Katana Cloud Inventory Erfahrungen

Vorteile

KatanaMRP has really helped me know what to order, and when to order it, as well as plan what comes next in manufacturing. It even lets me add time to tasks in production so I can monetarily make sure employees are being efficient enough for my company to remain profitable.

Definitely recommend. I wish I would have found them sooner.

Nachteile

Sometimes the app logs me out and I have to put the information in twice.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Odoo

Warum Katana Cloud Inventory gewählt wurde

ease of use and training of users

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Dynamics 365 und Sage 100

Warum Katana Cloud Inventory gewählt wurde

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).

Zuvor genutzte Software

Dynamics 365 und Sage 100

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Katana Cloud Inventory

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

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 ease of use, as compared to larger MRP systems, helps keep the team on track.

Nachteile

There are some missing features - custom fields, tiered pricing, etc.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

MRPeasy

Zuvor genutzte Software

NetSuite

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Katana Cloud Inventory

Ease of use, API integration

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.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Orderhive

Gründe für den Wechsel zu 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.

Vorteile

Ease of use, support, inventory management features, able to create builds/recipes for products (BOM), ability to upload data using Excel, integration with Quickbooks Online

Nachteile

Cost, certain features do not make sense in the implementation.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Zoho CRM, QuickBooks Online Advanced und QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Katana Cloud Inventory

Ease of use and the features. And it looks good.

Vorteile

Ease of Use
Easy Implementation
Customer Service
Reorder Options

Nachteile

I wouldn't say this is a con- but we are really excited for the bar code scanning option they plan to roll out in 2021!

Vorteile

I love the simplicity of Katana and the ease of inventory management. This software has saved us so much time and offers way more than other products we looked into. For a small business with lots of moving parts and inventory to manage, Katana makes everything a breeze.

Nachteile

N/a, Katana meets and exceeds all our needs!

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Odoo und Zoho Inventory

Warum Katana Cloud Inventory gewählt wurde

Zoho was consistently inaccurate and needed to to work with other Zoho products for full functionality.

Zuvor genutzte Software

Zoho Inventory

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Katana Cloud Inventory

Gave us everything that we needed.

Vorteile

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

Nachteile

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

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

ERPNext

Warum Katana Cloud Inventory gewählt wurde

Easy, simple and focus on MRP.

Zuvor genutzte Software

Odoo

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Katana Cloud Inventory

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

Vorteile

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!

Nachteile

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

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

This software is very user friendly compared to some other, more detailed programs.

Nachteile

I had some issue with the conversions during the product builds, so I am not sure if you could have multiple conversions for a product.

Vorteile

+ Simplicity. Probably most intuitive specialized software I've used.
+ Price structure. Very affordable for us.
+ Customer support.

Nachteile

- Lack of some "nice to have features". But, it's another side of simplicity and affordability, right?

Vorteile

It's helped us streamline inventory management, manufacturing orders and inventory orders. Highly recommend!

Nachteile

It was a significantly more money than what we were paying with our old system but the extra money has been so worth it for us.

Vorteile

Very easy to use without cluttered interface. This was my biggest selling point when comparing Katana to other similar products. Everything is so well organised and easy to glance over, while still offering nearly everything that I need for myself.

I also like that any changes in the inventory are immediately reflected in open orders. This is true for everything that I've used so far; as soon as I make a change in one area, it instantly reflects in all others as well.

Nachteile

I'm missing one feature, but it's more due to the specific nature of my business. It would be great if I could organize my inventory not just by total combined weight, but broken down into individual units as well.

For example, if my order requires 500g of plastic in one piece, but I have two separate pieces of 250g each, Katana will show that I have enough resources, even though I can't fill my order since I need one unbroken piece.

I've already got in touch with their support about this and they've said my request was put on their wish list, so I'm fairly confident it will eventually get implemented.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

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

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

Nachteile

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

Vorteile

The ability to streamline production, inventory and invoicing is a huge time saver and really helps with organization. I feel it is a great value for the money that you are spending and it

Nachteile

There is quite a bit of setup to get everything up and running and everything really functions together. This is not Katana's fault and they really have made it easy. Once everything (materials, products, production recipes) are set up, it runs like a charm.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

The UX and UI of app. Literaly everyone n our team is able to work with Katana how it is simply.

Nachteile

Not very often but sometimes app kick me out and I have to log in again.

Vorteile

The fact that Katana is always available and so easy to navigate with saves time.
Our requests for new features like back order handling, serial number tracking and multi currency and warehousing some of them already implemented and some coming soon.
The fact that we response fairly quickly on questions that we have submitted.

Nachteile

It was probably moving over from a well known package like Pastel Evolution to something not familiar to me; but the transition was seamless.

Vorteile

I really like that I'm able to save my product's SOPs and can easily find them when I need to make more! It is very handy to have that feature. I also enjoy that after I have made the product, I can add the inventory through a stock adjustment. It's a very simple process that is not convoluted. Big fan!

Nachteile

The only thing that I don't love is when I am doing a stock adjustment I have to do the math on each item to get it to the correct total. For example: If I start the week with 35 of a specific item and throughout the week, say, 17 get purchased, when I do inventory and account for that, I have to use the calculator to figure out 35 -17 = correct total. And I have to do that math for each individual item.