Katana Cloud Inventory Erfahrungen

Vorteile

- 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.

Nachteile

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

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

MRPeasy, NetSuite und Zoho Inventory

Gründe für den Wechsel zu 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.

Vorteile

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).

Nachteile

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.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

MRPeasy und ERPAG

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Katana Cloud Inventory

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.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

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!

Nachteile

There aren't many, if any things we've come up against yet that Katana didn't support.

Nachteile

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 ^^)

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

MRPeasy

Warum Katana Cloud Inventory gewählt wurde

Unacceptable prices hikes and commercial policy. Unsafe company.

Zuvor genutzte Software

MRPeasy

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

Great value, probably the only affordable cloud solution on the market

Nachteile

It's a great piece of software for data entry. Not so great when it comes to using that data to run your business. No dashboards or views that provide insights. They've solved for this by integrating with Easy-Insight and Stocktrim. Now that those are in place, I'm completely satisfied.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

A more complete inclusion of customer information from Shopify would be useful.

Vorteile

Customer Service and easy to use at the beginning

Nachteile

It appears to be that the designers and programmers have never worked in a company. *No discounts or price difeerentiation*Lack of point of sales*Very low scanning functionality*Not differentiated user rights*No history of document changes*Buggy

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Odoo

Warum Katana Cloud Inventory gewählt wurde

Quickbooks Integration

Zuvor genutzte Software

Odoo

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Katana Cloud Inventory

Quickbooks Online integration, easy to use, (appear to be fake) good reviews

Vorteile

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

Nachteile

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.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

MRPeasy

Warum Katana Cloud Inventory gewählt wurde

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

Zuvor genutzte Software

Odoo

Vorteile

The software is very intuitive, meaning everything is in a logical space. The flow between areas works well and we love the ability to be able to customise the quote templates now.

Nachteile

Haven't found anything as yet, had a few bugs but they mainly seem to be cache related.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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

Vorteile

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

Nachteile

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

Vorteile

Great inventory management software for the price.

Nachteile

Wish it worked better with other programs. We use Extensive for almost all other plugins. Also, wish it had a way to track cutting programs.

Vorteile

The software has the **potential** to be good.

Nachteile

There are only 2 user levels "Superusers" with access to all levels of creative and destructive features, and warehouse operators, with access to make to BOM instructions. The lack of "sales team" and other intemediate levels of access is a killer.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

Cloud integration and nice User Interface.

Nachteile

- 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.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

NetSuite

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Katana Cloud Inventory

Price.

Vorteile

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

Nachteile

My only issue is that it is slightly expensive for a small company.

Vorteile

I have been operating my business using excel, xero, monday.com and email. After searching for a system that could centralise my focus I came across Katana which in essence consolidates all the previous mentioned systems into one interface which saves me a tonne of time.

secondly the customer support, I have had a lengthy skype call with Hannes who is a founder of Katana where by he provided a demo session of how the software will be suitable for my business needs. I really valued to the bespoke service which ensured I got off to the right start.

Nachteile

The intergration to Xero is in development but this has been the most noteable con to date, that said Katana is working on this and it should be available shortly

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

This product is so easy to us. Once it is set up, it tracks your inventory very well, and the integrations with Woocommerce and Xero are excellent add ons as well. I would recommend to anybody

Nachteile

The pricing is a bit on the expensive side. As it is invoiced in $US, I don't have a fixed price each month, as it is subject to currency fluctuations, because I do not live in the US.

Vorteile

It takes some time to set up and deploy, but once it's running, its super helpful! Its very easy to generate POs, update stock levels, and track sales and make orders. All the function without the bloated junk that expensive and advanced MRP systems have.

Nachteile

I wish there was a way to have a negative stock variant (a single product that represents a product subtraction rather than having to make a full copy of a product recipe minus that one single item).
I wish there was a way to group materials without having to create a separate product for them. Each product will generate a separate make order, but sometimes Its not actually something that can be made individually, it just represents all the parts that make up an assembly. There is currently no way to make a group of materials that does not become its own product that the system thinks needs to be made as its own inventory item.

Vorteile

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!

Nachteile

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