The MRP system I wish I'd always had

Katana's awesome, full stop. I've been working with manufacturing businesses for years, and for years I've lamented Xero's relatively weak inventory management system. Two years ago I tried literally every MRP app I could find to plugin to Xero; they were all pretty bad. Along comes Katana, which maybe was around earlier but was "new to me" just this year, and ... wow. Mostly, it Just Works. The Xero integration works seamlessly for bills and sales orders, which speeds AP/AR quite a bit. 90% of the tool's value is outside of Xero though, and I now have a permanently-pinned Katana tab in my browser for tracking everything in the production flow from raw materials purchasing, to production, to sale, to reconciliation of remaining materials and product stock. It's great. Is it perfect? Not quite. They need to do some performance work, as load times are often a little sluggish. Also, it would be nice to see finer-grained automation, and better contact syncing. But overall, I'm delighted.

Pros

- It's really easy to use - Makes it easy to track materials on hand, reorder, etc - Calculates margin including labor cost - Xero integration works perfectly - Zapier integration makes it really flexible from an automation standpoint - Really lots of other stuff ... it's truly an excellent product and an outlier in a pretty clunky space.

Cons

It can be a little slow, and the contact syncing could be more robust.

Highly Recommend!

We love it. We use this app to help with our growing business. It has made it so easy to keep up with reordering and be able to manage inventory between two stores! The Katana team makes it so easy to use and offer a lot of help! Highly recommend!

Pros

Ease of Use Easy Implementation Customer Service Reorder Options

Cons

I wouldn't say this is a con- but we are really excited for the bar code scanning option they plan to roll out in 2021!

I dont understand all the great reviews

Pros

The interface is intuitive. The pricing seems okay.

Cons

This software is seriously lacking features. For all those who wrote reviews saying they love the software, I want to know what industry they work in and how they use the app. It doesnt offer very basic features. You can't bulk edit, you literally need to upload an excel sheet if you want to change several products. There are no images for your products. How does it not support images? This is basic database stuff. And currently, you can only manufacture items from one location! Who's rating this software as great?!

Very Useful

The overall experience has been excellent so far. Katana has helped us transition away from using spreadsheets to track our manufacturing operations and really professionalise our processes. It's an integral part of our everyday operations.

Pros

Katana has multiple features which have very useful in improving our manufacturing processes. The ability to create recipes for each product has been a huge help for us as we have quite a lot of raw materials in each finished product. The Shop Floor app has been brilliant for us to track production/assembly time more accurately. This has been a great help in pinpointing an accurate cost per unit.

Cons

The only aspect that hasn't met our expectations so far has been the batch tracking feature. This is an excellent feature and one that would be so helpful for us. However, we need it to work automatically with our Shopify orders and at the moment sales orders can only be attributed to particular batches if you fulfil them on the Katana dashboard. We need this to happen automatically when our Shopify orders are fulfilled.

Just what I needed

Overall I have been very pleased. I know have a solid grasp of my inventory and am informed when I need to reorder materials. This has been a real game changer for my business and has allowed us to scale our manufacturing.

Pros

Katana integrates with my Shopify Site very easily and makes bundling products on my Shopify so much easier to track. We also make candles and kits in house. Katana makes tracking inventory so much easier allowing me to know without guess or counting my materials how much of any particular object I can produce at any given time.

Cons

It would be nice if there were barcodes, but I hear feature is coming soon. It would also be nice if I sell out of an object that is apart of a bundle that it would then make the bundle unavailable on my shopify site. I believe this is also in the works.

Intuitive and well designed

Katana has been an asset to our inventory management and production planning. Previously, we were using QuickBooks desktop to manage all inventory. Katana has streamlined our production planning and made it overall more efficient. We have not yet implemented tasks and assigned employees to certain builds, but we appreciate that there is room to grow as we continue to use the system. We continue to use QuickBooks desktop as a separate operating system for accounting purposes and can easily do journal entries to input inventory quantities. We are looking forward to the multi-currency platform Katana will hopefully have soon.

Pros

It is intuitive and easy to implement. I like that you can prioritize builds so if we are short on product I can customize which particular build for it to go to.

