Katana Cloud Inventory

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.

Alternatives Considered: Cin7 Core and Odoo

Reasons for Choosing Katana Cloud Inventory: ease of use and training of users

Switched From: Cin7 Core

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

Comments: 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.

Alternatives Considered: Dynamics 365 and Sage 100

Reasons for Choosing Katana Cloud Inventory: Due to a downsizing in manufacturing we decided to look for a faster, more flexible, less complicated MRP-system which is cloud-based and would have good and propven interfaces to a standard accounting SW and to an on-line shop (spare parts).

Switched From: Dynamics 365 and Sage 100

Reasons for Switching to Katana Cloud Inventory: Simplicity with at the same time well covered basic features, ease of use, intuitive, cloud-based.

Started off good, but pricing has outpaced quality.

Comments: I started out paying $128/month for this software in 2019, and that jumped to $388 in 2021. Now in 2024, that price has increased to $399, BUT they took away several features we had become reliant upon and put them into separate "add-on" packages at $199 EACH—bringing my monthly all the way to $797! Something as simple as being able to label a part number with a bin number for easy retrieval was taken out and put into a "warehouse" bundle with other features that we don't use, so now all that work that was put into cataloging our parts has been erased. I was considering keeping these add-ons, but their serial number system doesn't work very well at all. I continually had to reach out to support to get them to fix things, but that often involved a lot of head scratching on their part and then instructing me to basically undo a redo completion of certain tasks to get a desired outcome (which didn't always work). I think these add-ons are overpriced—you can get serial number tracking from Zoho for $80/month, but they expect us to pay $199/month for just an add-on. If their add-on features worked reliably I might have continued paying. I am currently trying other platforms, and I will be ditching this vendor as soon as I am able.

Pros:

Before using Katana, I was doing everything manually. I can't express how reliant I have become on MRP software.

Cons:

They have increased prices by 523% since we started using this service. Bugs are ever-present, and they take existing features away to put behind a behind a paywall.

Great choice for small manufacturer

Comments: 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.

Alternatives Considered: ERPAG

Reasons for Choosing Katana Cloud Inventory: Odoo is a beautiful all-in-one platform that seemed to be the perfect solution to tying my entire business together. However, it doesn't "play" well with Shopify and social media platforms which both are essential to my business. Any customization requires an extra fee each month plus the cost of the custom 3rd party app. Set up was complicated and when I needed help, I was pressed to pay $10k for a customer service package. For a small business, that's a lot to shell out. If I were a large company and could pay to have it all set up and administered correctly, I'm sure Odoo would be an excellent choice. But for a one-woman show, it was just too much to juggle.

Switched From: Odoo

Reasons for Switching to Katana Cloud Inventory: Erpag was about the same price at the time and had a few extra features that I liked (barcode integration for example), but the user interface was just really clunky. It reminded me a lot of my days in 90's Windows. Lots of tabs and block colors. When I added a demo set of data in, it didn't seem too difficult to use, but it just wasn't intuitive to me.

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.