Craftybase

Pros

This software can link directly to all my selling channels, and it can track my inventory/materials, AND I can consign things to different locations. So I have a literal full view of my materials across every store I'm in. I love that. It has changed my life.

Cons

It's not visually stunning, but it works great. Definitely feels like a "technically skilled" people program. It was a little intimidating to set up. But so so worth it.

Pros

I love how user friendly the software is, and how easy it is to track everything. The software has you do a stock take every month to make sure your inventory is on par and adjusts accordingly. Also, there are many reports that can be printed out for various things such as current inventory, current materials, profit and loss statements, etc.

Cons

There are some issues with matching purchases to listings unless you "manufacture" the items for you listings. I tie a purchase to a listing but it doesn't change the stock level until I "make" it, but I buy some things already pre-made so that can be a little redundant. Also, I wish the software would tie in the fees and shipping to each item so I can see actual net profits for each item.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Craftybase

Pros

It accurately tracks ingredients for my recipes

Cons

It does not sync with BigCommerce, there is a lag MOST of the time when updating information, the price is outrageous compared to other options on the market today

Pros

I think it has many perks for handmade vendors who are small - it's tough to scale up but until you do, the recipes feature is perfect for keeping track of components. and the platform is really user friendly and designed well.

Cons

Quality is amazing, but pricing not so much. For many years it was reasonable but recently they raised it too high and the benefits do not equal the pricing increase. I have been with them for so long that moving at this point is difficult, and requires inventory counts and closing my shop to move it over, so I have yet to move. I felt like legacy clients had quite a shock when the price went up x5 (literally my price went up that much without exaggeration). It is tough to recommend to people I know because once you do the work to enter all your items and create the recipes, moving it when they can raise prices unexpectedly is why most people do not trust subscription-based services.

Pros

The ease of setting up everything and the user interface is very friendly and easy to navigate.

Cons

We had some trouble with the "Product Bundle" process when compenentizing our products, a lot of our wholesale sales channels include "Tester" products which is the same as the product. This created duplicates of products in Crafty which resulted in us having to spend more time fixing issues.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Craftybase

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to Craftybase

Pros

The price
Ease of use
Seamless Integration with Shopify

Cons

Nothing So far
I have been using the tool since 2 months

Pros

It keeps me organized without having to make a million excel documents. Product/material stock numbers are automatically adjusted when you make an order/manufacture. The recipe option is also super helpful because sometimes I can't remember exactly which size/style of hardware I used to create a product

Cons

If you forget to enter a product "manufacture" and update the quantity through a "stocktake", it won't calculate cost for an order. The import function added multiple items from my different integration sites even with matching SKU's. This took a while to fix and ultimately I downgraded my subscription because I didn't find benefit from the higher tier (I also only have a few orders a month to enter so order import wasn't very high on my priority list)

Pros

I love their customer service. Whenever I have questions or wants, I just reach out and they are quick to respond and very helpful

Cons

I wish the inventory synced with Shopify so that my inventory everywhere was correct.

Pros

It has helped us realize our disorganization with materials and where we may have spent unnecessary money. Also has been an amazing help with ensuring that we are charging properly for our product.

Cons

The only issue we have had is not a problem with Craftybase but more with how we run our business. It did take some time for me to understand how everything connected within the program, but they do have good tutorials, which I should have read ahead of time. We discovered during our set up that we were not consistent across our sales channels with product names which caused extra work on our part but was again our fault. The program has made us think a lot more about the business side and organizing everything.

Pros

Not having to do all the calculations in a spreadsheet anymore.

Cons

I only signed up for the Pro version and I wish it had some other features that are only available in more expensive versions, such as handling consignment locations, etc.

Pros

It is affordable for start ups compare to the bigger systems like trunk and gets the job done.

Cons

I hate the integration with the sales channels as it is very limited. I have been waiting for them to integrate with bigcommerce for 2 years now and their integration with square is horrible because it doesn’t bring in the items purchased and customer details. Instead it comes as a custom order and so it does pull from the inventory which means I have to delete the imported sales and re - enter it so it reduces the inventory. Time consuming.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Craftybase

Reasons for Switching to Craftybase

Pros

-automatically imports orders from multiple channels
-automatically creates manufactures for products and decreases material stock levels
-keeps track of all my expenses
-provides tons of various reports to help during tax time
-customer service is easy to reach and always helpful

Cons

There's nothing I don't like about craftybase!

