Katana Cloud Inventory

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

Reasons for Switching to Katana Cloud Inventory

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

Reasons for Switching to Katana Cloud Inventory

Pros

It worked for what I was expecting, it kept track of the items I needed to produce custom embroidered items. It was able to track when I needed to re buy items from my suppliers.

Cons

Where do you even start. I will start with the biggest issue they have. The price.
When I started the cost was around 60aud a month. Then they bumped me up to 400aud a month without any communication, then they bumped me up to $1400 aud a month without any communication.

When confronted with the problem with the pricing, and the illegal practices that they were acting under, they told me it was my fault because I was using API pulls. Which I was not doing. They realised that they were charging me incorrectly, and would "refund me the difference" and I am yet to see the refund. They would have never bothered to address this if I didn't bring it up to them, they would have happily charged me 2333% more than my original subscription without batting an eyelid.

How can a company honestly think that it is okay to charge 2000% more and remove functionality?

Customer service will only meet you at 2am Australian time (useless)

Oh, and they have a 1 month notice cancellation fee for a month to month subscription (illegal) so if you sign up for a month, expect to pay for two. Like a gym, except you didn't sign anything so they can't do that. but they will.

This company is greedy and it will fail if they keep this way. Do not look at reviews from further than two months ago, as that katana is long gone. Read all reviews from recently and you will see very cleary how this greedy corperate company has failed their customers.

Avoid at all costs, get a better mrp software or even a spreadsheet.

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.

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.