Katana Manufacturing ERP

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: DEAR Systems and Odoo

Reasons for Choosing Katana Manufacturing ERP: ease of use and training of users

Switched From: DEAR Systems

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 Manufacturing ERP: 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.

Overpriced and insecure

Comments: Too expensive, cheaper to purchase some of the Tier One options out there. Insecure as your users have wide open access to all features - including the dreaded "delete all" function.

Pros:

The software has the **potential** to be good.

Cons:

There are only 2 user levels "Superusers" with access to all levels of creative and destructive features, and warehouse operators, with access to make to BOM instructions. The lack of "sales team" and other intemediate levels of access is a killer.

A lot of bang for the buck!

Comments: We were able to implement Katana as our central point for our entire software stack. Each piece of software gets its orders and data from Katana. Normally, I would be hesitant to put any of the software that small business sees on a daily basis into this important position. I had no issue putting Katana into this position.

Pros:

This software has a fantastic feel to make working in it incredibly efficient. As a person that works with software/web design/development, I can appreciate the attention paid to this incredibly complex platform.

Cons:

There isn't much we don't like. Most of the small things are already in the development cycle and they include small things like being able to customize Katana a bit more for our specific needs. Column order, custom fields, field mapping of API connections, etc.

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 Manufacturing ERP: 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.