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BrightPearl - a small-business back office that could use a bit of polish
March 28, 2016

BrightPearl - a small-business back office that could use a bit of polish

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Brightpearl

Pay the money to get this set up correctly, with your accountant /bookkeeper and a BrightPearl expert. If there's something you don't understand, ask BEFORE you implement fully; cleaning up after a poorly planned implementation is a real pain (not specific to BrightPearl). If you're working with a third-party app or integration, test thoroughly so you understand what information is being shared and in what direction.
They are generally very knowledgeable, and definitely professional and helpful. I'd say 9 or 10, but occasionally I've had more complicated issues that took longer than I'd hoped to resolve.
BrightPearl is basically the back office for a retail client. It's used to keep track of everything- product catalog, purchase orders & payments, sales orders and invoices, customer loyalty. They have multiple sales channels, so BrightPearl is used as the central repository to keep track of inventory and sales across brick-and-mortar and online presences.
  • Batch processing - import and export of product, order and customer data is intuitive and flexible. Being able to specify a 'data map' for exactly the items I need to update in a CSV file means I don't have to touch every attribute value when I only need to adjust one or two.
  • Provides a RESTFUL API, which allows script-based automation of common queries and tasks in whatever language you need.
  • Inventory management - from purchase order through fulfillment, it's easy to see what you've got, how much is allocated and how much is on order.
  • Tax calculations. BrightPearl supports both European-style VAT and US location-based systems, but it seems like the US tax calculation can be brittle
  • Managing inventory and sales of by-weight or by-volume items.
  • User interface is a little busy and not consistent. There are often too many menus - I counted 4 separate menus on the 'Settings' page alone. Sometimes the user-interface elements seem non-standard (and therefore non-intuitive): a left-side 'expanding' menu (see: Settings) that visually doesn't transition well and makes it hard to use.
  • Working in BrightPearl every day, we have a much clearer picture of how the business is working overall. It' easy to see the end-to-end - purchase order, warehouse, fulfillment & payment, and to keep track of purchases and revenue.
  • Multi-channel support is key; since the back-end was set up already for an online store, we were able to add a brick-and-mortar location with a POS much faster than if we'd gone with a turn-key traditional retail POS.
  • Using BrightPearl as the central hub also makes communications more efficient between people responsible for sales, warehouse and customer-contact.
BrightPearl was already selected and partially implemented by the time I joined the project.
Since the by-weight/ by-volume inventory is lacking, not a good match for a grocery. Product variants seem well-handled, and multiple-channel management is done well, so a clothing retailer seems a perfect match - same item in different colors and sizes, sold via eBay, online store and brick-and-mortar store (using the POS).