Katana Manufacturing ERP Reviews

It takes some time to set up and deploy, but once it's running, its super helpful! Its very easy to generate POs, update stock levels, and track sales and make orders. All the function without the bloated junk that expensive and advanced MRP systems have.

I wish there was a way to have a negative stock variant (a single product that represents a product subtraction rather than having to make a full copy of a product recipe minus that one single item). I wish there was a way to group materials without having to create a separate product for them. Each product will generate a separate make order, but sometimes Its not actually something that can be made individually, it just represents all the parts that make up an assembly. There is currently no way to make a group of materials that does not become its own product that the system thinks needs to be made as its own inventory item.

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.

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.

Thank you for your feedback!

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.

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.

Thank you for sharing your feedback!

I love how easy it is to keep track of our inventory, and easily order more materials. It is easy to navigate and very user-friendly. You can easily see how much material you have in stock, and Katana warns you when stock is running low. Never again will I run out of what I need! Customer service is very outstanding as well, I have asked them multiple questions and they always get back quickly with a well detailed response. Love it!

Honestly cannot think of any cons about this software, I have not had any problems out of it.

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

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.

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.

The length of time it took to setup in the beginning because the app was lacking a unit conversion which they have since fixed.

THank you for the feedback and happy to hear Katana has made business-life so much more easier for you!

The price makes Katana most attractive. It is also intuitive to set up and use. Katana also provided helpful onboarding assistance.

The software is a bit limited with respect to features for or customization of PO's.

Thank you for reviewing Katana!

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.

While they're super responsive to feature requests, Katana doesn't include an API or Hook.

Thank you for your review! We will be working on opening an API very soon.

I appreciate how much this software has helped me fix my inventory issues! I also love that when I have an issue that I do not know how to resolve, I can schedule a call and get live support. [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] is awesome and extremely relatable!

I think there could be a little more development with the integration process. It would also be nice to have an onboarding specialist because it is difficult to explain the unique quirks of your business and specific issues you need help with, to a different person each time. I also think the shop floor app could use a little more functionality but I am hopeful they will be adding more features eventually.

It's really easy to setup and use. It gives you just the right information about your products and the automatization of any changes you make in processes is very useful and convenient.

I've encounter a lot of bugs that are quickly fixed, but interfere with projects and daily work. The margins and costs info is a little untrustworthy and hard to read when looking for errors. The software doesn't consider quantity of people actually making the production, only hours, so if we work with extra hands is really hard to setup time lines for our weekly throughout.

Thank you for the feedback! I can assure we are constantly working on having less errors on daily basis!

Easy to learn, easy to set up and user friendly. It is the perfect visual tool to immediately show what orders are available for production and which are not with the inventory you have on hand. Easy for shop floor workers to understand and implement. Improved shop to office communication. Makes scheduling easy and quick.

I wish it had an integrated scheduling calendar that could be personalized and blocked out according to production times per order. I also wish when you backed up it would go to the previous page and not take you back to the main sell or make page causing you to have to find where you were again. Minor improvements would make this software pretty close to perfect for us.

The fact that Katana is always available and so easy to navigate with saves time. Our requests for new features like back order handling, serial number tracking and multi currency and warehousing some of them already implemented and some coming soon. The fact that we response fairly quickly on questions that we have submitted.

It was probably moving over from a well known package like Pastel Evolution to something not familiar to me; but the transition was seamless.

Happy to hear your feedback and that the transition has gone well!

I really like that I'm able to save my product's SOPs and can easily find them when I need to make more! It is very handy to have that feature. I also enjoy that after I have made the product, I can add the inventory through a stock adjustment. It's a very simple process that is not convoluted. Big fan!

The only thing that I don't love is when I am doing a stock adjustment I have to do the math on each item to get it to the correct total. For example: If I start the week with 35 of a specific item and throughout the week, say, 17 get purchased, when I do inventory and account for that, I have to use the calculator to figure out 35 -17 = correct total. And I have to do that math for each individual item.

Thank you for your kind words!

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

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.

Hi Daniel! Thank you for your honest feedback. We are continuously working on improving on the points of time planning and will be ready with better capabilities in the coming months already.

Inventory tracking, maufacturing orders vs sales orders

The only thing I would suggest as a change would be to maybe add wholesale and retail pricing for the same product item.

Thank you for the feedback!

- User interface - Ease of use - Set up was straight forward

- Lacking a few features but they are expanding and often adding new features

Thank you for the review. And, indeed, we are on weekly basis adding new features :)

Simple to use, comprehensive functionalities and above all highly flexible to fit our DTC and made to order workflow.

Inventory reporting can be improved with standard analytics

Great integration with Shopify and Xero Ability to track everything in one place from sales to invoices to production. Work easily with creating customers and invoices through to xero.

No batch tracking (yet) A little complicated to set up when you have multiple price points for the same SKU and need to input the product card to reflect this as discounts of one set price isnt ideal to flow into xero

Thank you for the feedback and support!

If you use Shopify, than you can easily integrate and sync with Katana. As a very valuable side-effect we got a MUCH better understanding of the overall production activities and their cost. Katana also helps you with reminders of when to purchase certain items in order to keep your delivery dates.

As someone who have not been in control of production and inventory before, I would have appreciated a free trial that where 4 weeks and not 2 weeks. That said, we asked for some extra time and we got a longer test period.

Thank you for the feedback and support!

I own a small, specialized machine shop and previously we have not had any inventory control or planning systems. When a customer called for a part, we went to the inventory and look at how many we had, if it was short we quickly ordered material and rushed there manufacturing to meet the order. Katana has given us visibility into our inventory supply as well as provided invaluable insight into our planning and work scheduling. Additionally it has helped identify areas for improvement in our workflow. Katana is an excellent app for managing inventory and processes.

We would like to be able to set stock up to quantities so that once the minimum stock is reached the software advises how many to make/purchase.

Thank you for the feedback and support!

Ease of use Set up Customer service Ability to integrate

No in house integrations option. Customer service was so good, I would have liked an integration option directly from Katana

Once our products were in there, we really started to see the power of our small global company as we gained control of inventory everywhere

We got side-tracked on the materials side of things which looked great on the surface but really just complicated things for us

Katana keeps us organized both in inventory and in our manufacturing process.

Many new features seem to be only available in the highest level of the software, which is very expensive for a small business.

The Katana MRP interface is very easy to use and the steps are logical with help integrated into each section. The access to the knowledge base is good and the support team are efficient.

This is a relatively new software system (a couple of years old) and it is still rolling out new features, so my only (minor) point is that they don't have every aspect I need for my business and the cost for extra users is a little higher than I would have liked.

Thank you for the review! Indeed, we are rolling out new features on weekly basis and closing the gap between Katana and perfection.

The ease of use is the main thing that we like.

We have a bespoke website and some of the API was tricky to implement - but now it is up and running it is decent.