Manage multiple warehouses!

What happens if you want to open a 2nd warehouse, or split your stock between a storage area and a shop front? With your Accounting system you can only see 1 stock level.

We hear often that companies have work around excel spreadsheets to know what is in each location, but this is ridden with the potential for mistakes.

Fishbowl Inventory offers an UNLIMITED number of Warehouses, and within each of those warehouses Fishbowl offers UNLIMITED number of bin locations so you can see exactly where your stock is at all times.

3. No limits for number of items!

Fishbowl Inventory offers an UNLIMITED number of items (Parts and Products), which can all be grouped by brand, or range, or by the grouping that is important to you.

4. The ability to track your items by expiry date, lot number, or serial numbers!

Fishbowl offers date driven tracking such as best before or expiry date tracking, also Batch or Lot Number, and even unique item identifiers such as Serial Number tracking.

You also have the ability to create your own type of tracking with the Fishbowl Tracking creator module. 

This allows for extremely powerful inventory tracking capabilities so that you can manage your stock turn with accuracy and efficiency.

5. Manage multi level customer pricing tiers!

Fishbowl has very powerful customer pricing levels via the “Pricing Rules” module.

With Fishbowl’s Pricing Rules, you can determine;

WHO gets the rule,

WHICH items is it applied to,

WHAT the rule is (discount, markup, mark down, margin, fixed price etc),

WHY if you want to set quantity driven price breaks, and

WHEN by using the date range field.

6. Provide full warehouse management systems!

Take your warehouse operations to the next level with Fishbowl Inventory’s powerful warehouse management systems.

Picking customer orders via the “Pick – Pack – Ship” workflow will allow for accuracy and efficiency. Go beyond simply printing a Packing Slip for your dispatch team, with Fishbowl Go you can see open orders ready to pick in the palm of your hand.

You can group multiple order together into a single pick, create pick routing to save your legs from walking further than needed, and much more to make picking more efficient and accurate.

Likewise with your manufacturing, you can reduce the handling of paper and put this information in the hands of those completing Work Orders. Fishbowl Go again eliminates double entry of the picking of raw materials, recording of tracking data, and completing product builds.

7. The Accounting platforms don’t offer Manufacturing capability!

Manufacturing is a complex process that is often unique to each business, so it is understandable why the Accounting systems don’t offer this capability.

At Fishbowl eat, sleep and breath Inventory control regardless if you are a “box in box out” type business, or an extremely complex multi staged manufacturing business. Fishbowl offers full Bill of Material, Manufacturing Order, and Work Order functions with the ability to consume items in inventory as part of a production run.  

Plus much more!

These are just a few examples of why using accounting software to run your stock based business is not the right solution. When you use Fishbowl alongside you accounting software you unlock a wealth of addition features that will truely allow your business to scale and grow.

But I also love using Excel!

Excel is a fantastic program, but it was never designed to be a business order management platform. Sure you can make Excel perform some of these tasks but often this workbook has been created and is controlled by one individual in the business. All of that knowledge is locked up with that one person, and this is a huge risk for your business.

What if that individual is you? Well you could say not a problem, actually it is a problem as you are not future proofing your business.

By centralizing your business data into a system like Fishbowl you remove this risk and future proof your business. You also ensure the accurate information is the starting point with powerful Purchasing, Receiving, and Inventory control. This is the information that is integrated with your Accounting system and removes the risk of poor data manipulation and control in Excel.

For you Excel lovers, we can create a live data feed to Excel from Fishbowl so you can still play with the accurate data to your heart’s content. Pull ACCURATE, LIVE data from Fishbowl and use this in Excel to create your reporting that you want to see, but leave the full inventory lifecycle from Purchase to Customer order, to Invoice up to Fishbowl.

CONTACT US

Contact one of our amazing Client Solutions Specialists to have a chat about your frustrations, and let us show you how Fishbowl can help your business to grow.

Fishbowl has been successfully developing and implementing inventory management software for 20 years!

1300 785 755 (AU) or 0800 785 755 (NZ) 

solutions@fishbowlinventory.com.au

www.www.fishbowlinventory.com.au