Katana Cloud Inventory

Avantages

- 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.

Inconvénients

It can be a little slow, and the contact syncing could be more robust.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à Katana Cloud Inventory

Avantages

Katana provided the right level of specificity for us. It wasn't too much where it overwhelming to get setup, but it was enough to track everything thing we needed.

Inconvénients

Honestly the hardest part of Katana for us was getting correct daily counts from employees.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à Katana Cloud Inventory

Inconvénients

Katana is one of these SAAS that looks pretty and attractive on the surface only to hide the worst possible customer policy, pricing plans and billing methods i have encountered in 15 years of professionnal digital experience.

We are a small size company making ±1.5M€ in revenues. We choose Katana in 2021 as the functionalities at the time seemed to match our needs. The price was decent (199$ a month) and despite we felts like it was already quite a budget (±2400$ a year), we decided to subscribe.

For a few month, things have been relatively fine despite frequents technical issues (front end lags, data not updated, locked order status, ...). Then came reality.

Without a warning, Katana first increased the subscription to 349$. Ouch. You just lost 1800$ overnight. We really didn't appreciate that but all the manufacturing data of our company was inside Katana, our employees were trained and used to the software, so we swallowed the pill.

A few month later, the subscription was up to 899$. Yes you read that right. Again, without a warning, without getting approval, they just start to bill your payment card with 899$ every month. You just lost another 7800$ overnight (per year, 23400$ for 3 years usage).

Right there we have understood Katana trapped us. Katana's company hook you up with a sense of affordability only to charge astronomical price hikes whenever they feel like it.

Despite the fact that this is highly irregular and most certainly illegal and fraudulent at least in Europe, the break of trust and the leverage made over the customer data is disgusting.

Wait, it's not over yet ! Once you decided enough is enough and you can't give your data and your trust to a company acting like a MAFIA organisation, you migrate to another software (i really recommande MRPEasy for those wanting to leave or looking to a safe solution), and you cancel your subscription.

And surprise (or not) ! Katana tries by any mean to charge you with another 1 month subscription (899$) after your cancel it. An absolute disgraceful method to squeeze any $ left in your wallet.

The reality is that Katana is an highly unprofitable company established in Estonia that lost more than 7.5M$ for just 3.5M$ of revenues in 2022 (accounts are public, go check) and they desperately need to rebalance their accounts. They do not have that much customers, so they decided to go Kamikaze and raise prices until something breaks.

Obviously, this is exactly the kind of chaotic experience you want to avoid to your company and your staff. Any service looking remotely unsafe should be kept far away from you manufacturing process and Katana definitely is one of them. I am not the only one with that experience, check out the other reviews on Capterra.

(check how they will copy/paste a generic bullshit answer in the reply section, it will give you a sense of their level of concern ^^)

Avantages

Its very very easy to use. Having used other systems, like inFlow, it has refreshing clean visually cued interface. Its very satisfying to use.

Inconvénients

Very little - I would ask why they dont allow non-stock items to be a thing (we cant be the only ones!) - we have to make up that we have 1000s of imaginary non-stock items to keep the system happy. But its a tiny weeny gripe and has very little bearing on anything.

Avantages

As a small business, Solid Stash, with an annual turnover of approximately 300kEUR and handling around 3000 orders monthly, we initially chose Katana for its affordability and features. However, our journey with Katana has been increasingly disheartening, marked by unexpected and steep price hikes that have put our business in a challenging position.

Initially, we were content with a reasonable monthly fee of about 100 USD. This was manageable for a business of our scale. However, due to a change in Katana's billing rules related to sales order rows, we experienced our first major setback: an abrupt increase in our monthly fee to over 300 USD. This was a significant blow to our finances, but we reluctantly accepted it, hoping for cost stability in the future. We also anticipated the benefit of batch tracking, a feature crucial for our operations.

Our disappointment was further compounded when Katana introduced a new pricing structure. Not only did we face another hike in our monthly fee, but batch tracking, previously included, was now a separate add-on costing an additional 199 USD per month. This escalation meant our expenses on Katana's services skyrocketed from around 100 USD to over 500 USD monthly – a fivefold increase in just two years.

This pricing strategy feels like a trap. We initially invested in Katana, dedicating time and resources to set up and train our employees, only to find ourselves facing exorbitant fees that are unsustainable for a small business like ours. The lack of predictability in Katana's pricing is alarming. There's a constant fear that next year might bring another doubling of costs or a new, arbitrary billing metric.

We feel cornered and exploited. The assumption that the high switching costs will force us to accept these unreasonable increases is unfair and disrespectful to loyal customers. We are not just numbers on a spreadsheet; we are a small business striving to survive and grow.

We are making a sincere request to Katana: please reconsider your pricing strategy. We need stability and fairness in pricing. We made our initial investment based on the original pricing structure, and these drastic changes are not just a financial strain but also a breach of the trust we placed in Katana.

In conclusion, while Katana's software may offer certain operational benefits, their pricing policies are a source of major concern and disappointment. We urge potential customers to consider this aspect carefully before committing to Katana. The financial unpredictability and lack of consideration for small businesses in their pricing strategy are significant drawbacks that cannot be overlooked.

Inconvénients

Their extortionate pricing policies. Costs hiked fivefold over the last two years

Avantages

Before using Katana, I was doing everything manually. I can't express how reliant I have become on MRP software.

Inconvénients

They have increased prices by 523% since we started using this service. Bugs are ever-present, and they take existing features away to put behind a behind a paywall.

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

The user interface is pretty and nice to use, mostly
The concepts of scheduling and general "idea" behind the katana system are good

Inconvénients

The endless bugs and now pricing issues. No backup, no undo, and again, lots of bugs.

