Likelihood to Recommend Brightpearl is very well suited for small-medium companies that are growing quickly and need a way to improve their operational systems and functionality to handle increasing volume of orders. Particularly if you use multiple SKUs, sales channels, and/or warehouses, the features offered by Brightpearl are excellently well suited to handle these types of needs. I don't believe Brightpearl would be very applicable for very small companies with a small number of SKUs, as many of the features offered would be unnecessary and underutilized.
Joel Graham Customer Support and International Operations Manager
Read full review When I first started using QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise for my non-profit 7 years ago, there were some struggles, but updates they have made to the product have been great and improved a lot of the functions that were a struggle. It is super helpful for handling specific non-profit needs where the normal QuickBooks, while great, is set up for for-profit businesses. The ability to enter donations and allocate them by classes that I set up is an invaluable tool.
Read full review Pros Brightpearl tracks order changes and communications very well. It documents all activity in a feed that anyone can see, including status changes, notes made, emails sent, etc. Brightpearl makes it incredibly easy to find orders fitting certain criteria through the use of statuses that you can customize. For example, as a multichannel seller, we can easily create statuses for each channel that we sell from, where our orders will (oftentimes automatically) land in. We also deal often with things like back ordered items; we can also create statuses for certain brands, so that when we expect a shipment in from that company, our back order specialist can easily sort through her orders that are waiting on that shipment. Brightpearl makes it easy to take orders over the phone. Everything I need is right there on one screen; not often do I find myself needing to deviate to other tabs. The steps I take (from "new order" to finish) are straightforward and understandable, and go in steps that make sense. Read full review Detailed organization of financial information Several security measures and double check systems to ensure incorrect entries aren't made. This prevents accidental errors and protects the company from fraud. Ease of overall use Reporting can be as detailed or as general as you prefer. Each report allows you to look at the overall picture or access specific details of each aspect of the company financials. Read full review Cons Supports only a small number of marketplaces and in a limited way only. When I signed up with Brightpearl they claimed that you could list directly onto eBay from within Brightpearl but this turned out to be untrue as Brightpearl did not support eBay postage policies (eBay's semi literate way of saying shipping tables). Not only can you not list directly onto eBay, you cannot list directly from within Brightpearl to any marketplaces whatsoever. With other software you can list directly to all the marketplaces they integrate with. Brightpearl is abysmal at VAT. Brightpearl calculates VAT on Channel Islands and Canary Islands orders even though there is no Vat in either of them. So when you pay HMRC you will be paying them a bit extra unless you check all your orders which makes the software somewhat redundant. When I signed up they advertised Brightpearl as the software to automate your online selling. But it didn't really do that. A couple of years later at considerable extra cost they released an add-on app called Brightpearl Automation that does seem to deliver on automation. However other software offers that at no extra cost. Brightpearl claims that it integrates with Amazon, but this is only partially true as they have completely ignored the new marketplaces that Amazon have opened. If you list on those marketplaces you have to input the orders manually and Brightpearl will not update the stock, putting you at risk of negative feedback. Other software integrates fully with all Amazon marketplaces. Now that I am leaving it was suggested that I might benefit from read-only access so that we could easily double check things like warranty claims. They offered me a year's read-only access for £10,080 which is more than double my yearly contract for full use of the software. Now, if that isn't taking the mickey, I don't know what is!!! Read full review The software becomes "cranky" more often than I would like. A quick data scan on the server usually helps, but if I am out the staff get pretty stressed. Record Retention is not working with QuickBooks. Should there be legal action requesting records for 20 years ago the records will be there - not advisable. Upgrades are quite time consuming as I have to "touch" every computer using the software. Read full review Likelihood to Renew Brightpearl has proved to work out for our company and we have no need or intention to let it go. Rather we intend to build on what we've accomplished and it will no doubt help us scale our business and meet our ambitions.
Read full review We've been using QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions from when the business started, 11 years ago. I don't see us changing programs any time soon as it is working pretty well for us now. It would be extremely time consuming to start from scratch with a new accounting or inventory management program.
Read full review Usability Brightpearl can be a little confusing to begin with, there are a lot of options to look through and working out the intricacies takes some time depending on what you would like to be able to do on it and what your account is set up to do. It is however very thorough and once you can work your way around it most of the functions are fairly simple to use and very detailed.
