Third Party Logistics (3PL) Integration with Fishbowl.
A third party logistics provider (“3PL”) stocks and ships inventory for the client. Each 3PL has their own inventory management software. The purpose of the 3PL integration is to provide essentially a translation between your Fishbowl Inventory and your 3PL’s proprietary software. Often the 3PL is the only warehouse that you are using.
Sales & Shipping Integration
Our most popular 3PL integration service
Orders exist in Fishbowl from all channels. Your staff picks the orders it wants the 3PL to ship. The combination of the pick status and the assigned location group tell us which orders need to be sent to the 3PL. The integration selects these orders and converts the order data to a format compatible with the 3PL’s software (usually xml). This converted order data is then delivered, usually to an FTP site from which the 3PL downloads the orders into their system.
Once the orders are shipped the 3PL uploads the shipment and tracking information to the FTP site and our integration retrieves that data and uses it to ship the order in Fishbowl.
The integration program can be run as many times a day as is desired. The program can be set up to either run on a schedule or by clicking a desktop icon.
Purchasing Integration
We can automate this process
Most organizations choose to issue purchase orders and then manually track the 3PL’s receipts against these purchase orders in Fishbowl. However, if desired we can automate this process.
Our Purchasing Integration will pull your Fishbowl database for issued purchase orders. We will then deliver those orders to the FTP site in the appropriate format for the 3PL’s software.
When goods are received against those purchase orders the 3PL will upload the receipts to the FTP site. Our integration will retrieve the receipts and process them in your Fishbowl software.
Inventory Reconcilliation
Automatically adjust the on-hand quantities in Fishbowl to match the 3PL
We generally recommend a manual reconciliation, especially for high-value inventory items. But if you want your Fishbowl inventory to be automatically adjusted to match the 3PL’s counts, we offer integration whereby the 3PL will upload a count by part and the required tracking. The integration will then fetch this data, compare it to the balance in Fishbowl for that location group, and then generate the necessary cycle count adjustments.