Buddy Punch vs. Fishbowl Inventory

I think that is very convenient as far as tracking your employees when they are punching in or out to ensure they are physically at the location they are supposed to be for that shift. I also think that the option to download this app to your personal phone is amazing, it makes it more convenient to punch in or out when you aren't near a laptop or a residence to use one. The feature of being able to attach a note with your punches explaining possible late punchers or absences is very beneficial to the employee allows show proof if needed.

Fishbowl is well suited for warehouse operations because you can control, monitor, report or view the progress of materials all the way from purchasing and receiving to the shipment and tracking of products. It integrates with major carriers and with QuickBooks so it does offer a suite that can support the entire operation. It allows for workflow monitoring, so particular groups or products can be tracked.

Incentivized

• Their customer service is second to none. We have requested several changes over the years for the web interface and app; I think all the requests we've made were implemented by this point. I only wish this was the case with other companies we utilize.
• They allow you to set different pay rates based on department which allows us to pay employees more for the skilled jobs they perform versus the more basic work they perform. This is a huge benefit to a small company as it encourages employees to strive for more skilled work and they keep moving up the ladder to become even better assets to the company.
• The reports you can run are very thorough and work very well for us when it comes time to enter payroll.
• Having the ability to set alerts has allowed us to cut back on unnecessary overtime as employees can get reminders prior to going over. We can also set reminders for employees to punch in/out for the ones that have a tendency to forget.

Incentivized

• Inventory control - provides easy/accurate reports. Also, cycle counts can be done at any time. The warehouse team was easily trained.
• Sales Orders - Fishbowl allowed us to have the sales orders accessible to everyone and linked the customers' purchase order to the orders and work orders (within the system). It no longer needs to be manually linked.
• Custom reports - for a small fee we had reports customized specifically for our company.
• Link to Quickbooks - invoices generated directly after closure of sales order.

Incentivized

• Sometimes I need to check back to be sure I'm still punched in.
• The indicator between punched in and out is not very indicative of if I am or not.
• I want to total hours not just by the week but by pay periods 1-15 days, 16-end of [the] month.

Incentivized

• MRP
• BOM creation
• Unified interface

Incentivized

Originally the support for Fishbowl was very poor. It was hard to get anyone to help. In the last 12 - 14 months, it has greatly improved and if it continues this way I would certainly rate it higher.

Incentivized

We originally scheduled and ran payroll through Homebase, but in the last few months the software became very buggy, customer service was slow and when they did respond, was not helpful. When we cancelled our account they didn't even try to make things right. We are so happy that Buddy Punch is like us--taking care of their clients and really invested in their success!

Incentivized

Fishbowl is more useful than QuickBooks Manufacturing if you operate complex manufacturing with multiple multi layered BOMS

Incentivized

• Efficiency has definitely gone up switching to Buddy Punch. Ive never quantified specific hours or time lapse it has given to my personal managerial efficiency. But it has without doubt.
• I can see a better overview of the employees I need to be concerned with and not have to filter out others not concerning me.
• Ease of use has decreased mental stress and angst in maneuvering employee time cards.

Incentivized

• Positive: Decreased time spent on copy/pasting in spreadsheets.
• Positive: Easier to analyze costs and guarantee efficiency.
• Negative: Time to get it up and running is really difficult to work with.

Incentivized