Brightpearl Review

Looking for an all-in-one solution for your growing business? Then you can’t go wrong with Brightpearl. Designed for businesses that are growing fast (like $1 million fast), Brightpearl includes all the features you’d expect from inventory management plus shipping, sales orders, retail, purchasing, payments, and customer relationship management. It truly is designed to be your one and only business solution. 

Brightpearl offers two plans, based on order volume, and without any immediate pricing information. It has some fantastic features, great customer service, and integrations that allow you to connect ecommerce, shipping, and POS to your inventory management system. If you are a large enterprise-level business, Brightpearl is a great choice.

Unfortunately, it’s not a great fit for small businesses because of the order and sales requirements. If you’re a small business looking for an inventory management system to scale up with you, you’re going to want to find a different option. Otherwise, it has great features to offer and is fantastic for large businesses.

When looking at plans for Brightpearl, the big thing to consider is not price but how many of the features you need from the service. There are not any prices listed for either of the plans—instead, Brightpearl pricing is available upon request and after your business requests a quote. Unfortunately, that makes it very difficult to determine whether Brightpearl is an affordable option for business owners.  However, we can expect, based on past experience, that since you are requesting a quote, it will be too expensive for small businesses.

However, looking at it from the features side, Brightpearl Order Management Solution only allows up to 1,500 orders a month. Depending on the size of your business, that may be perfect and you won’t need any more. But since this is geared towards large businesses, you’ll be choosing the full Brightpearl system in the end.

Both plans offer some good features—along with optional features and add-ons—but you may end up with a customized plan from Brightpearl at the end of the day. The thing to remember is that Brightpearl is for merchants trading $1 million or above—or those that expect to in the next 12 months. The software is not designed for small businesses; it’s a very tailored system that works for large businesses and those undergoing huge growth. Based on its plan options, Brightpearl is not a helpful fit for most businesses.

It’s not a stretch to say Brightpearl is one of the few inventory management systems designed for large and enterprise-level businesses. In fact, as an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, it’s uniquely situated to deal with the demands of large businesses doing business on multiple sales channels around the world. Since Brightpearl works great for large businesses, that also means it’s not that great for small businesses.

When comparing Brightpearl to its competitors—some of our other top choices for inventory management software—there are two specific places where it excels: ecommerce support and ERP. With ecommerce, it’s one of the few brands that doesn’t require an integration but has built-in relationships with major ecommerce platforms like Amazon and Shopify. Also, of the Brightpearl alternatives, only two on our list are ERP systems, but Brightpearl by far works best for large and enterprise businesses.

Brightpearl is designed to make running a large company easier, and its built-for-retail systems prove that it works. With a fixed-cost contract, you can be sure you’re receiving the tools you need to grow your business.

What makes Brightpearl best for these businesses versus other inventory management systems? It’s optimized to serve larger businesses. Specifically, Brightpearl is centered around an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) model, which gives it the advantage. As an ERP system, Brightpearl manages the day-to-day processes for a business from accounting to inventory management to POS to warehousing to supply chain operations to retail. Every step of the business process goes through an ERP and the system is able to synthesize the data to help business owners make the best decisions.

Brightpearl is one of the few inventory management ERPs on the market—most ERPs, like Square and Quickbooks, are centered around finance—which gives it an advantage. It is able to bring in your inventory and monitor levels, sales, and spending to help optimize your business. Why does that make it the best for wholesale and large retailers? Those businesses need a system that can help them optimize their supply chain performance while also ensuring customers are able to pay for goods at retail locations.

Brightpearl combines all of those needs into one system, providing features and analytics that larger businesses need because there are more variables at play. With only one system, business owners can be confident that all their data is accounted for, and they don’t have to juggle different platforms. Brightpearl is the all-in-one solution.

Brightpearl offers six major categories of features with two optional categories that can be added to your plan.

These six bring Brightpearl beyond the realm of just inventory management and into fulfillment, payments, and CRM. It’s an impressive list of features, and they seem to pull it off well, bringing a lot of options to your Brightpearl account.

As an omnichannel retail software, Brightpearl is designed for you to sell products. Now, you can sell products any way you want—from B2B sales to wholesale distribution to in-store retail to ecommerce. Or all of the above.

It’s true: Brightpearl works with all of it. Designed as a retail and wholesale solution, Brightpearl can manage your orders across many sales channels. It’s actually one of the best features of Brightpearl. The basic plan starts with five sales channels—which can be customized—and you can go up to an unlimited number of channels. There are endless possibilities!

