Katana Cloud Manufacturing Reviews

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.

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 Cloud Manufacturing

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

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

Cons

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.

Alternatives Considered

MRPeasy

Reasons for Choosing Katana Cloud Manufacturing

In the middle of the switch but it seams to offer far more options and cross capability.

Switched From

Odoo

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

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.

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.

Pros

Clear process: Order fulfillment, Purchasing, Manufacturing and Inventory Control.

Cons

Don't have kitting BOM (Combo product).
Format of Currency is bad, it's difficult to read.

Alternatives Considered

ERPNext

Reasons for Choosing Katana Cloud Manufacturing

Easy, simple and focus on MRP.

Switched From

Odoo

Reasons for Switching to Katana Cloud Manufacturing

Simple and Very focus, easy to connect with Shopify and Quickbook.

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.

Pros

Handling of inventory, items, products, ingredients, sales orders - all this is handled in a very efficient, clear and easy to use way. Makes the difference compared to many alternative MRP-/ERP-systems.
Connector to QuickBooks with automatic trigger for invoices in QB once the products are marked as shipped in KATANA.
Connector to Shopify for on-line sale of spare parts.
100% helpful and open minded customer service - very helpful in helping to understand all features and finding the best workflow for specific situations.

Cons

There are some functions/features which need improvement, e.g. the customization of documents such as Quotations so every company can generate a set of individual template to serve different areas (machines, spare parts, service,..). 3-5 custom fields for Quotes/Sales Orders/Products would be helpful. Althoug KATANA is intended to be a MRP-system it would be helpful to integrate SERVICE-articles (not only MAKE or BUY articles). This would allow to add a possible service portion to a spare parts quote.
Dedicated Delivery Notes (with partial shipments) would be a great feature.

Alternatives Considered

Dynamics 365 and Sage 100

Reasons for Choosing Katana Cloud Manufacturing

Due to a downsizing in manufacturing we decided to look for a faster, more flexible, less complicated MRP-system which is cloud-based and would have good and propven interfaces to a standard accounting SW and to an on-line shop (spare parts).

Switched From

Dynamics 365 and Sage 100

Reasons for Switching to Katana Cloud Manufacturing

Simplicity with at the same time well covered basic features, ease of use, intuitive, cloud-based.

Pros

The support is always helpful - they've been quick to answer and they have always been able to answer our questions.

We've had this app for about 2 months now, and we are loving it. The adjustment was fairly simple and easy for staff, importing our data was easy and straight forward for setup.

Cons

Would be great if we could count inventory via barcode scanner instead of manually entering qty's and then importing.

Alternatives Considered

Odoo, Printavo and JobBOSS²

Reasons for Switching to Katana Cloud Manufacturing

We chose Katana because it connects natively to Shopify (no third party link/sync) and it best matched our current and future needs.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Alternatives Considered

Cin7 Core, QuickBooks Online Advanced, QuickBooks Desktop Pro, QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise and Quickbooks Online

Reasons for Switching to Katana Cloud Manufacturing

Ease of use and interface

Pros

Super easy to use, pricing is more clear and streamlined than when we started. Support is great; not always the quickest but 1-2 days usually gets us a thorough and well covered answer to our questions. You can send them suggestions and they will tally in to their dev schedule. Saves a lot of time and nice to be able to access it from any computer.

Cons

There currently (2020) is no option to add fixed costs to POs. This makes tracking cost of inventory a little tougher. I also cannot edit PO templates. Having these features would make cost tracking and insurance claims easier. There is also no support for contractor per unit manufacturing but a simple way to get around this would be to set contractor tasks and payment by the hour and make each unit take 1 hour to finish. This does though make it difficult to track time if you need to track how long production will take. Fortunately we have a good idea of how long something will take without the help of Katana.

Pros

Improved our ability to track shared ingredients for the products we sell.
Easy to know what quantity of ingredients to buy and who to buy it from.
Connects to Shopify and updates automatically.
Amazing customer support.

Cons

It took some time to learn the software and create ingredients for each product - but is worth while.

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.

Pros

Cloud integration and nice User Interface.

Cons

- I am still little bit worried about lack of backup available to the user. There should be method to revert in time for example. If somebody messed up something, there is no way to go back.
- Another thing is lack of Sage integration.
- If new option is added to the existing product/material Internal Barcode is not generated and it has to be created manually. I am not sure why...
- sorting for example of PO orders is done by string, so orders are never in the correct order. Prefix PO- should be omitted for sorting table.

Alternatives Considered

NetSuite

Reasons for Switching to Katana Cloud Manufacturing

Price.

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.

Pros

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

Cons

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

Pros

Its easy to use as both a user and an admin. Low learning curve with a high return of success.

Cons

Its really unintuitive for me at least to communicate with my users with the shop floor app. Im better off getting up and takinf the time to talk to them directly rather than leaving them notes and vice versa. Also the reports NEVER work, ive never been able to pull a report or print a packing slip for whatever reason (the link always dies) thankfully I also keep up to date on our accounting software so I can pull the report from there otherwise Id probably rate this lower.

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.

Pros

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!

Cons

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

Pros

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

Cons

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

Alternatives Considered

Lead Commerce

Reasons for Switching to Katana Cloud Manufacturing

Price and ease of onboarding.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

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!

Cons

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.