Cons

I wish we could add materials to sales orders. Sometimes we sell different parts and it would be nice to add those to a sales order.

Brilliant System

Frees up time. Accurate stock levels. Easily see where in the manufacturing process a job is

Pros

Brilliant. Katana has transformed how we managed stock and control manufacturing. The best part is it is simple without unwanted extras that take as much time to maintain as a manual system. Katana is efficient and fast. Integrates well with Xero and Shopify. Highly recommended.

Cons

AMobile App would be brilliant but not essential

Great Software for Custom Production

We switched to this app to help manage our custom product orders. It is really great at helping us track our costs and meet our delivery standards. It connects natively to Shopify which is a big bonus and helps us pull for our orders more efficiently. It also allows us to manage multiple stores/locations easily and effectively.

Pros

The support is always helpful - they've been quick to answer and they have always been able to answer our questions. We've had this app for about 2 months now, and we are loving it. The adjustment was fairly simple and easy for staff, importing our data was easy and straight forward for setup.

Cons

Would be great if we could count inventory via barcode scanner instead of manually entering qty's and then importing.

Great Inventory Software

Knowing the real numbers of what I have in stock, what I need to order, how much it will cost me, and how much profit I will accrue is essential for making it to next year. In Katana, these figures are easy to find and keep up with. If I have a question, support is quick to respond and helpful. They are a great company to deal with!

Pros

The simple progression from Items to Buy, Make, and Stock to Sell makes it easy for me to maintain best practices in tracking my inventory. The flexibility in making stock adjustments made transitioning easy from confusions in my previous software into an ongoing accounting of what I have. Likewise, integrating with Shopify and Quicken was seamless.

Cons

A more complete inclusion of customer information from Shopify would be useful.

Smooth Operator

It has been great, highly recommend for small to medium business. Very user friendly!

Pros

Katana has made our day to day business so much more fluid and stress free. It was easy to build out the product lines, upload product sku's and flip the switch on going live. Game changer!

Cons

On the production schedule front, hoping that the software will eventually lump all the tasks together, I have multiple consumers that order the same item, each order is its own line item instead of being lumped into a group, so our production team needs to scrub the tasks before production starts as to make sure they capture each item, as to not create redunancy in work.

First Impression KATANA - perfect fit for smaller companies which do not need a complex ERP-system

For our requirements, set-up and company size the best we could find and test! We will manage inventory/warehouse with 5000+ items, handle products with ingredients & operations, edit quotes, generate sales orders and mark received orders as shipped for automated invoice generation in Quickbooks. The cloud-based concept and the reduced complexity combined with an intuitivbe operatzion makes this SW easy to install and to work with if you have a team in different geographic locatioopns (as we have). Set-up of KATANA is absolutely simple, mostl yself-explanatory and can be done by any "power-user" without need of (expensive) external ERP-consultants.

Pros

Handling of inventory, items, products, ingredients, sales orders - all this is handled in a very efficient, clear and easy to use way. Makes the difference compared to many alternative MRP-/ERP-systems. Connector to QuickBooks with automatic trigger for invoices in QB once the products are marked as shipped in KATANA. Connector to Shopify for on-line sale of spare parts. 100% helpful and open minded customer service - very helpful in helping to understand all features and finding the best workflow for specific situations.

Cons

There are some functions/features which need improvement, e.g. the customization of documents such as Quotations so every company can generate a set of individual template to serve different areas (machines, spare parts, service,..). 3-5 custom fields for Quotes/Sales Orders/Products would be helpful. Althoug KATANA is intended to be a MRP-system it would be helpful to integrate SERVICE-articles (not only MAKE or BUY articles). This would allow to add a possible service portion to a spare parts quote. Dedicated Delivery Notes (with partial shipments) would be a great feature.

Met our needs at beginning, as needs grew Katana team listened and added features

We maintain about 1500-2000 SKUS and all assemblers work at home. Some do different steps, returning work weekly and then having it distributed to the next person. Giving every MO an actual number has kept every bag of parts and supplies organized. We can track who has it, where it's at in the manufacturing process, etc. Even though we have used Katana since January, it's the last 3 months that it's really proven it's value to us. We do not use it for order fulfillment, just in-house manufacturing. But it's allowed us to prep for holiday season from July forward and stay completely organized and efficient. No more "where-did-it-go" or "how-many-have-we-prepped" frantic moments. We began the year knowing we needed a software that "fit" our company's size and our needs. Katana has proven invaluable for our company this year. We are currently doing our first complete inventory and we hope to add these numbers to Katana in 2020 and continue to improve our efficiency.