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Craftybase

Pros

I can enter all my materials (in my case: various beads, wire, packaging materials, etc) and even set "recipes" for popular items so that when someone purchases an item, I can "Manufacture" it in the software and my materials are automatically deducted according to the recipe I set. I then get warnings anytime a specific material runs low. It's literally hands-off inventory management!

Cons

It's a LOT of data to input in the beginning. The time invested up front is well worth it though!

Pros

I love the ease and accuracy of this program. It helps keep our inventory in check, along with organizing our business I would recommend this program to anyone and everyone!! I tried a handful of different methods and programs and this is by far my favorite!

Cons

The pricing may be a little steep, but I am so happy with the product, that I am willing to pay the price.

Pros

Ease of setup and customer service and inventory control

Cons

Adding inventory to a second store did not show correct quantity and shows -quantiys

Pros

I love the functionality of this product. I make candles and cosmetic products and the recipies, manufactures, expense tracking and order tracking is awesome. Much better than my previous overly complicated excel spreadsheet.

Cons

I wish there was an app for imputting expenses on the go or pulling recipies. My office is not near my manufacturing area so I have to write things down before and after inputting the data.

Pros

Craftybase plays a vital role in my jewelry-making business. It allows me to effectively manage and track the extensive assortment of metals, components, and findings that form the foundation of a jewelry brand.

Cons

There's bit of a learning curve but the videos, and customer support, are wonderful.

Pros

Relatively easy to set up and use. The inventory recording system is useful.

Cons

Price and subscription model doesnt seem very starter friendly.

Pros

The ease of use during initial set up was great.

Cons

It’s very generalized and not specific to one industry.

Pros

They had some baked in reporting that was good.

Cons

Customer service is only by EMAIL. NO PHONE SUPPORT! This made it very difficult for a beginner (who read the useless startup guide) to get everything setup correctly. Even then I was never 100% implemented. They should also add auto categorization rules for expense items and COGS by vendor/other Parameters.

Pros

It's absolutely perfect for my needs of running a small jewelry business. It keeps track of my supply inventory and how each material relates to finished products, to customer sales and production of those finished products. It's cloud based, which means I can check my orders and inventory from anywhere, and each section is intuitively linked to other sections, making it the only software I need to fully track my inventory and orders.

Cons

Nothing, honestly. It does everything I wanted it to, and intuitively.

Pros

We used to use spreadsheets to keep track of our inventory and raw materials until I discovered CraftyBase. It was one of the best investments we've made. Software is super easy to use, provides many tools and features to keep track of not only inventory and materials but also orders, different locations where our products are sold. It's all-in-one type of software that any business should have.

Cons

Ability to sync to regular Amazon inventory/order system.

Pros

My favorite features are supply ordering versus use breakdown ie purchase the supply by the foot and then use by the inch. The product recipe section is easy to set up and fantastic in usability. It makes tracking manufactures a breeze

Cons

I wish there was a better way to track payments. Right now it's just a check box. I would love to see a date and pay method field.

Also would love the ability to print invoices without having to download them first.

Pros

I like this this is a cloud-based application. It works well for a jewelry business to track inventory, expenses and sales. It integrates with a few of the more popular e-commerce handmade platforms.

Cons

Some of the bugs are frustrating. For example, some of the Etsy fees do not auto associate with sales/products. So when trying to associate these fees, the fields in the Associate dialog do not keep focus. I can click in the field and then start to enter the product or order just to find focus was lost and nothing is being entered. There are lots of associations that need to be made, so it's very frustrating to select the field and then lose focus most every time.

Pros

Easy to set up and use. They are always adding new features and listening to what the users want. And their customer support is fantastic! They personally reply, very quickly, to any questions or issues.

Cons

A little clunky in some parts -- too many steps sometimes to get a task done. But, again, I feel they are addressing this and adding more streamlined functionality.

Pros

I like how easy it is to use and helps with product manufacturing, inventory control, sales and expenses.

Cons

Sometimes it can be very detailed, and while that is good, at first it was something I had a hard time with.

Pros

Craftybase allows me to track manufactures, material inventory, and product inventory, and finding the true value of each. It also makes pricing suggestions for products and see how much I make each order.