We regularly have to contact support with issues in their system. Most of the time the response is "oh we'll put it on our voting system, if it gets votes we'll fix it", which really is not what I expect from a system that costs several hundred dollars a month, before addons and users.

To be perfectly honest, we were making do - the pros of not having to build this kind of system ourselves outweighed the cons. That has now changed.

What triggered this review is that they doubled the price of our plan, turned off a number of features we were using to run our business operations, and charged us for "add-ons" all without warning. We did get sent an email, warning us of an upcoming change in billing (note this email was sent 28 days before the change...). That email said someone would reach out to us to discuss transitioning. That did not happen, and instead they just turned things off and billed our card for add-ons we never agreed to.

Forced onboarding (billable of course) with an "expert" is a bit of a joke

Avantages

It seemed simple. It didn't work as originally sold, but they did improve it throughout the first year.

Inconvénients

We THOUGHT it was going to be a good value. But after the first year, they took away functionality and doubled the price!

Avantages

Great user interface, very easily operable.

Inconvénients

Pricing is getting worse. Basic functions disappear and appear later as a paid add on for hefty monthly fee.

Avantages

Katana has multiple features which have very useful in improving our manufacturing processes. The ability to create recipes for each product has been a huge help for us as we have quite a lot of raw materials in each finished product.

The Shop Floor app has been brilliant for us to track production/assembly time more accurately. This has been a great help in pinpointing an accurate cost per unit.

Inconvénients

The only aspect that hasn't met our expectations so far has been the batch tracking feature. This is an excellent feature and one that would be so helpful for us. However, we need it to work automatically with our Shopify orders and at the moment sales orders can only be attributed to particular batches if you fulfil them on the Katana dashboard. We need this to happen automatically when our Shopify orders are fulfilled.

Avantages

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!

Inconvénients

Sometimes it slows in operation which is mildly annoying. This could probably be fixed with some more servers in our geographic region.

Avantages

Katana integrates with my Shopify Site very easily and makes bundling products on my Shopify so much easier to track.

We also make candles and kits in house. Katana makes tracking inventory so much easier allowing me to know without guess or counting my materials how much of any particular object I can produce at any given time.

Inconvénients

It would be nice if there were barcodes, but I hear feature is coming soon. It would also be nice if I sell out of an object that is apart of a bundle that it would then make the bundle unavailable on my shopify site. I believe this is also in the works.

Avantages

It is intuitive and easy to implement. I like that you can prioritize builds so if we are short on product I can customize which particular build for it to go to.

Inconvénients

I wish we could add materials to sales orders. Sometimes we sell different parts and it would be nice to add those to a sales order.

Avantages

I'm not sure what your situation is, but I was creating my POs and tracking how much of every component to order manually in Google Sheets. Yep, it was a pain. I tried a few competitor options, but they were designed in an awkward way; I needed to guess/lookup/read up. With Katana, my first day was already productive, and everything was intuitive. I even told my friend who is a UX/UI for Meta to go look at the only software that I like using (compared to the FB ads nightmare wormhole of dashboard:))

Inconvénients

Direct integration with Amazon would be nice. The route they have rn is through another app and it's another subscription price

Avantages

What i like the most about katana is Knowledge Base. it has answers to all questions and resourceful tutorial on how to manoeuvre the system.

Inconvénients

I am still very new to the system and I have currently not come across anything i least like about Katana

Avantages

One of the key benefits of katana manufacturing Erp is it's user-friendly interface. The platform is easy to navigate drag and drop functionality allows for a simplified production planning process.The platform offers real-time inventory tracking, allowing business to track the stock levels of their materials and profuct.Integration of platform of e-commerce

Inconvénients

Some users have reported issue with the accuracy of the platform inventory management system, particularly during inventoryrreconciliation. The platform Mey not be useful for complex manufacturing process

Avantages

That may not sound very exciting, but in my experience, it's not always a given that getting the features to work is straightforward. But Katana really is both powerful and yet pretty straightforward, although just BECAUSE it has a lot of facility, I would recommend the investment of a little time in watching some of the training videos, which are excellent. Once I'd done that, it was full steam ahead and everything fell beautifully into place. The integration with Xero was completely straightforward and works like a charm. I know that as we go forward and get more and more information into the system it will provide even more, very valuable information for us.

Inconvénients

I have only a couple of really minor niggles; I would prefer to be able to enter dates, rather than having to always pick them off a calendar (for someone who types fast, this slows me down). I'd also like it if when you are "making" a product, if all the components of that product's sub-assembly are available, the software would just go on down the line and automatically make right down to the lowest assembly level. But as I said, these are really minor and would not stop me from wholeheartedly recommending Katana.

Avantages

This software has a fantastic feel to make working in it incredibly efficient. As a person that works with software/web design/development, I can appreciate the attention paid to this incredibly complex platform.

Inconvénients

There isn't much we don't like. Most of the small things are already in the development cycle and they include small things like being able to customize Katana a bit more for our specific needs. Column order, custom fields, field mapping of API connections, etc.

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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 envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à Katana Cloud Inventory

Avantages

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

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

Ease of use
Set up
Customer service
Ability to integrate

Inconvénients

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

Avantages

This makes our manufacturing process so easy, our orders come in via shopify and go straight into Katana. The time it saves us is amazing.

Inconvénients

We would still like to be able to add images to products, this was something we asked for in the early days and were assured it would happen, but not happened to date.

Avantages

It can be merclged with many other softwares i use

Inconvénients

Only one user per acount at any time is annoying