Katana Cloud Inventory

The MRP system I wish I'd always had

Comments: 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.

Alternatives Considered: MRPeasy, NetSuite and Zoho Inventory

Reasons for Switching to Katana Cloud Inventory: It's easier to use, it's priced right, and it gives you what you need without a bunch of stuff you don't. Perfectly tailored for SMB/SME manufacturers.

Intuitive, Fast To Implement, and Beautifully Designed

Pros:

The user interface is clean and very intuitive, requiring essentially no time to learn. Some of the other MRP solutions we tried were difficult to navigate and use, and training on them would have been labor intensive and costly. Katana is beautifully designed, and the batch-tracking and inventory management is easy to adapt to our business (MRPeasy/ERPAG were very clearly not designed with food manufacturing in mind, so making them even remotely functional for that purpose felt like a bit of a fools errand, whereas Katana just works).

Cons:

While it is very user-friendly and it has the ability to track batches/lots (which is critical for us), we've had to develop workarounds to make it function the way we need it to -- it doesn't quite handle this the way I would envision it should. There are also some minor time wasters. If there's one simple feature I wish they would change, it's being able to type in the expiration dates rather than having to scroll through the calendar manually to select the correct date. This becomes so onerous when receiving multiple items on a PO and having to manually click through/scroll through the calendar to select the correct date as opposed to simply having a field that allows you to type in the date and move on.

Alternatives Considered: Fishbowl, MRPeasy and ERPAG

Reasons for Switching to Katana Cloud Inventory: Katana is a great small business solution that I can easily see growing with us. Fishbowl is cost-prohibitive (and honestly at this point, I'd rather just use Katana). MRPeasy and ERPAG are not as well designed and don't work well as a food industry solution -- they made simple tasks feel like running through a maze. The developers at Katana did a beautiful job of creating something intuitively designed that works well across multiple industries while also making it as clean and aesthetic as it is functional. It's a pleasure to use. I've noticed that they also seem to be regularly implementing improvements and updates, which is awesome. Customer support is friendly and responsive. Highly recommend.

Very poor MRP overrated in reviews, with good service

Comments: Very easy to start. Lack of a lot of important functionalities by the time of use. Overpriced by the functions provided.

Pros:

Customer Service and easy to use at the beginning

Cons:

It appears to be that the designers and programmers have never worked in a company. *No discounts or price difeerentiation*Lack of point of sales*Very low scanning functionality*Not differentiated user rights*No history of document changes*Buggy

Alternatives Considered: Odoo and Wherefour

Reasons for Choosing Katana Cloud Inventory: Quickbooks Integration

Switched From: Odoo

Reasons for Switching to Katana Cloud Inventory: Quickbooks Online integration, easy to use, (appear to be fake) good reviews

Katana is great!

Pros:

The set up and use of Katana is super easy and user friendly! The online resources they provide are incredibly helpful. I found the Katana Academy videos the most helpful.

Cons:

Katana does not provide a way to "waste" products, however I know that Katana is currently working on implementing a program to do this. The only true complaint is that it doesn't support fractions. Our products are divided into 12 and when inputting the "recipes and boms" 1 is not divisible by 12 evenly. This makes us have to stock adjust to get proper inventory counts.

Alternatives Considered: Fishbowl and HandiFox

Reasons for Switching to Katana Cloud Inventory: Katana is easy to look at, user friendly, and the easiest and cheapest way to achieve the goals we want in an inventory system.

Most affordable MRP system for small manufacturers

Comments: 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.