Pros

The ability to use Resources as a way to assign a specific person to each task so I can see who is working on what step of the manufacturing process and the allotted time they are provided for the task. This year we went from contract labor/paid-per-piece to employees/hourly-wage and Katana has made this a much smoother transition then it could have been. Having both "cost-per-piece" for assembly of items as well as "cost-per-minute" has given us the ability to compare former payment procedures with what to expect per hour from employees.

Cons

There are a variety of tasks that were unable to be done when we began using Katana in January 2019 but I am thrilled to say that most of them have been developed. The developers listen and are very attentive to requests, bug reports, and ideas and so despite the fact that some of the features were not available (exporting reports, importing recipes, bulk print MOs/pick lists, etc.) they have added these and the software continues to grow. The next feature I'd love to see is the ability to have a product photo attached to each product that prints out an image with the MO. Also, we have some items "on hold" (not sent to distribution center yet) and we use Resources to specify ONHOLD-BIN221 etc. to know the status of any particular SKU completed. We'd prefer not to use different locations, but rather have the ability to add a couple more "status" options. Either a misc or a custom. For now, everything on hold gets marked BLOCKED status and then the Resource is used to say it's on hold in whatever bin.

Great choice for small manufacturer

I tried several different MRPs before settling with Katana. Some were too clunky, others too expensive, complicated and elaborate. I felt a bit like Goldilocks. Katana was just right. Reasonably priced. Integrating with Quickbooks and Shopify was simple and efficient. The set up was fast. I no longer have to duplicate data entry onto multiple systems. This saves me times and I don't lose track of orders or inventory. I especially like the instant chat feature with their customer service reps. I can leave a quick message or screenshot of a problem and within a day or so, I have a response back and my problem resolved. No need to hire an expensive consultant, anyone could set up Katana and run it.

Pros

Very simple user-interface Was able to set it up quickly and efficiently Continual feature upgrades Simple integration with Shopify & QuickBooks Very responsive customer service Detailed, but not overwhelming

Cons

The upload from Excel was clunky and not helpful. It was faster to just enter in the data directly. There are features I look forward to having but that are not currently available. I know their team will be releasing them in the next year.

Best MRP/inventory manager for small business

Overall, I'm very happy with Katana. Even though I run a small business and the price is relatively high for me, it's still well worth it. Adding new orders is quick and simple, but more importantly, I can instantly see if I have all the required resources at hand. Even if I have a few dozen pending orders, their coloured chart makes it so easy to quickly see if there are any issues.

Pros

Very easy to use without cluttered interface. This was my biggest selling point when comparing Katana to other similar products. Everything is so well organised and easy to glance over, while still offering nearly everything that I need for myself. I also like that any changes in the inventory are immediately reflected in open orders. This is true for everything that I've used so far; as soon as I make a change in one area, it instantly reflects in all others as well.

Cons

I'm missing one feature, but it's more due to the specific nature of my business. It would be great if I could organize my inventory not just by total combined weight, but broken down into individual units as well. For example, if my order requires 500g of plastic in one piece, but I have two separate pieces of 250g each, Katana will show that I have enough resources, even though I can't fill my order since I need one unbroken piece. I've already got in touch with their support about this and they've said my request was put on their wish list, so I'm fairly confident it will eventually get implemented.

Most affordable MRP system for small manufacturers

Katana has been extremely responsive with receiving feedback on the product and working in product improvements based on that feedback. There have already been multiple issues I had with the product early on that they have reacted to feedback on and implemented changes. Great customer service.

Pros

I love the value. We were stuck using excel to manage our inventory for a long time because there were no affordable options until Katana came along. I am able to maintain accurate stock levels much more easily now.

Cons

There are a few minor inconveniences that are small time wasters. One example is not being able to shift/ctrl click multiple items and drag them around as a group when reorganizing priority rank of manufacturing orders. Since we have multilevel subassemblies I spend more time dragging around manufacturing orders to organize the order I want them completed in and I could save some time if I could drag items around as a group.

