EDGEBIC + Fishbowl Integration FAQ: 12 Questions Shops Ask First

These are the questions Fishbowl shops ask in the first conversation, answered without hedging: there is no certified connector, the interface is your existing exports, the operation-level routing Fishbowl lacks is built once inside EDGEBIC, and nothing you import can disturb an order already running. Each answer stands on its own, so skip to whichever one you came for.

EDGEBIC by User Solutions is a finite capacity scheduling platform that sits beside your inventory and order system. The full walkthrough is the complete Fishbowl integration guide, and the field-level detail lives in the Fishbowl to EDGEBIC mapping reference.

Is there a certified Fishbowl connector?

No, and it is a design decision rather than a gap. EDGEBIC integrates through reusable import masks that read Excel, CSV, delimited text, or a database source. You map your export's columns onto EDGEBIC's fields once and save the mask; every run after that is two clicks. The same architecture serves Fishbowl, QuickBooks, SAP, and home-grown systems identically, so there is no per-ERP connector to certify, version-match, or repair when either side upgrades. A connector is a dependency. A file is not.

Does EDGEBIC replace any part of Fishbowl?

No. Fishbowl stays the system of record for parts, inventory, purchasing, and manufacture orders. EDGEBIC reads exports, builds a finite capacity schedule against real shift hours and real machine counts, and hands dates and dispatch lists back as Excel. Inventory transactions and order entry keep running exactly as they do today. The general case for that split is in why ERP needs a scheduling add-on, and the head-to-head is on the RMDB versus Fishbowl page.

Fishbowl schedules manufacture orders already. What does EDGEBIC add?

Finite machine capacity. Fishbowl sequences orders by date and material availability, but it does not model how many identical machines a work center has or how changeover time depends on sequence. EDGEBIC places every operation against those constraints, which is what turns an availability date into a date the floor can hit. The general distinction is in finite versus infinite capacity scheduling.

Does anything get installed inside Fishbowl?

No. Nothing is installed, no schema is extended, and no interface object joins your upgrade path. The only artifacts on the Fishbowl side are the exports your team builds, which are ordinary reports run by people who already have access to run them.

Where do work centers and routings come from?

You build them once inside EDGEBIC, because Fishbowl carries parts and a rough bill of materials but not the operation-level detail scheduling needs. Work centers are entered directly or loaded from a small spreadsheet, and routings are drawn in the graphical designer or imported from a routing file, often built by extending a Fishbowl bill of materials export. After that one-time build, every manufacture order for that part reuses its routing automatically.

How long until the first real schedule?

Most shops see a first finite capacity schedule from their own data in the first working session once one routing exists, and a tuned one inside two weeks. The documented benchmark in the User Solutions lineage is the Plastilite integration: 5 days, Monday to Friday, from first export to a complete optimized schedule with dates synchronized back to the ERP. That figure belongs to that case rather than being a blanket guarantee, but the method is what repeats.

What happens when Fishbowl is upgraded?

Nothing, in almost every case. The integration reads files rather than calling an interface, so there is no connector version to track and nothing to re-certify. If an upgrade renames a column heading in an export, you re-map that column in the mask once, which takes minutes.

Our times are per lot, not per piece. Do we rebuild the routings?

No. Put a conversion factor of 0.01 on the hours column in the routing mask, and a cell of 2.5 hours per 100 pieces lands as 0.025 hours per piece. Setup minutes on the same file use 0.016667 on their own column. The factors are saved with the mask, which makes the conversion permanent and auditable through the per-run log.

Do imported orders schedule themselves?

No, and the separation is deliberate. An import changes data; the scheduler changes the plan. Newly imported orders appear as unscheduled demand and stay there until you run the scheduler. Before the run starts, a confirmation states the scope in plain numbers: how many jobs are new and how many existing jobs are being rescheduled. An import can therefore never silently rearrange a plant. The modes are covered in EDGEBIC scheduling modes explained.

Can an import disturb orders already running?

No, for two independent reasons. Every scheduled job carries a frozen snapshot of the routing it was planned with, so a routing change affects future jobs and leaves work in progress alone. And recorded work is never moved by any run: an operation with an actual start and an actual end is historical fact. On top of both, imports never schedule anything.

What if someone runs the same file twice?

Nothing bad happens, on any entity type. Master data comes back Reused (matched and left untouched) unless you explicitly enabled updates. Routing imports wipe and recreate a part's steps rather than appending, so steps never accumulate. Actuals always overwrite the days a file carries, so a double import never double-counts. The import system assumes files get re-run, because in real shops they do.

What can import never bring across?

The settings that most change what a schedule looks like, because Fishbowl has no source for them. Work center groups (machine pools re-shopped on every reschedule, with per-member efficiency factors). The sequence-dependent setup matrix that lets the optimizer sequence work to cut changeover. Operator skills and rosters. Bottleneck anchoring. Lot streaming with transfer batches. Each is configured once inside EDGEBIC and then applies to every imported order afterwards. The EDGEBIC product overview maps them.

Who runs this day to day?

The planner, in about twenty minutes each morning, without IT. Involve IT exactly once, to turn the Fishbowl exports into saved reports that land in a known folder with stable names. After that the routine is export, run the saved masks, run the scheduler, publish the dispatch lists. For the same questions answered for other platforms, the QuickBooks and Odoo FAQs follow the same shape.

Still deciding?

The fastest way to settle any of this is your own export. Pull this week's open manufacture orders and your part list, then bring them to a demo: mapping them live takes minutes, and once one routing exists you leave having watched your own shop scheduled against its own capacity.