Katana Manufacturing ERP Review: Features & Pricing for 2023

Katana integrates with QuickBooks Online and Xero for accounting. Since Katana is a manufacturing ERP, it doesn’t come with built-in accounting features. With an integration in place, QuickBooks Online or Xero can automatically create invoices and bills based on the statuses. Upon integration, Katana will ask you to map the ledger accounts for sales orders, bills, cost of goods sold (COGS), and inventory.

After setup, everything will be automatic. Once you create a sales order within Katana, it will feed sales order data automatically to QuickBooks Online or Xero and record an invoice. Creating POs will also create bills in your accounting software automatically.

Katana makes it easy for users to make POs from the MO screen. This feature allows you to create POs in case some materials aren’t available easily. Alternatively, you can create POs from the Buy window (see image below).

Creating a Purchase Order

Items in the PO are reflected in Expected units in the Stock screen. Whenever you make a PO, you’ll see how many units are expected to arrive so that you get a full picture of what’s yet to come once the order arrives.

Katana uses the moving average method of inventory costing. It means that inventory cost per unit will be updated after every purchase or completion of productions. Katana computes average cost by dividing value in stock, such as dollar amount of inventory, by the total units of stock. The value in stock is the sum of all MO costs. Since each MO may have different total costs due to fluctuations in prices or usage of raw materials, these differences get buried in the average cost.

Since usage of materials and labor affect inventory cost, Katana has a feature within the sales order that asks for the planned and actual usage. Initially, Katana will pull out information based on the bill of materials that contains the standard units and hours per product. However, in the event of over usage or overtime in manufacturing, you may place the actual usage within the sales order. Katana will update the cost of inventory automatically.

Upon delivery and sale of products, Katana will carry the moving average cost as the COGS. This feature is a big plus because Katana automates the computation of inventory costs and COGS. With the QuickBooks Online and Xero integration, you can sync inventory balance from Katana and update COGS balance in the ledger.

Katana has a shop floor feature that lets your workers see and start working on MOs. Once you create an MO and assign it to a shop floor operator, the MO will appear on the operator’s shop floor app. The app is web-based, and you need to access it via a web browser. There is no dedicated mobile app that you can download from an app store.

Web-based Shop Floor App of Katana

Katana recommends using a tablet instead of a smartphone for the shop floor app. Through it, operators can start, pause, and finish MOs assigned to them. Other operators will also see the status of each MO when they view the app. You can also set default operators for a specific task. Once you create an MO, Katana will automatically assign operators if a certain task is included in the MO. Hence, you can skip manually assigning tasks to operators.

Yes, Katana is a manufacturing ERP—but it’s not a full ERP system. Katana’s features showcase only inventory and manufacturing management. A full ERP system includes accounting, customer relationship management, human resources (HR), supply chain, and inventory management.

Manufacturing ERPs like Katana help manufacturers automate and streamline operations. They remove redundancies and bottlenecks, such as tasks assignment and resource planning, through automations and workflows. As a small manufacturer, manufacturing ERP can make operations management easier on the production floor and production control.