Katana Cloud Inventory Reviews

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

MRPeasy, NetSuite and Zoho Inventory

Reasons for Switching to Katana Cloud Inventory

It's easier to use, it's priced right, and it gives you what you need without a bunch of stuff you don't. Perfectly tailored for SMB/SME manufacturers.

Pros

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

Cons

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.

Cons

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 ^^)

Alternatives Considered

MRPeasy

Reasons for Choosing Katana Cloud Inventory

Unacceptable prices hikes and commercial policy. Unsafe company.

Switched From

MRPeasy

Pros

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.

Cons

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

Pros

Great user interface, very easily operable.

Cons

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

Pros

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

Cons

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.

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

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

Cons

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

Alternatives Considered

MRPeasy

Pros

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

Cons

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

Pros

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:))

Cons

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

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Alternatives Considered

Cin7 Core

Reasons for Switching to Katana Cloud Inventory

Katana was much more suited to our needs in terms of the receipt creation features for each product. The interface was also much simpler than the alternative products we considered.

Pros

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!

Cons

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

Pros

I love this software because of the ease of use and the workflow methodology. The drill down ability for stock and manufactured items are great. We have managed to get a lot more information on staff productivity through exporting complete manufacture orders data and reporting. I also love it that support is real and that I now know some of the team personally. They answer queries fast and efficiently.

Cons

All the current issues I have are in development.
For example:
1. Adding landing costs to purchase order items
2. Multi Currency
3. Back Order information

Alternatives Considered

Unleashed

Reasons for Switching to Katana Cloud Inventory

We were using Evolution at the time and were really struggling to get real-time data. We converted to XERO as an accounting package but needed stronger manufacturing software. A friend recommended Katana and after a demo at her office, and a online real-time demo with [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] at Katana, I was sold. (It was impossible to get a demo that suited my schedule from the other app's we considered. That already made me very concern) We decided on Katana and am glad to see their dedication and growth as a company.

Pros

I loved the user interface and the ease of working with the system. The system is very intuitive and with the instructional videos you can pretty much pick up the basics very quickly. I love the way that you can upload information through Excel and the system is flexible with the upload. Also the seamless integration with Quickbooks online is very nice.

Cons

One of the features that is missing, but they are working on it, is sales forecasting by SKU. This would be a great feature to add as it will allow us to add our expected sales for each SKU and have the system forecast demand. Another issue is when you have a price rule for a client in QuickBooks Katana has no way to see this, so when the invoice is pushed to QuickBooks you have to go through each individual line to accept the price rule. Not a game changer, but a bit of a hassle.

Pros

it was easy to set up the team helped me a lot

Cons

it was a easy set up i did not have anything i did not like

Pros

It can be merclged with many other softwares i use

Cons

Only one user per acount at any time is annoying

Pros

We like having the ability to make manufacture orders so everyone involved can see what's been planned and when it's due. The ability to prioritize orders is very helpful for assigning inventory.

Cons

Identifying products that are ready to ship on each order is cumbersome. Our customer service team has to click individually into each order to see if any items are ready to ship. There's no way to easily flip to the next order. You have to close that window & click on the next order. It would be nice if you could at least toggle between orders within an order window. We'd also love to see some kind of drop down or hover-over feature that would quickly show you if partial shipments are available.

Pros

- easiness of navigation and implementation
- support
- the colour coding

Cons

- not sure how to upload documents
- not being able to add multiple sale and purchase accounts
- not being able to ship partial sale orders

Alternatives Considered

Fishbowl

Reasons for Choosing Katana Cloud Inventory

too hard to navigate/ implement/ support etc

Switched From

JobBOSS²

Reasons for Switching to Katana Cloud Inventory

overall feel and easiness of allocation

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

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

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

Ease of use
Set up
Customer service
Ability to integrate

Cons

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

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

PROS:

- really easy to use, great interface

- support is responsive, although we didn't have much need for support thanks to a very thorough and detailed knowledge base

- reasonably priced compared to other inventory management systems

- good integrations with Shopify, Quickbooks, etc

- it made inventory tracking a lot easier for us as a manufacturer. The manhours saved on doing Excel updates to inventory would definitely cost more if you run complex operations

Cons

CONS:

- Integration with Quickbooks is a little iffy if you don't login to Quickbooks beforehand

- It doesn't have a multicurrency feature for purchase orders (when you buy inventory in a currency different from your main currency)

- It's not easy to account for freight costs in the costs of buying raw materials

- You can't work in 2 browser tabs without paying for 2 users, this can be a little frustrating

Pros

I love the deep inventory tracking and that it feels like a modern app. Inventory software is typically painful to use, and Katana is a breeze. I love that Shopify sales are automatically imported and function live with Shopify, so when you fulfil an order in Shopify it automatically fulfils it in Katana. The Quickbooks integration makes generating invoices simple. You only have to do things once when you use Katana, there's no need to fill in the same info in different services over and over. Tracking inventory in Katana in multiple locations, and being able to include the ingredients of each product in the tracking is also a plus.

Cons

When creating purchase orders, it can generate a Bill in Quickbooks. This is helpful, however I'd love to be able to create a Purchase Order in QB so that I can simply track them all.