Katana Cloud Manufacturing reviews

The best for small manufacturing

Pluspunten:

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.

Minpunten:

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

The MRP system I wish I'd always had

Opmerkingen: Katana's awesome, full stop. I've been working with manufacturing businesses for years, and for years I've lamented Xero's relatively weak inventory management system. Two years ago I tried literally every MRP app I could find to plugin to Xero; they were all pretty bad. Along comes Katana, which maybe was around earlier but was "new to me" just this year, and ... wow. Mostly, it Just Works. The Xero integration works seamlessly for bills and sales orders, which speeds AP/AR quite a bit. 90% of the tool's value is outside of Xero though, and I now have a permanently-pinned Katana tab in my browser for tracking everything in the production flow from raw materials purchasing, to production, to sale, to reconciliation of remaining materials and product stock. It's great. Is it perfect? Not quite. They need to do some performance work, as load times are often a little sluggish. Also, it would be nice to see finer-grained automation, and better contact syncing. But overall, I'm delighted.

Pluspunten:

- 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.

Minpunten:

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

Katana is great!

Pluspunten:

The set up and use of Katana is super easy and user friendly! The online resources they provide are incredibly helpful. I found the Katana Academy videos the most helpful.

Minpunten:

Katana does not provide a way to "waste" products, however I know that Katana is currently working on implementing a program to do this. The only true complaint is that it doesn't support fractions. Our products are divided into 12 and when inputting the "recipes and boms" 1 is not divisible by 12 evenly. This makes us have to stock adjust to get proper inventory counts.

Very poor MRP overrated in reviews, with good service

Opmerkingen: Very easy to start. Lack of a lot of important functionalities by the time of use. Overpriced by the functions provided.

Pluspunten:

Customer Service and easy to use at the beginning

Minpunten:

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

New User

Opmerkingen: Customer service has been outstanding to help me learn features and problem solve. Very friendly and helpful!

Pluspunten:

The software is very easy to use and I like the automatic saving feature but also able to edit transactions as well.

Minpunten:

I would like to be able to process payments through eCommerce in Katana, those need to be done manually.

Met our needs at beginning, as needs grew Katana team listened and added features

Opmerkingen: We maintain about 1500-2000 SKUS and all assemblers work at home. Some do different steps, returning work weekly and then having it distributed to the next person. Giving every MO an actual number has kept every bag of parts and supplies organized. We can track who has it, where it's at in the manufacturing process, etc. Even though we have used Katana since January, it's the last 3 months that it's really proven it's value to us. We do not use it for order fulfillment, just in-house manufacturing. But it's allowed us to prep for holiday season from July forward and stay completely organized and efficient. No more "where-did-it-go" or "how-many-have-we-prepped" frantic moments. We began the year knowing we needed a software that "fit" our company's size and our needs. Katana has proven invaluable for our company this year. We are currently doing our first complete inventory and we hope to add these numbers to Katana in 2020 and continue to improve our efficiency.

Pluspunten:

The ability to use Resources as a way to assign a specific person to each task so I can see who is working on what step of the manufacturing process and the allotted time they are provided for the task. This year we went from contract labor/paid-per-piece to employees/hourly-wage and Katana has made this a much smoother transition then it could have been. Having both "cost-per-piece" for assembly of items as well as "cost-per-minute" has given us the ability to compare former payment procedures with what to expect per hour from employees.

Minpunten:

There are a variety of tasks that were unable to be done when we began using Katana in January 2019 but I am thrilled to say that most of them have been developed. The developers listen and are very attentive to requests, bug reports, and ideas and so despite the fact that some of the features were not available (exporting reports, importing recipes, bulk print MOs/pick lists, etc.) they have added these and the software continues to grow. The next feature I'd love to see is the ability to have a product photo attached to each product that prints out an image with the MO. Also, we have some items "on hold" (not sent to distribution center yet) and we use Resources to specify ONHOLD-BIN221 etc. to know the status of any particular SKU completed. We'd prefer not to use different locations, but rather have the ability to add a couple more "status" options. Either a misc or a custom. For now, everything on hold gets marked BLOCKED status and then the Resource is used to say it's on hold in whatever bin.

Food Manufacturing ERP system

Opmerkingen: So far the experience has been very good. I have had a few issues with the initial implementation fee which is mandatory and in my opinion expensive for what you get. I do receive some feedback, but sometimes it takes a while to receive it.

Pluspunten:

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.

Minpunten:

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.

good overall

Opmerkingen: Good. bit of a learning curve

Pluspunten:

manufacturing and inventory management.integration with quick books

Minpunten:

cannot move existing s.o. to quote or canceled status.

thanks for the support! great company

Opmerkingen: inventory management

Pluspunten:

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

Minpunten:

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

Taking my manufacturing business to a new level of efficiency and control.

Opmerkingen: It is very good, it allows me to have a complete vision of my business and make informed decisions based on the updated data.

Pluspunten:

It's great because with this platform, I have the ability to efficiently manage my inventory, work orders, scheduling and tracking, very good all in one place.

Minpunten:

I think they could improve is in the flexibility of customization. Although it offers a wide range of features, sometimes I would like to be able to further customize certain aspects according to the specific needs of my business.

