Katana Cloud Inventory

The best for small manufacturing

장점:

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.

단점:

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

Great choice for small manufacturer

주석: 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.

장점:

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

단점:

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.

Scrappy startup quality at enterprise rates

주석: Now at the money grabbing stage before they implode, would be my guess. Clunky at the best of times. We put up with quirks, bugs that were never going to get fixed and general major omissions (like lack of back up and undo) This company is being run like it's an open source "best effort" outfit, but charging premium monthly rates for a software that feels barely out of beta. Given how central MRP/ERP/etc is to our business, we will be looking for a different provider asap, as none of this inspires trust in what should be a long term partner

장점:

The user interface is pretty and nice to use, mostly The concepts of scheduling and general "idea" behind the katana system are good

단점:

The endless bugs and now pricing issues. No backup, no undo, and again, lots of bugs. We regularly have to contact support with issues in their system. Most of the time the response is "oh we'll put it on our voting system, if it gets votes we'll fix it", which really is not what I expect from a system that costs several hundred dollars a month, before addons and users. To be perfectly honest, we were making do - the pros of not having to build this kind of system ourselves outweighed the cons. That has now changed. What triggered this review is that they doubled the price of our plan, turned off a number of features we were using to run our business operations, and charged us for "add-ons" all without warning. We did get sent an email, warning us of an upcoming change in billing (note this email was sent 28 days before the change...). That email said someone would reach out to us to discuss transitioning. That did not happen, and instead they just turned things off and billed our card for add-ons we never agreed to. Forced onboarding (billable of course) with an "expert" is a bit of a joke

Very Useful

주석: 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.

장점:

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.

단점:

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.

Katana is great!

장점:

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.

단점:

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.

Exactly What Our Growing Business Needed.

주석: So far, we are really liking hoe easy it was to setup and get running. The inventory management has improved the flow and processes in our company for the better.

장점:

Ease of use, support, inventory management features, able to create builds/recipes for products (BOM), ability to upload data using Excel, integration with Quickbooks Online

단점:

Cost, certain features do not make sense in the implementation.

Highly Recommend!

주석: 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!

장점:

Ease of Use Easy Implementation Customer Service Reorder Options

단점:

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!

Working with Katana

주석: Ive tried lots of other systems - ugly ones, expensive ones, and completely confusing ones. Katana wins hands down. And without charging you lots of extra fees to do things like multiple locations.

장점:

Its very very easy to use. Having used other systems, like inFlow, it has refreshing clean visually cued interface. Its very satisfying to use.

단점:

Very little - I would ask why they dont allow non-stock items to be a thing (we cant be the only ones!) - we have to make up that we have 1000s of imaginary non-stock items to keep the system happy. But its a tiny weeny gripe and has very little bearing on anything.

The best app ever!

장점:

I love the simplicity of Katana and the ease of inventory management. This software has saved us so much time and offers way more than other products we looked into. For a small business with lots of moving parts and inventory to manage, Katana makes everything a breeze.

단점:

N/a, Katana meets and exceeds all our needs!

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

주석: 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.

장점:

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.

단점:

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.

Promised so much delivered far short of what we hoped

주석: Disappointed. They are pretending this software is the best thing since sliced bread and its more like a stale baguette.

장점:

It works on a basic level for stock management and also bills of materials.

단점:

It fails to have any sort of calender or gantt chart. It also fails terribly with time planning/recording of how long a task can take. For example you can't even put into the system that you start your working day at half past the hour only full hours are allowed. Further to the time planning side you can not block out time for holidays or meetings. Making this software useless to plan your time and give acreate lead times to customers.

Love the functionality!

장점:

This software is very user friendly compared to some other, more detailed programs.

단점:

I had some issue with the conversions during the product builds, so I am not sure if you could have multiple conversions for a product.

Love it!

주석: We LOVE this app! We had to work out some kinks the in the beginning based on our needs but Katana's representatives were very helpful and we got it all figured out.