Perfect for where we're at right now

We chose Katana after trying out a couple different MRP's which were either overly complex, over-priced, or didn't fit our needs. We've stuck with Katana based on it's ease-of-use, intuitive design, and delivery of everything we need it to do.

Pros

It's great to be able to log in on any computer without having to install software, and it's done an amazing job of keeping our inventory tidy and up-to-date. The Purchase Order generator has also made us look very professional to our suppliers. The integration with Shopify is also a huge plus to us as it prevents us from having to manually transfer Shopify orders and automatically removes all parts from the BOM from our inventory. Highly recommended!

Cons

There aren't many, if any things we've come up against yet that Katana didn't support.

The best for small manufacturing

Pros

KatanaMRP has really helped me know what to order, and when to order it, as well as plan what comes next in manufacturing. It even lets me add time to tasks in production so I can monetarily make sure employees are being efficient enough for my company to remain profitable. Definitely recommend. I wish I would have found them sooner.

Cons

Sometimes the app logs me out and I have to put the information in twice.

Cannot recommend this app enough

Honestly has changed my life for the better. I'm no longer running out of supplies and having to do emergency orders (hello, extra shipping fees!). This keeps me organized and helps me to better my time management. I can see every open order that I need to fulfill and planning out supply orders is a breeze. I've recommended this app to every other maker I know because I am that in love with it. I'll use this app for the rest of my life because it is the best thing that's happened to my business in a long time.

Pros

This software legitimately changed the way my business runs. It keeps me accountable for the hundreds of supplies I use on a daily basis and keeps me organized in a way that no lists, or other apps, ever have.

Cons

I can honestly say nothing, this app works so seamlessly and wonderfully. Maybe the load speeds can be a little laggy, but that's mostly because I have a lot of materials I've input. Definitely not an app downfall or issue at all.

Great alternative MRP to its expensive competitors

Katana has completely solved our supply line issues and it is an amazing tool that enables you to visualize production issues and bottlenecks.

Pros

I love graphical representation and its ease of use. It took less than a week to get my company up and running. Katana has been a fantastic MRP that has been able to grow with us. They have added some important updates that have made its daily operation even easier. All things considered Katana was a great choice for my company!

Cons

Sometimes it slows in operation which is mildly annoying. This could probably be fixed with some more servers in our geographic region.

Great for small but growing handmade biz!

Pros

Just completed the free 14 day trial of Katana and have now begun a paid subscription. It took a few days and a bit of frustration to manually add all our products, ingredients, recipes, and current pending wholesale orders from outside of shopify, but having the shopify integration helped a lot. We use three different wholesale platforms (Faire, tundra & Abound), none of which offer automated third party integrations, so we knew we’d have to manually input orders and Katana serves that purpose as our centralized dashboard to see what needs to go out, when, from which platform, if we have it in stock, when we can make it, etc. In two weeks, we’ve already seen an increase in production efficiency and decrease in wholesale turnaround times now that EVERYTHING is being tracked in one place. Highly recommend Katana if you’re a maker, it’s never too early to implement automated systems in your biz!

Cons

Glitches with accurate purchase prices showing up in overall product list. Described it to customer service and they denied it being a problem. That’s the only problem I’ve encountered so far. Tbh on customer support quality.

Lifechanging

We make to order and we make to stock. We make standardized products and we also make private label custom products. Katana is the first platform I have found that supports what we do while also being affordable for a new business.

Pros

Katana delivers a lot of value. It fully covers my MRP needs while being affordable to a scaling business.

Cons

I would also like an option to dropship the products that I make for clients and I don't see a way to do that.

Katana Make Production Visible

It has been a very positive experience, putting joy in my work.

Pros

I love this software because of the ease of use and the workflow methodology. The drill down ability for stock and manufactured items are great. We have managed to get a lot more information on staff productivity through exporting complete manufacture orders data and reporting. I also love it that support is real and that I now know some of the team personally. They answer queries fast and efficiently.

