Fishbowl (Fishbowl Inventory / Fishbowl Advanced)
| Vendor | Fishbowl (portfolio company of Diversis Capital) |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | American Fork, Utah, USA |
| Ownership | PE-owned (Diversis Capital, since December 2021) |
| Deployment | Cloud (Fishbowl Inventory); cloud-hosted or self-managed (Fishbowl Advanced) |
| Target market | QuickBooks-based small and midsize manufacturers, distributors, and e-commerce sellers |
| Industries | Light manufacturing, wholesale distribution, e-commerce, warehousing |
| Pricing | Fishbowl Inventory $229-$729 per month billed annually; Fishbowl Advanced from $595 (Warehouse) / $675 (Manufacturing) per month (vendor website, August 2026) |
| Website | fishbowlinventory.com |
Overview
Fishbowl is inventory, warehouse, and manufacturing software built around QuickBooks. Since 2001 it has been the most widely used inventory extension for QuickBooks in the US market, and the division of labor has never really changed: QuickBooks keeps the books, Fishbowl runs parts, stock, and production. For thousands of small US manufacturers and distributors that pairing works as a de facto ERP, without the cost and disruption of a full suite implementation.
The company behind it
Headquarters sit in American Fork, Utah. Since December 2021 the business has belonged to Diversis Capital, a Los Angeles private equity firm, and the product naming has moved more than once under that ownership. What used to be the classic client-server product is sold today as Fishbowl Advanced, in Manufacturing and Warehouse editions, either cloud-hosted or self-managed. The newer cloud-native line goes to market as Fishbowl Inventory; an earlier cloud name, Fishbowl Drive, has disappeared from the website. In 2026 the vendor added a cloud-based AI operations platform including the Juno assistant and Fishbowl AI Insights. Customer count is reported at more than 6,000.
Core functionality
- Inventory: multi-location stock, lot and serial tracking, barcoding, cycle counts
- Warehouse management covering receiving, picking, packing, and shipping
- Manufacturing with bills of materials, work orders, and MRP-style material planning
- Commerce Suite for e-commerce channel and marketplace connections
- Deep two-way sync with QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, and Xero
That last item is the load-bearing one. Everything above it depends on the accounting connection holding up under real transaction volume.
Best-fit companies
Picture a QuickBooks-based small or midsize business with physical inventory: a light manufacturer, a wholesale distributor, an e-commerce seller shipping from its own shelves. Fishbowl positions itself openly as the step before a traditional ERP. Operational control improves, and the accounting platform the bookkeeper and the CPA already know stays exactly where it is.
How it is sold
Fishbowl Inventory runs in the cloud. Fishbowl Advanced ships cloud-hosted, with a self-managed option for teams that want to keep the infrastructure in house. Prices are published on the vendor website (as of August 2026): Fishbowl Inventory at $229 (Essentials), $429 (Growth), or $729 (Scale) per month billed annually, and Fishbowl Advanced from $595 per month for the Warehouse edition and $675 for Manufacturing. Published list pricing is rare in this market and makes early budgeting considerably easier.
Our take
The promise is narrow, and that is the strength: Fishbowl upgrades QuickBooks into an operations platform instead of replacing it, which keeps total cost and change management far below a classic ERP project. Buy it if QuickBooks still fits your accounting but the warehouse and the shop floor have outgrown spreadsheets. Do not buy it as an ERP system, because it is not one: there is no native general ledger, and the QuickBooks integration is a single point of failure that belongs in the evaluation with realistic data volumes, not in the go-live plan. Companies whose finance requirements have already outgrown QuickBooks should skip the detour and look at real suites, since Fishbowl postpones that migration without removing it. One practical caution while shortlisting: the repeated renaming under private equity ownership makes older reviews unreliable, so confirm whether a quote covers Advanced or the cloud-native Inventory line, because maturity and feature depth differ between them.
What the Fishbowl (Fishbowl Inventory / Fishbowl Advanced) website looks like
Current view of the vendor homepage, captured by our editorial team.