Great choice for small manufacturer

Opmerkingen: I tried several different MRPs before settling with Katana. Some were too clunky, others too expensive, complicated and elaborate. I felt a bit like Goldilocks. Katana was just right. Reasonably priced. Integrating with Quickbooks and Shopify was simple and efficient. The set up was fast. I no longer have to duplicate data entry onto multiple systems. This saves me times and I don't lose track of orders or inventory. I especially like the instant chat feature with their customer service reps. I can leave a quick message or screenshot of a problem and within a day or so, I have a response back and my problem resolved. No need to hire an expensive consultant, anyone could set up Katana and run it.

Pluspunten:

Very simple user-interface Was able to set it up quickly and efficiently Continual feature upgrades Simple integration with Shopify & QuickBooks Very responsive customer service Detailed, but not overwhelming

Minpunten:

The upload from Excel was clunky and not helpful. It was faster to just enter in the data directly. There are features I look forward to having but that are not currently available. I know their team will be releasing them in the next year.

Katana Make Production Visible

Opmerkingen: It has been a very positive experience, putting joy in my work.

Pluspunten:

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.

Minpunten:

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

Brilliant System

Opmerkingen: Frees up time. Accurate stock levels. Easily see where in the manufacturing process a job is

Pluspunten:

Brilliant. Katana has transformed how we managed stock and control manufacturing. The best part is it is simple without unwanted extras that take as much time to maintain as a manual system. Katana is efficient and fast. Integrates well with Xero and Shopify. Highly recommended.

Minpunten:

AMobile App would be brilliant but not essential

Smooth Operator

Opmerkingen: It has been great, highly recommend for small to medium business. Very user friendly!

Pluspunten:

Katana has made our day to day business so much more fluid and stress free. It was easy to build out the product lines, upload product sku's and flip the switch on going live. Game changer!

Minpunten:

On the production schedule front, hoping that the software will eventually lump all the tasks together, I have multiple consumers that order the same item, each order is its own line item instead of being lumped into a group, so our production team needs to scrub the tasks before production starts as to make sure they capture each item, as to not create redunancy in work.

Love the functionality!

Pluspunten:

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

Minpunten:

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.

Perfect choice for small manufacturing company

Opmerkingen: We are a starting up printing company which has been looking for a fast learning curve solution to manage our manufacturing and supply chain data. Katana turned out to be a perfect match for us.

Pluspunten:

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

Minpunten:

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

Does everything it says it will

Opmerkingen: Like Xero, it's simple but powerful - what's not to like about that?! The support is friendly and helpful (despite only being available online) and the training videos are really well presented and easy to follow. A really good software implementation experience.

Pluspunten:

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.

Minpunten:

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.

Great for small but growing handmade biz!

Pluspunten:

Just completed the free 14 day trial of Katana and have now begun a paid subscription. It took a few days and a bit of frustration to manually add all our products, ingredients, recipes, and current pending wholesale orders from outside of shopify, but having the shopify integration helped a lot. We use three different wholesale platforms (Faire, tundra & Abound), none of which offer automated third party integrations, so we knew we’d have to manually input orders and Katana serves that purpose as our centralized dashboard to see what needs to go out, when, from which platform, if we have it in stock, when we can make it, etc. In two weeks, we’ve already seen an increase in production efficiency and decrease in wholesale turnaround times now that EVERYTHING is being tracked in one place. Highly recommend Katana if you’re a maker, it’s never too early to implement automated systems in your biz!

Minpunten:

Glitches with accurate purchase prices showing up in overall product list. Described it to customer service and they denied it being a problem. That’s the only problem I’ve encountered so far. Tbh on customer support quality.

Simple but Effective Inventory Management

Opmerkingen: We've saved countless manhours on tracking inventory. It also makes purchasing decisions a lot easier, with the ability to know at a glance how much of each product you need to buy.

Pluspunten:

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

Minpunten:

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

Streamline Any Business With KATANA

Opmerkingen: The customer service is honestly the best customer service I have ever experienced. They are quick to respond, clear at explaining, very knowledgeable of the software, and great to work with. Rep even made me videos walking me through the parts of the process that were hanging me up.

Pluspunten:

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

Minpunten:

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.

It's a good start

Pluspunten:

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.

Minpunten:

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.

Easy to use and helpful

Pluspunten:

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.

Minpunten:

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.

Easy to use, helps tremendously with inventory management.

Opmerkingen: Inventory management, orders, sales, everything in general.

Pluspunten:

The dashboard is simple to understand and use. It makes purchases, sells, orders so much easier to manage. The team behind Katana is exceptional. They are quick to answer and always ready to help. Integration from shopify was easy.

Minpunten:

The length of time it took to setup in the beginning because the app was lacking a unit conversion which they have since fixed.

Katana is great for inventory management and manufactury planing.

Pluspunten:

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

Minpunten:

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

There are many shortcomings with this software

Opmerkingen: Manufacturing process

Pluspunten:

Ease of use, easy to implement and overall ease of use

Minpunten:

Shortcomings, bugs, and ever-changing pricing models