Katana Manufacturing ERP

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.

Overwogen alternatieven: DEAR Systems en Odoo

Redenen om voor Katana Manufacturing ERP te kiezen: ease of use and training of users

Overgestapt van: DEAR Systems

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.

Overwogen alternatieven: MRPeasy, NetSuite en Zoho Inventory

Redenen om over te stappen op Katana Manufacturing ERP: 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.

Promised so much delivered far short of what we hoped

Opmerkingen: Disappointed. They are pretending this software is the best thing since sliced bread and its more like a stale baguette.

Pluspunten:

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

Minpunten:

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.

Overwogen alternatieven: MRPeasy

Redenen om voor Katana Manufacturing ERP te kiezen: In the middle of the switch but it seams to offer far more options and cross capability.

Overgestapt van: Odoo

A critical piece of our business that we can't live without

Opmerkingen: I love it. I've had great interactions with everyone on the team, and I can tell they want to help me succeed. Thanks Katana!

Pluspunten:

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

Minpunten:

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.

Intuitive, Fast To Implement, and Beautifully Designed

Pluspunten:

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).

Minpunten:

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.

Overwogen alternatieven: Fishbowl, MRPeasy en ERPAG

Redenen om over te stappen op Katana Manufacturing ERP: 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.