장점:

It's helped us streamline inventory management, manufacturing orders and inventory orders. Highly recommend!

단점:

It was a significantly more money than what we were paying with our old system but the extra money has been so worth it for us.

Best MRP/inventory manager for small business

주석: 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.

장점:

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.

단점:

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.

Katana boosted our confidence as new business owners!

주석: Great! Service has been very helpful, and we’ve been able to do everything we need to do. Looking forward to seeing Katana grow and deploy more functions!

장점:

Inventory and order management systems were relatively new to us when we started with our company. We evaluated and tested several web-based tools and Katana was by far the most user friendly. The interface is clean and initiative, which helped us to get up and running quickly and confidently.

단점:

There are some features and reporting that we would like to have that haven’t been rolled out yet (particularly around customer information) and we spent time tinkering around and then ultimately asking customer support about it. They have been very helpful and we are waiting for the enhancements.

Bait and Switch

주석: Horrible. MRP systems are time consuming to implement. For them to take away functionality and SIGNIFICANTLY increase the price after the first year was ridiculous. Now we will be implementing a different MRP system. We feel cheated.

장점:

It seemed simple. It didn't work as originally sold, but they did improve it throughout the first year.

단점:

We THOUGHT it was going to be a good value. But after the first year, they took away functionality and doubled the price!

Small Manufacturing MRP

장점:

Great inventory management software for the price.

단점:

Wish it worked better with other programs. We use Extensive for almost all other plugins. Also, wish it had a way to track cutting programs.

First time Katana user

주석: Overall, we have been very happy with the product. There are some features we would like to see implemented, and those have been passed onto to their support team. But the value has far exceeded the cost and we are excited to get completely rolled out soon!

장점:

The setup is quick and easy and the customer service is nothing short of excellent. We love the simple interface which makes it easy to train others on,. The Excel templates allow for bulk uploads of all of the required data categories which doesn't need to be uploaded manually.

단점:

It could be more circular in that you sometimes have to jump back and forth within the system to complete a task. The production operation feature should allow you to set a default number of labor hours per task so that it isn't required with each manufacturing order setup.

Katana for a small manufacturer

주석: We're still in the implementation stage, but Katana has met the majority of our business requirements with ease. It's been easy to transfer and upload data into Katana and we're feeling very confident about go live. Customer support is outstanding and they pass all improvement suggestions up to their development team for review. They embrace continuous improvement similarly to our manufacturing floor.

장점:

The ease of building products and variants. Our products have a lot of variants, and Katana makes it very easy to manage them all simultaneously. The previous MRP system used required us to build a unique BOM for every variant, which took significant time.

단점:

Minimum order quantity feature. Ability to reject/second quality part of a manufacturing lot. Develop an easy way to see product list not broken down into variants. Have the ability to only show certain BOM items on the shop floor app. Consumables like glue and tape don't need to be shown.

Most Intuitive MRP Ever

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

장점:

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.

단점:

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.

Inventory and Sales Simplified

주석: 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.

장점:

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.

단점:

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.

Great for sales and quotes, not so much for inventory.

장점:

Great user interface, very easily operable.

단점:

Pricing is getting worse. Basic functions disappear and appear later as a paid add on for hefty monthly fee.

It's a good start

장점:

We like having the ability to make manufacture orders so everyone involved can see what's been planned and when it's due. The ability to prioritize orders is very helpful for assigning inventory.

단점:

Identifying products that are ready to ship on each order is cumbersome. Our customer service team has to click individually into each order to see if any items are ready to ship. There's no way to easily flip to the next order. You have to close that window & click on the next order. It would be nice if you could at least toggle between orders within an order window. We'd also love to see some kind of drop down or hover-over feature that would quickly show you if partial shipments are available.

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

주석: 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.

장점:

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.

단점:

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.

MKUltra Corporation

주석: 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.

장점:

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.

단점:

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.