QuickBooks Online offers essential accounting features, but it has limitations in managing complex inventory processes. This is where Fishbowl Inventory comes into play. Fishbowl expands upon QuickBooks’ capabilities, providing advanced inventory control, manufacturing functionality, and other essential features that businesses often require to streamline their inventory management processes.
What is QuickBooks Online?
QuickBooks Online is a popular cloud-based accounting software designed to help businesses manage their financial transactions, track income and expenses, generate reports, and perform various accounting tasks. QuickBooks provides features for invoicing, expense tracking, bank reconciliation, payroll management, and basic inventory management.
QuickBooks Online’s dashboard
What is Fishbowl?
Fishbowl Inventory is a feature-rich inventory management software designed to work seamlessly with QuickBooks Online. It offers a comprehensive set of tools that extend the inventory management capabilities of QuickBooks. Fishbowl supports critical features such as advanced inventory control, bill of materials (BOM) management, barcode scanning, landed cost calculations, and multi-location inventory transfers.
Fishbowl dashboard (Source: Fishbowl)
Understanding the QuickBooks and Fishbowl Integration
The integration between QuickBooks Online and Fishbowl Inventory is a two-way synchronization of data between the two systems. It enables seamless communication and real-time updates between financial and inventory management processes. Fishbowl acts as a robust inventory management solution, complementing the accounting features of QuickBooks Online. By integrating the two systems, businesses can achieve enhanced visibility, accuracy, and control over their inventory operations.
How Fishbowl Enhances QuickBooks’ Inventory Management Capabilities
Advanced Inventory Control
Advanced Inventory Control in Fishbowl offers several powerful features that significantly enhance inventory management and provide substantial benefits when integrated with QuickBooks Online.
- Serial Number Tracking: With Fishbowl, businesses can track inventory items using unique serial numbers. This feature enables precise tracking of individual items from purchase to sale, ensuring accurate inventory records and facilitating warranty or recall management.
- Lot Number Tracking: Fishbowl enables businesses to track inventory based on lot numbers, particularly useful for products with expiration dates or specific manufacturing details. Lot number tracking allows for better inventory rotation, quality control, and compliance management.
- Multiple Warehouse Management: Fishbowl supports managing inventory across multiple warehouse locations. This feature is especially beneficial for businesses with multiple storage facilities or distribution centers. It allows for accurate tracking of inventory levels across different locations, efficient order fulfillment, and optimized inventory allocation.
Bill of Materials and Manufacturing
With Fishbowl, you can create detailed BOMs that define the components, quantities, and instructions needed to manufacture a finished product. The BOM includes all the raw materials, subassemblies, and resources required for production. You can add different types of bill of material items, such as raw good items, repair, finished goods, or batch add items.
Add a Bill of Materials Item in Fishbowl (Source: Fishbowl)
Once the BOM is defined, Fishbowl facilitates the creation and management of work orders. Work orders are used to track the progress of manufacturing tasks, schedule operations, assign resources, and manage production timelines.
Barcode Scanning and Mobile Warehouse Management
Fishbowl supports barcode scanning, allowing businesses to accurately track inventory items throughout the warehouse. By scanning barcodes, warehouse staff can easily pick, pack, and ship orders. Barcode scanning speeds up the order fulfillment process, reduces picking errors, and enhances overall efficiency.
Meanwhile, Fishbowl’s mobile warehouse management allows warehouse personnel to access real-time inventory data from handheld devices. They can instantly view inventory levels, locations, and other relevant information, enabling better decision-making and improved inventory control.
Landed Cost Calculation
Landed cost calculation in Fishbowl helps businesses accurately determine the total cost of acquiring inventory items, including not only the purchase price but also various additional costs associated with importing or shipping the goods. This feature allows businesses to track and allocate these additional costs to individual inventory items, providing a more accurate representation of the true cost of goods sold.
Ready to Integrate QuickBooks with FishBowl?
Our expert team is ready to handle the entire integration process for you from start to finish. We’ll not only set up the integration but also provide customization options tailored to your unique business needs. If you have any questions, we are glad to answer them, and we will also provide you with a free consultation to help you decide whether QuickBooks Online and Fishbowl integration is right for you.