Cons

All the current issues I have are in development. For example: 1. Adding landing costs to purchase order items 2. Multi Currency 3. Back Order information

Great MRP tool, some flaws but very responsive and receptive customer service and dev team

Great MRP for small manufacturers. I find that Katana saves a lot of time and makes it easy to track inventory. Saves me many "counting" trips to different locations.

Pros

Super easy to use, pricing is more clear and streamlined than when we started. Support is great; not always the quickest but 1-2 days usually gets us a thorough and well covered answer to our questions. You can send them suggestions and they will tally in to their dev schedule. Saves a lot of time and nice to be able to access it from any computer.

Cons

There currently (2020) is no option to add fixed costs to POs. This makes tracking cost of inventory a little tougher. I also cannot edit PO templates. Having these features would make cost tracking and insurance claims easier. There is also no support for contractor per unit manufacturing but a simple way to get around this would be to set contractor tasks and payment by the hour and make each unit take 1 hour to finish. This does though make it difficult to track time if you need to track how long production will take. Fortunately we have a good idea of how long something will take without the help of Katana.

Katana has made a huge improvement to our business process!

I was extremely happy to find this app after months of struggling to keep track (using a spreadsheet) of current quantity for 1.) In stock blank shirts (various colors and sizes) 2.) Ordered blanks (various colors, sizes, and suppliers) 3.) Sales of finish products (various styles, colors, sizes, and designs.) Making a Purchase Order list took way to long to complete each day. With Katana, tracking what we have and what we needed got so much easier and I was able to focus on more important business decisions. Before Katana I was over and under ordering ingredients. I would recommend this app to anyone who uses Shopify and wants to make managing inventory of raw materials, ingredients, and sales orders easier.

Pros

Improved our ability to track shared ingredients for the products we sell. Easy to know what quantity of ingredients to buy and who to buy it from. Connects to Shopify and updates automatically. Amazing customer support.

Cons

It took some time to learn the software and create ingredients for each product - but is worth while.

Helped Us Take Our Business to the Next Level

Pros

Clean interface, well organized and thought out and modern in its features. Integrates well with lots of other software I use, including Quickbooks and Shopify. Customer service is absolutely top notch, and the tutorials are very helpful.

Cons

If you have zero experience with MRPs like I did, it may take you a little while to figure everything out. But the customer service team really goes above and beyond to answer any questions and walk you through anything you're having issues with. If there was one feature I wish was available that is not currently, it's barcode scanner integration. That would make updating my inventory and adding new knives to inventory much easier.

Most Intuitive MRP Ever

Overall it's simple to setup, simple to use, and while not quite polished, does everything we need in a hugely user friendly way.

Pros

I was looking for a solution for seasonal manufacturing workers that we don't have time to get up to speed with some complex MRP - Kanata's UI is the most intuitive interface out of any MRP I was able to find. The ease of re-prioritising jobs, and the automatic stock refactoring is awesome, and the team are really, really responsive to feature ideas and issues. Seamless integrations with WooCommerce makes supplying orders to customers super easy.

Cons

It doesn't quite have everything we need, some of which I though we're quite base (Bin Locations, Supplier Product Codes, Purchase Orders that email directly to suppliers), but all of those have work arounds, and I'm assured are planned for future development.

Simple but Effective Inventory Management

We've saved countless manhours on tracking inventory. It also makes purchasing decisions a lot easier, with the ability to know at a glance how much of each product you need to buy.

Pros

PROS: - really easy to use, great interface - support is responsive, although we didn't have much need for support thanks to a very thorough and detailed knowledge base - reasonably priced compared to other inventory management systems - good integrations with Shopify, Quickbooks, etc - it made inventory tracking a lot easier for us as a manufacturer. The manhours saved on doing Excel updates to inventory would definitely cost more if you run complex operations

Cons

CONS: - Integration with Quickbooks is a little iffy if you don't login to Quickbooks beforehand - It doesn't have a multicurrency feature for purchase orders (when you buy inventory in a currency different from your main currency) - It's not easy to account for freight costs in the costs of buying raw materials - You can't work in 2 browser tabs without paying for 2 users, this can be a little frustrating

Inventory and Sales Simplified

Excellent. Everything about using Katana has been great. The team there walked me through the product and helped me set it up. They answer questions quickly and personally. The product is as-described and thoroughly game-changing for my business. There is strong value, we have much less waste and mistakes in our ordering now.