Read full review I like the QuickBooks Enterprise edition so much I moved my company to it this year. I like the overall functionality of the program and I am very familiar with the user interface which makes my job easier. One of the things I dislike about the online version it is not modeled after the desktop edition and I have a hard time getting around in the program.
Read full review Reliability and Availability Brightpearl is always easily accessibly anywhere that you can find an internet source. I have checked our stock levels when we have been off site at Ham Rally's at home and on my way home or to work if needs be. That is probably one of the best features of this system.
Read full review They have always been available to meet our needs when we need it. We have had zero complaints with getting the assistance we need.
Read full review Performance Brightpearl performs very well and integrates very well with our Metapak packing and despatch system. IT also intergrates very well with Amazon and we have used Ebay although there have been complications with Ebay and stock levels. We use Ebay mostly for second hand items of which we only have one so have skipped using Brighpearl for these products.
Read full review QB is a good and reliable system. We probably should have explore the other modules rather that jump in to the conclusion that we needed a new ERP.
Read full review Support Rating Brightpearl was ALWAYS great at responding to us. Their customer service was quick and responsive. Unfortunately, the responses were often that "engineers were working on it" but nothing seemed to ever come of that. I realize that Brightpearl is a large company that a lot of businesses rely on. But when you can't hit "enter" when trying to search in the front-end POS, that type of behavior should be changed very quickly and it never was. Admittedly, small things, but those annoyances tend to ultimately affect the overall experience.
Read full review Very rare do I call the Quickbooks Enterprise Solutions support staff and I get a customer service associate quickly. On average, my wait time is near an hour, and at times even longer. After spending the first three minutes discussing my problem, they then begin to poke and prod around, sometimes the questions continue. But 80% of the time, the problem is over their head and they have to escalate the issue. The only problem is this escalation arrives usually after spending forty-five minutes poking and proding around but learning nothing. In short, my experience is rarely all that well, let alone great
Read full review In-Person Training No in house training was given.
Read full review It is a very easy system to learn, so with the help it was even easier. QB is a good solid system, but it lacks some of the complexity other systems have. with QB you need to get additional modules to get the same functionality that other systems offer standard
Read full review Online Training The online training was very helpful in the areas we were shown and was implemented very well via a Skype call and an presentation done via the internet. However it was not thorough enough for all of our needs in certain areas. More training in person on site would have been very helpful.
Read full review easy to learn system, specially with some kind of support. Just like with any other system, things get lot easier if you have guidance to lead you in your search for answers. having said that, QB is very easy to use and very easy to teach. you wont spend much time memorizing where to click.
Read full review Implementation Rating Implementation was generally perfect, but if you are coming across from Sage I personally would recommend doing this as baby steps. We tried to import our entire Sage history in one batch and that was a bad idea hence the 9/10. That was mainly our fault and nothing on Brightpearl.
Read full review If you're loading QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions onto a computer that you're going to directly log into, you should be able to do it yourself. If you are going to connect to a server through a network or remote connection, you should probably have a professional IT person set it up for you.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Initially we went with Brightpearl because it was an all in one solution.
Salesforce CRM capabilities right out of the box far surpass Brightpearl's, but there's no inventory or accounting system pre-built in. We are currently moving away from Brightpearl for both CRM and accounting functions however.
Read full review We have selected this product as it is affordoable in terms of pricing and features too. Our clients is geeting lots of benefits by using this product. By using QuickBooks desktop client also manage the information realted to financials and also get the clear picture for the future by using the accounting information from this product.
Read full review Scalability Brightpearl's ability to increase or expand its capacity and retain its performance levels to accommodate growth were acceptable but not fantastic. The program was constantly making changes which can be useful, but was also confusing & hard to keep up with since we were never updated that changes were about to be made or had been made.
Read full review It has worked for our small company in every way. We have very little issues with the software and when we have had problems, Intuit has stepped up and resolved in promptly.
Read full review Return on Investment It's really difficult to say. While everything is now in one place, we've spent a ton of time with support and figuring things out on our own. We've also had to spend a ton of money with our CPAs fixing our financials every month. However, the sales piece has streamlined our process for shipping orders out in a timely basis. Read full review Good value for the price. The initial setup was quick and easy. When properly set up and processes are followed it's decent at managing inventory which is something we had problems with. Have to have a dedicated employee to builds. Rolling up costs in multi-level BOM's is a project each time we have to review costs, it's very time consuming to manually update all assemblies. Read full review ScreenShots