Cons

The components and auto-manufacturing feature is a bit tricky to setup. I also have some products that I sell individually AND as a set where it must be a component, but the inventory is always off since I manufacture them as one and sell them the same way. It's a major hassle trying to correct.

Pros

I like how there was a checklist available to help on where to start. I have reached out to the support desk a few times and have had great help and I didn't have to wait long for someone to answer my questions. I love the quick at-a-glance dashboard that shows me my products and materials and stock levels as well as the graph that shows profit margins and expenses.

Cons

I would really like to be able to delete products that I no longer have (discontinued) to sell instead of only being able to archive them.

Pros

Sales integration and inventory are the biggest winners. Put some thought into and setup the SKU's correctly across your channels and a majority of the paperwork is taken care of for you. That's worth hours after each event. If you have relatively static items building a recipe for manufacturing inventory is almost as easy. Once those are seeded correctly it's just a minute to record that you made X number of an item. COGS is updated, stocks are updated and expenses are tracked.

Cons

Learning curve was moderately steep. This wasn't unexpected as my day job is in setting up production systems so I have an idea of the complexity that is needed. Expect to spend a moderate amount of time building and then probably heavily modifying what you setup that you thought was correct. You just don't know what you don't know until you start using it and realizing how it actually goes together as an entire system.Depending on your business type some shortcuts might be needed. We do jewelry sales and a variety of categories needed to be combined for our sanity. If I tracked each and every bead, gem or finding that we used we would have nearly 2,000 unique entries in the materials tab. As an example in our case some additional thought and planning had to be devised to combine all the generic ear hook styles together and build them as a trackable unit in grams. This would be repeated for the several hundred bead styles we use. Glass, gemstone, crystal, wood, 4mm, 6mm, 8mm, 10mm etc. We aren't trying to track the 10's of thousands of beads we inventory so they are categorized by price points and then inventoried and tracked by weight.These aren't quite con's just a reality of having moved into an inventory system after a year of not having a proper one and the width of material options that we had. A business that sold soap might only have a couple dozen oil options, some jars and wicks to track. This would be much easier to directly track specific items.

Pros

Excellent, reliable software
Highly detailed
Integrates with my Shopify store
Powerful even at lower subscription level

Cons

Sometimes not intuitive; it's not their fault that I am new to all of this.

Pros

We love the ease of use with Craftybase. We have a ton of items that we sell indiviually as ingredients, as well as combined to make other products on our shelves. Craftybase allows us to build these "components" as well keeping track of each individual ingredient. This is by far the most accurate and easiest way we've found to keep track of inventory, and recipes.

Cons

There is a bit of a learning curve when first starting out, but that is mostly because we had to learn the terms that Craftybase uses, and the functionality behind some of the features. There are tons of good walk-throughs in the system, as well as good examples. Customer service isn't the most reachable. If you have a question, it may take a day to hear back, and they only have email. There is no live chat, or phone support. There's no onboarding calls or dedicated support staff to really help you hit the ground running, so you'll have to spend some time really learning the system, and try and send questions that you don't need immediate answers to.

Pros

It promises a lot. Looks nice simple and clean

Cons

Expensive, poor integrations, no cuctomizations at all. Simple errors not fixed tru years

Pros

I like being able to cost product with a recipe and for the general works of business management.

Cons

The cost due to exchange rate. Wish I could find a product the same but not have to pay double the subscription price.

Pros

What I like most about Craftybase is it calculates COGS based on all data, in real time. So if the price of your materials rises, Craftybase will automatically reflect those increases in your COGS. If you have more than a handful of products, this can really save you time and ensure you have the most accurate understanding of your COGS so that you can ensure to price your products profitably.

Cons

This is not the quickest/easiest software to use, and maybe that's to be expected when dealing with something as complex as manufacturing handmade items that require various materials. I'm busy with a ton of different things going on, so I still haven't made time to do a full set up of everything in Craftybase yet, and it's been months (this is not an issue with the software itself).My least favorite thing about Craftybase is it's price. I was automatically upgraded to a higher subscription plan when reaching my max limit for my monthly order line item limit, when it didn't seem to me like I was making so many sales that it justified that price.