Add to that the syncing of sales across multiple platforms within Brightpearl—from accounting to reporting to shipping and more—and you’ll see how important sales channels are to Brightpearl. If you’re dealing with multiple stores and handling a large sales volume, then Brightpearl might be the right investment for you because of its sales channels and syncing alone.

The main features of Brightpearl are in inventory and order management where you have a multichannel system built for retailers and wholesalers. Automation is one of the key features here and it helps businesses process and ship orders up to 45% faster. 

But the big selling point is omnichannel order fulfillment. What that means is you’re selling products across many different sales channels—brick and mortar, ecommerce, personal website, stocked at the local Walmart, et cetera—and you are able to keep track of all the products and where they are going. This is a difficult task, and it’s the one Brightpearl is designed for. 

As a service specifically designed for retail and wholesale, you’ll only be seeing inventory management features you need. From ecommerce integrations to multichannel inventory sync (so you always know what’s in stock), you’ll be able to keep products moving. 

The other big things that are unique to Brightpearl’s multichannel system include these features:

With orders centralized in Brightpearl, you can get inventory in boxes and out the door fast—no matter where the order came from. Brightpearl keeps you updated when an order is placed, boxed, shipped, invoiced, and received. That’s because inventory, orders, warehouses, shipping, and fulfillment are all managed together, unlike other inventory management systems.

The big plus here are the multiple fulfillment options Brightpearl offers:

• Regular fulfillment
• Partial fulfillment
• Dropshipping
• Multi-location fulfillment
• Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA)

Shipping integrations also allow you to manage all of your carriers in one system and decide which one to use for different sales channels or orders. (For example, UPS and USPS may be your best pairing for Shopify, but FedEx could be working great with WooCommerce.)

Automated workflows allow you to pick, pack, and ship faster than you thought was possible. With automated dropshipping, configurable workflows, and automated order fulfillment, your product will be on the road in no time. And if you don’t have an item in stock, you can split the order and then automatically ship the backorder once you receive the item.

Overall, by combining ecommerce with inventory and order management, Brightpearl has made a system that thinks as you do. It’s going to collect sales information and make sure each item is out the door and to your customers so they keep coming back.

Since Brightpearl combines accounting, payments, and POS with your inventory management system, you’re able to see immediate financial insight. 

With retail accounting, you’re gaining insight into sales performance, profitability, and costs across each sales channel. Brightpearl also has a native real-time accounting platform (that pulls data from your inventory and sales) or you can integrate with major accounting software like QuickBooks and Xero. Without having to do any manual calculations, you reconcile bank accounts, complete monthly accounting, and have an audit trail going from purchase orders to sales.

But it gets better… A flexible purchase order system makes it easy to replenish your inventory and calculate costs. Then, once you’re ready to sell, Brightpearl Payments offers you the opportunity to process phone orders and B2B payments from a native application. You’ll get paid faster and be able to send and receive payments in an instant.

But what about doing sales with customers? There’s an integrated point of sale (POS) system for that too. Brightpearl’s POS system connects all of your in-store and online sales channels into one system so you never miss a sale. It automatically syncs your inventory and customer information so that you increase sales and elevate your customer experience. You can manage transactions and payment partners, create a loyalty program, and issue gift cards. All from your inventory management platform.

Since most inventory management systems don’t have native accounting, payments, or POS systems, it’s safe to say that Brightpearl is unique. What’s more, they don’t require you to use their system—they have integrations you apply and use with the native application. All of this comes together to help you manage your inventory across as many sales channels as you want.

Brightpearl reporting and business intelligence can help you see where your products are going and which trends you should follow. They can highlight data based on sales channels and help you make strategic decisions based on what customers are doing.

With reporting, you’ll get a full picture of what your business is up to from an inventory and sales perspective. Since it’s designed for retail, you’ll be pulling in stats from all of your sales channels and you’ll be able to make decisions for your business faster—and with all the information at your fingertips.

Although this reporting isn’t too different from other inventory management systems, the fact that Brightpearl is able to bring in so much native data (without relying on integrations) is really helpful. You’re getting a full picture of what’s selling where and who’s buying.

Every customer wants to feel special. With Brightpearl’s CRM, you can create a personalized experience for everyone. 