Pros

I love the deep inventory tracking and that it feels like a modern app. Inventory software is typically painful to use, and Katana is a breeze. I love that Shopify sales are automatically imported and function live with Shopify, so when you fulfil an order in Shopify it automatically fulfils it in Katana. The Quickbooks integration makes generating invoices simple. You only have to do things once when you use Katana, there's no need to fill in the same info in different services over and over. Tracking inventory in Katana in multiple locations, and being able to include the ingredients of each product in the tracking is also a plus.

Cons

When creating purchase orders, it can generate a Bill in Quickbooks. This is helpful, however I'd love to be able to create a Purchase Order in QB so that I can simply track them all.

Streamline Any Business With KATANA

The customer service is honestly the best customer service I have ever experienced. They are quick to respond, clear at explaining, very knowledgeable of the software, and great to work with. Rep even made me videos walking me through the parts of the process that were hanging me up.

Pros

The ability to streamline production, inventory and invoicing is a huge time saver and really helps with organization. I feel it is a great value for the money that you are spending and it

Cons

There is quite a bit of setup to get everything up and running and everything really functions together. This is not Katana's fault and they really have made it easy. Once everything (materials, products, production recipes) are set up, it runs like a charm.

A nessecary tool

Mainly we have had a good experience, the system is updated to try and make it fit every company model. It has helped me monitor our business and stock levels closely, you just have to make sure it is kept up to date so that it accurately reflects your current stock levels.

Pros

Helps keep track of work stock if used correctly. Updated regulary. We had an issue where there was not enough decimal places for us to input our formulas, we raised this issue and within a month it was fixed. Allows me to quickly find out a customers purchasing history and the percentage profit made per product

Cons

My only issue is that it is slightly expensive for a small company.

Katana for manufacturing

Lots of potential Katana, it a emerging system sure it doesn't have the xero integration in play atm but like my own business Katana is also growing so I like that I have partner with a operating system that going through similar growing pains as we are. if you have a manufacturing process you wish to have better control of I recommend exploring this system.

Pros

I have been operating my business using excel, xero, monday.com and email. After searching for a system that could centralise my focus I came across Katana which in essence consolidates all the previous mentioned systems into one interface which saves me a tonne of time. secondly the customer support, I have had a lengthy skype call with Hannes who is a founder of Katana where by he provided a demo session of how the software will be suitable for my business needs. I really valued to the bespoke service which ensured I got off to the right start.

Cons

The intergration to Xero is in development but this has been the most noteable con to date, that said Katana is working on this and it should be available shortly

A must for any manufacturing startup

Katana has been an absolute game changer for our cosmetics manufacturing business. Prior to this, we were using an inventory management system more suited to home crafters. It was woefully inadequate for our needs, but traditional MPR software was too complicated and expensive. Katana offers the perfect balance between powerful, seamless tracking and a user-friendly interface. It saves us hours of planning time each week and has greatly reduced errors. There's no way we'd be able to scale our quickly-growing business without this software.

Pros

Intuitive, user-friendly interface and powerful, seamless inventory tracking.

Cons

We don't like the per-user pricing model.

Katana has made my life easier

My inventory issues are now a thing of the past. Katana has made it so easy to now sync to Woocommerce, it is so easy to see exactly where my inventory issues are.

Pros

This product is so easy to us. Once it is set up, it tracks your inventory very well, and the integrations with Woocommerce and Xero are excellent add ons as well. I would recommend to anybody

Cons

The pricing is a bit on the expensive side. As it is invoiced in $US, I don't have a fixed price each month, as it is subject to currency fluctuations, because I do not live in the US.

Perfect choice for small manufacturing company

We are a starting up printing company which has been looking for a fast learning curve solution to manage our manufacturing and supply chain data. Katana turned out to be a perfect match for us.

Pros

+ Simplicity. Probably most intuitive specialized software I've used. + Price structure. Very affordable for us. + Customer support.

Cons

- Lack of some "nice to have features". But, it's another side of simplicity and affordability, right?

The software we've been searching for!