Pros

It works. It’s robust, perhaps more so than I need. I’m a Gen-Xer, so I don’t mind the old-school UI

Cons

The interface with Square Online is a nightmare. Why can’t Information flow both directions

Pros

I loved the fact that it had all the categories I needed to keep up with production and material use.

Cons

What I didn't like is the 24 to 48 hours to get a response and the fact that the data base goes down. I have a small team. Having to wait 24 to 48 hours to sort something out isn't feasible. We kept just going manual and I finally decided the time required to keep it up to date just wasn't worth it if we kept having stumbling blocks.

Pros

The ease of use in setup and management made it a great choice and a huge improvement over traditional spreadsheet management. One of the determining factors for me was being able to create and sell bundles that include multiple products that I had trouble finding with other tools. It also integrates easily with a number of viable eCommerce platforms.

Cons

I would love to see more feature related to managing finances like cash flow, balance sheets, and financial planning tools

Alternatives Considered

Pros

I really like that Craftybase integrates with multiple sales channels that I use. This, along with auto-manufacturing makes it easy for items to be adjusted as I sell, and I can have an accurate real-time look at all the materials I have on hand.

Cons

I found the process of getting Craftybase up and running very labor intensive - especially having over 200+ SKUs. I wish there was an easier bulk editing feature. It feels really clunky at times and there is a lot of clicking in and out of different pages in order to get each product set up - even after using the upload csv feature.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Craftybase

Pros

i like the reports you can run like schedule C, but I found the numbers to be off from Etsy.

Cons

Company raised prices by 3x while my business took a massive hit. Could not believe how much more they wanted for what little i did.

Pros

I sell knit products, and it’s been fantastic at tracking everything I make and sell as well as the yarn I buy.

Cons

I wish there was a way for the recipe to be updated from the manufactures. Right now, figuring out how much yarn I use per product is a manual process, and it’s one of the most important parts of my price estimates.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Craftybase

Pros

I love the materials and recipe and product screens. I also love the reports but wish that instead of just taxes it would have gst pst for Canadian.

Cons

I wish it would update products into Shopify. Sharing both ways

Pros

Hands down, best customer service!! Their team replies quickly and gives me exactly what I need to know.

Cons

No mobile app for it. I work away from my desk and a mobile app would be greatly beneficial for me

Pros

Allows me to track, price and log my materials, products and sales with ease in one place. Saves me time and multiple spreadsheets abs helps me keep on track of my small business

Cons

It takes a while to work out how best to use the system and it can be time consuming logging materials, products and manufactures

Pros

I like the reports the most. it helps to to see how your product is moving

Cons

the time consuming part I need like a week to set up and just to learn everything and manage take hours of my day and I get behind because it is hard to stay on top of everything

Pros

Everything works great so far. The ability to build bundles of products is helpful. Being able to assign and track lot number is great. It has really helped us track inventory and especially the actual cost to make products.

Cons

Setting up the bundling is a bit complex plus you have to store all the inventory info in the components instead of as a product. It is also quite complicated to merge products and variations/options if you have multiple sites integrated.

Pros

Inventory tracking and manufactures and schedule c guidance.

Cons

Not being able to link inventory amount of product to Shopify

Pros

Good value, good customer service, gets the job done! As long as I keep manufactures and supply purchases up to date, my inventory is accurate and the program helps me not run out of materials, or over-purchase.

Cons

I still find it challenging to nearly impossible bundle products for promotional items or gift sets, even with being in their Facebook group and hearing tips from other users. It isn't intuitive in the program to bundle items together. Rather, other users share how they make it work.

Pros

Craftybase was easy to set up and has thus far been pretty intuitive to learn. I was manually entering inventory into a spreadsheet before this, so switching over to Craftybase has saved me SO much time. The automations make inventory management for my jewelry business super easy.

Cons

There were one or two things that I couldn’t quite grasp initially, there was also an issue with my sales channel not updating but their help team has always been able to explain or fix any problems with efficiency and kindness.

Pros

I love that it keeps me organized. I also love how it recommends pricing based on material prices and material used plus overhead. It has saved a ton of time for me!

Cons

I think some areas could be better explained (or maybe it’s just me) because my stock count is sometimes off and sometimes I can’t figure out why

Pros

Lot tracking for material used and dashboard

Cons

Can’t connect to Individual Amazon seller’s account nor Facebook and instagram shop.