Brightpearl is one of the only inventory management systems with CRM included, and it can help your business a lot. The CRM will collect customer details, order history, and interactions in one place so that you can refer back to it for targeted marketing or when they order a product. Plus, customer relationship management helps you build lasting relationships—be it in a retail or wholesale environment.

CRM is a great way to step up your business, and it’s included with both Brightpearl plans.

Automations are an optional feature from Brightpearl. They are available to add, but full automation workflows are not immediately available with either plan. However, you do still get some of the basic automation features as part of inventory management, order management, and shipping and fulfillment.

But automation is a big part of Brightpearl. You can

• Process and ship orders faster
• Automate fulfillment to handle orders across multiple sales channels
• Invoice orders and verify accounting
• Tag customers for targeted marketing
• Configure your own scheduling and rules so that automations continue even when you’re off the clock

Automations even come into play with warehousing too! Automating the transfer of selected inventory—or finding warehoused inventory when processing an order—is one of the many things you can check off your to-do list.

To use optional features, you have to request they be added to your plan when customizing with Brightpearl. Unfortunately, it’s the same with warehouse management and is frustrating because those features are advertised on the website but are not immediately available.

Like automations, the same thing is, unfortunately, true for warehouse management. Although you can have multiple warehouses, configure warehouse workflows, and even plan warehouse inventory, you cannot manage a warehouse. To make it even worse, the option to add warehouse management is only available for the full Brightpearl plan—which requires at least 1,500 orders per month.

So what are you missing with these optional features? 

• Dedicated user interface for warehouse teams
• Multiple barcode support
• Shipment batching
• Scanning goods
• Agile picking
• SKU driven packing
• and more…

Although the warehouse management feature is a great plus for Brightpearl—and available in some other sections—these features are not immediately available. Businesses would have to request the addition of optional features to have access to the tools Brightpearl is advertising prominently on its website. It’s not the best, but at least you know that you can manage warehouses and automate workflows with Brightpearl.

Brightpearl does offer a lot of features to work with your business, but unfortunately not everything about the software is amazing. It excels in its growth models, features, and solutions systems, but the pricing model and optional features leave a lot to be desired.

We broke down the strengths and weaknesses of Brightpearl to help you see all sides of Brightpearl.

Brightpearl is much more than an inventory management system. It’s designed for omnichannel retailers to grow their business by increasing their sales channels and customers. One of the big ways it does that is with the 11 solutions systems that combine with inventory management to turn Brightpearl into an ERP—or Enterprise Resource Planning system: an all-in-one solution for your business. 

The eleven systems include:

• Sales Order Management
• Inventory and Demand Planning
• Shipping & Fulfillment
• Warehouse Management
• Retail Accounting
• Purchasing & Supplier Management
• Workflow Automation
• Reporting & Business Intelligence
• Payments
• CRM
• POS

What this means is that you will not outgrow Brightpearl. As an ERP system, it’s designed to flow with your business. A lot of these systems do rely on integrations to fulfill your business needs, but they cover way more ground than the typical inventory management system does.

As you take on new customers and new orders, you expand your reach with Brightpearl. You won’t need to add new software to your business or change your inventory management system as you grow; Brightpearl is ready to take on those changes because it’s designed for them. With so many features to help guide your business decisions, Brightpearl can stay with you as you grow.

Brightpearl has created its all-around ERP system by adding features and integrations. The integrations are a key part of the Brightpearl package and offer six to eight integrations included with each plan plus an additional nine optional integrations. 

Brightpearl offers a balanced integration list focusing on ecommerce, accounting, shipping, POS, and more. These integrations strengthen your business and broaden your reach to consumers.

When fulfilling orders, it’s important to have a system in place to ensure shipments are sent on time with the right items. That’s where Brightpearl’s warehouse management and fulfillment features come in handy.

Although the warehouse management features are optional, they are necessary for many large businesses dealing with a big inventory. You can use barcode scanning to track items across locations, and automated workflows will help pick and pack items to ship.

Honestly, these features are key for large businesses operating multiple sales channels with lots of sales volume. You want to know that your inventory won’t get lost and that packages can be fulfilled in a variety of ways. With Brightpearl, you don’t have to worry about any of that.

Brightpearl focuses on order volume and requires that companies they work with have a high sales volume or trade option. Immediately, that takes many small businesses out of the running, and the order volume requirement for Brightpearl plans is a huge detriment.

Focusing on order volume reduces businesses to their current size instead of where they could be in a couple of months with the right inventory management ERP system. Now, Brightpearl advertises itself as that system—the all-in-one that can elevate your business, but focusing on order volume takes many businesses out of the running.