Katana makes it easy to take our manufacturing to a new level by adding structure that will end up saving time and ultimately saving money.

Pros

Easy to use, flows and clear path to implementation.

Cons

Would like to see Multi-languages and currency options.

I learned this product by using it; few hints from the online help. I decided on day one to keep it

I can now run my business without spreadsheet hell. I can actually make more product. This is not an exaggeration. I was stressed before using this software. I actually could not work out what I needed to order to satisfy our production demands.

Pros

It answers my questions easily, what purchase orders do I need to make to satisfy the orders I have coming in. What should I work on next and when will it be ready for the customer! I can see delays in deliveries and the effect on production. It manages very complex bill of materials for our vast number of products. and it does so with a user experience that is simple and easy.

Cons

Where there has been anything I didn't like about the software, I chat instantly to the development team and they listen, they come back to me with an instant work around; then in the longer term they have provided updates that fix the problem. They are an adorable bunch of people and really want to make this work for our busy little workshop.

Easy to use and helpful

Pros

It takes some time to set up and deploy, but once it's running, its super helpful! Its very easy to generate POs, update stock levels, and track sales and make orders. All the function without the bloated junk that expensive and advanced MRP systems have.

Cons

I wish there was a way to have a negative stock variant (a single product that represents a product subtraction rather than having to make a full copy of a product recipe minus that one single item). I wish there was a way to group materials without having to create a separate product for them. Each product will generate a separate make order, but sometimes Its not actually something that can be made individually, it just represents all the parts that make up an assembly. There is currently no way to make a group of materials that does not become its own product that the system thinks needs to be made as its own inventory item.

MKUltra Corporation

Invaluable to the maker+vendor. No more guessing, no more surprises when material stock runs out or inventory levels are low - Katana is the second set of eyes I didn't know I needed. Worth every minute of setup, this app has not only saved my business money and time - it has saved my business, period.

Pros

Integrates flawlessly with my Shopify store and makes managing materials and stock levels incredibly easy once everything is setup. The ability to prioritize jobs based on different criteria and rearrange them on the fly if necessary is critical for my business and Katana handles this with ease.

Cons

Setup was a chore BUT that is really more of a good thing, because there is a LOT of data that people might not take into account when initially considering software like this. If you want to use it properly, each and every little detail needs to be accounted for and when you have hundreds of SKUs like me, it can seem like a mountain. Climb it, you'll be glad you did.

Katana Review

Just the app I needed for my small business to mange the complexities of inventory and materials management. It is a no brainer for anyone looking to manage their direct to consumer manufacturing and will be my key managing fast growth. The sync between Xero, Shopify and Katana is exactly what I was after. Great support from the team too!

Pros

I was looking for software that could manage both my purchased and manufactured products with both BOM and raw material management. Katana does a great job of this with the bonus of syncing with Xero and Shopify. It is not a complex system and simple for my small business.

Cons

Katana is quite basic with what you can record for your products and materials. It would be great if there was more ability to add custom fields ( supplier SKUs, Drawing number references etc). Also some ability to customize purchase order and sales order format would be a good improvement. To be able to add a suppliers sku to a PO would be very valuable.

Amazing Software!

Pros

I love how easy it is to keep track of our inventory, and easily order more materials. It is easy to navigate and very user-friendly. You can easily see how much material you have in stock, and Katana warns you when stock is running low. Never again will I run out of what I need! Customer service is very outstanding as well, I have asked them multiple questions and they always get back quickly with a well detailed response. Love it!

Cons

Honestly cannot think of any cons about this software, I have not had any problems out of it.

Easy to use, helps tremendously with inventory management.

Inventory management, orders, sales, everything in general.

Pros

The dashboard is simple to understand and use. It makes purchases, sells, orders so much easier to manage. The team behind Katana is exceptional. They are quick to answer and always ready to help. Integration from shopify was easy.

Cons

The length of time it took to setup in the beginning because the app was lacking a unit conversion which they have since fixed.

Incredible product and support

Pros

We tried several ERP systems for our manufacturing business without a lot of luck. Katana, without question, is one of the best and more affordable options we've come across. Coupled with their incredible support, we wouldn't recommend anything else.

Cons

While they're super responsive to feature requests, Katana doesn't include an API or Hook.

