Katana MRP Reviews

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

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?!

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 2/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

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

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Katana is a standout for me. I'm so happy that I found this software almost on accident. It does everything I need. It is straightforward and intuitive. Most other companies require me to Demo with the staff just to figure out how to move around but Katana is different. I was able to figure things out and plug my data and get going almost immediately. Haven't been using it very long but zero complaints up until this point.

Cons
I haven't been using the program very long. The only complaint that I have is the chat box in the lower right corner can get in the way when tryin to edit products or make adjustments while on the site. Other than that minor design flaw everything is excellent.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

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

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

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

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

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

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?

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Easy to use, flows and clear path to implementation.

Cons
Would like to see Multi-languages and currency options.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10