Unfortunately, it’s only the first in a list of weaknesses that position Brightpearl as the option for large and enterprise-level businesses instead of all businesses. Brightpearl does advertise the ability to scale up plans, but without any indication of pricing, and by immediately requiring businesses to be trading at $1 million, Brightpearl shows it’s more interested in helping larger businesses rather than everyone.

There’s no way around this: companies that do not put pricing details on their website immediately get downgraded in our rankings. That’s because price transparency is hugely important to us as reviewers so we can easily pass that information on to you.

Brightpearl does not have pricing available anywhere on their website. We tried contacting them for more information too but to no avail. What this means is that we can’t tell you if Brightpearl is a good deal or comparable to other inventory management companies. 

Businesses must apply and request pricing—there are not any pricing or plan details up front. You can do that easily on their website, and they will customize plans and pricing to your business. But since there is no indication about the cost, you may lose countless hours working with Brightpearl only to find that it’s not affordable for your business.

Brightpearl has two plan options:

• Brightpearl Order Management Solution
• Brightpearl

While they may seem identical on the surface, they hide a big difference: the list of available features. Brightpearl Order Management Solution is missing over a dozen features that can help a business grow, including inventory management, shipping and fulfillment, retail accounting, payments, and POS features. The fact that certain features are only available to businesses that exceed 1,500 orders per month is disappointing. 

Add to that Brightpearl’s optional features and you’ll see the bigger issue we have with the software. In the regular Brightpearl plan, there are 40 advertised optional features, including these: 

• Bill of materials
• Some integrations
• Most inventory planning features
• Workflow automation features
• Warehouse management features

Optional features in any software hurt business owners because they require extra money for add-ons and features that are advertised as if they are part of the package. It feels like false advertising, and the cost pushes away small-business owners.

Since businesses can’t choose their plan—it’s based on order volume and then customized by the Brightpearl sales team—they may not be able to grow as fast. This puts many smaller businesses at a disadvantage and is one of the key reasons why we don’t recommend Brightpearl for small or medium-sized businesses.

If you’re looking for a great ERP and one-stop shop for your large business, then Brightpearl is an excellent choice for you. With its 11 built-in solutions systems and dedicated Brightpearl support, your company will be ready to go and tackle everything from customer data and payment to multiple sales channels and reporting. Unfortunately, its price takes small businesses totally out of the equation.

If you’re in the market, it doesn’t hurt to see what Brightpearl’s pricing would be. Overall, Brightpearl does a lot of the heavy lifting for your business and is a solid ERP inventory management software for large businesses.

If you’re still looking for the right inventory management software for your business, check out our ranking of the top options out there to help make your decision.

Yes, Brightpearl is an ERP! With its integrations and features allowing you to have access to all parts of your business, Brightpearl is focused on enterprise management from supply chains to warehousing to shipping and retail management. All of it can be organized with Brightpearl.

An ERP is a system that helps manage all aspects of your business including financials, manufacturing, supply chain, procurement, sales, and inventory management. With its POS and payment portal, shipping features and warehousing, order management, and customer relationship management (CRM), Brightpearl is a very well-rounded inventory management ERP for larger wholesale businesses.

On their website, Brightpearl lists nearly 70 companies that they work with—including fashion, home and garden, sporting goods, beauty products, and more. These companies are primarily retail and wholesale businesses that sell online. But there are more than 1,300 businesses using Brightpearl as their inventory management system since 2014!¹

Brightpearl was founded in 2008 by Chris Tanner as a way to help run sales and operations for Lush Longboards. Since then, the Bristol, UK-based company has raised over $55 million in funding to build their business.^1,2

In our review, we looked at pricing, features, customer service, integrations, usability, ecommerce, and reporting to decide our rankings for Brightpearl. While assessing the value of the software to different businesses, we compared it with other top inventory management choices to see how it stacked up. From there, we graded everything and computed the star ranking. Our review is subjective and based on how we believe these features will work with larger and wholesale businesses.

1. TechCrunch, “Enterprise Platform Brightpearl Raises $10M In Round Led By MMC Ventures,” April 29, 2014. Accessed September 7, 2021.
2. Tech.eu, “UK scale-up Brightpearl raises $33 million to help retailers run a tighter ship,” December 24, 2020. Accessed September 7, 2021.

Disclaimer

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