Great Value for Small Manufacturing Businesses

The overall experience has been a positive one. It does well what is promised, and the support team is helpful while also listening to feedback for future improvements.

Pros

The price makes Katana most attractive. It is also intuitive to set up and use. Katana also provided helpful onboarding assistance.

Cons

The software is a bit limited with respect to features for or customization of PO's.

Katana

It's been really helpful to keep track of our production and inventory. Once was very useful to check out margins considering operation, but this info got confused at some point, so we are trying to resolve it so we can once again trust what appears on the software.

Pros

It's really easy to setup and use. It gives you just the right information about your products and the automatization of any changes you make in processes is very useful and convenient.

Cons

I've encounter a lot of bugs that are quickly fixed, but interfere with projects and daily work. The margins and costs info is a little untrustworthy and hard to read when looking for errors. The software doesn't consider quantity of people actually making the production, only hours, so if we work with extra hands is really hard to setup time lines for our weekly throughout.

Katana

Katana have changed how we look at our stock management as well as our manufacturing. A lot of the small important things were neglected in the past like wastage management. We can know give the subcontractor near accurate qty's and amounts of what was wasted on a batch. Overall visibillity of the stock as well as the manufacturing process have improved. We are very happy with the overall functionality of Katana.

Pros

The fact that Katana is always available and so easy to navigate with saves time. Our requests for new features like back order handling, serial number tracking and multi currency and warehousing some of them already implemented and some coming soon. The fact that we response fairly quickly on questions that we have submitted.

Cons

It was probably moving over from a well known package like Pastel Evolution to something not familiar to me; but the transition was seamless.

Love this platform!

I was having issues accounting for bundled products as well as tracking labor costs in real time. I have enjoyed that Katana has these capabilities. I no longer have to count thousands of products each week!

Pros

I appreciate how much this software has helped me fix my inventory issues! I also love that when I have an issue that I do not know how to resolve, I can schedule a call and get live support. [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] is awesome and extremely relatable!

Cons

I think there could be a little more development with the integration process. It would also be nice to have an onboarding specialist because it is difficult to explain the unique quirks of your business and specific issues you need help with, to a different person each time. I also think the shop floor app could use a little more functionality but I am hopeful they will be adding more features eventually.

Worth the Price

Great experience. It has made a huge impact and improvement on our production and scheduling and we are now much more efficient.

Pros

Easy to learn, easy to set up and user friendly. It is the perfect visual tool to immediately show what orders are available for production and which are not with the inventory you have on hand. Easy for shop floor workers to understand and implement. Improved shop to office communication. Makes scheduling easy and quick.

Cons

I wish it had an integrated scheduling calendar that could be personalized and blocked out according to production times per order. I also wish when you backed up it would go to the previous page and not take you back to the main sell or make page causing you to have to find where you were again. Minor improvements would make this software pretty close to perfect for us.

Great software with an amazing user interface

Pros

- User interface - Ease of use - Set up was straight forward

Cons

- Lacking a few features but they are expanding and often adding new features

Katana is great for inventory and stock adjustments!

Overall the pros definitely out weigh the cons (at least for our business) so we're very pleased.

Pros

I really like that I'm able to save my product's SOPs and can easily find them when I need to make more! It is very handy to have that feature. I also enjoy that after I have made the product, I can add the inventory through a stock adjustment. It's a very simple process that is not convoluted. Big fan!

Cons

The only thing that I don't love is when I am doing a stock adjustment I have to do the math on each item to get it to the correct total. For example: If I start the week with 35 of a specific item and throughout the week, say, 17 get purchased, when I do inventory and account for that, I have to use the calculator to figure out 35 -17 = correct total. And I have to do that math for each individual item.

Perfect for what we needed

This program has helped us in so many ways. It has already saved me money by reminding me of materials Im running low on that come from the same company I might be ordering from. It is tracking all of my different materials, which in itself is a big job. I'm really enjoying being able to see everything layed out as far as materials and time it takes and profit percentage right there so clearly.

Pros

Inventory tracking, maufacturing orders vs sales orders

Cons

The only thing I would suggest as a change would be to maybe add wholesale and retail pricing for the same product item.