Get total visibility and optimize your inventory with Katana
We wanted an accurate inventory system for batch planning, warehousing, and sales. Katana fulfills all our needs in a simple, easy solution.”
Irah Vet
Founder and Production Manager at Hornby Organic
It’s great to be able to see where inventory faults happen and being able to fulfill orders and where the turnaround happens.”
Alaina Oehrlein
Production Lead at Essence One
Katana’s bill of materials (BOM) is a tremendous help. Integrations with Shopify and Xero also play a big role in business management, and we can now manage both B2B and B2C orders with greater ease.”
Nadia Hussain
Supply Chain Manager at Raw Coffee Company
That was one thing that was very difficult to manage was raw material inventory — for example, how many black t-shirts do I need to order? That was the main reason why we selected Katana.”
Lisa Diep
Chief Operating Officer (COO) at Peace Collective
Reduce the time spent on manual inventory management tasks
Every manufacturer knows that spreadsheets and paper-based inventory tracking are both time-consuming to work with and prone to human error.
Katana’s app for Shopify enables you to automate manual inventory tasks. For example, when an order is placed in Shopify, the required inventory (materials, products) is automatically booked for the order and stock levels are always synced back to Shopify in real time. You can also set reorder points to know when to buy more materials and keep production moving.
These solutions — and multiple integrations that can be connected to Katana in minutes — enable you to cut admin and lead time.
Find options to implement inventory forecasting into your business
The first step in forecasting inventory is to gather accurate data of your production processes and sales.
This can be done by analyzing sales orders or other data reports that can be generated via our reporting integrations. Efficient inventory forecasting will ensure you have enough stock to fulfill customer demand without having too much inventory that strains your flexibility and cash flow.
Katana’s synchronized data tracking continuously collects information of your sales. You can use this data to generate custom reports via our integrations.
Katana’s Shopify integration ensures data synchronization
Direct-to-consumer (D2C) manufacturers on Shopify often struggle with managing and syncing sales data between their manufacturing software and e-commerce store.
Katana’s Shopify integration allows you to manage sales and production in one place — it also makes it easy to track inventory across multiple locations, both online and offline.
Katana manufacturing ERP is also a certified Shopify app that is well-known across the manufacturing industry and continuously used by thousands of production managers and sales managers. Read their reviews here.
Inventory planning is deciding exactly how much inventory you need and when to order and it involves forecasting demand. When done successfully, this helps companies meet demand whilst reducing expenditure.
In other words, by having just the right amount of inventory at the right time and in the right location, businesses can:
- Reduce the overall cost of storing merchandise
- Optimize inventory allocation routes
- Make sure there is always the right amount of stock to meet customer demand
Using a Shopify inventory planner can help you make smart business decisions.
Implementing inventory planner for forecasting equips you with knowledge and data you need to stay profitable. You will know exactly what, when, and how much to reorder — and to which warehouse. Data enables you to prioritize purchasing and production decisions, and optimizing inventory becomes second nature in your everyday job.
Yes, it does. The Shopify Fulfillment Network (SFN) tool offers demand forecasting based on data from your Shopify store.
However, SFN doesn’t equip you with real-time inventory management, batch tracking, automated inventory transactions, or barcode scanning. It requires constant input and reviews your inventory demand based on sales history and upcoming promotions.
You can connect Shopify and Katana by logging into Katana and heading over to Settings > Integrations.
You can also connect multiple Shopify stores to your Katana account if needed. Multiple Shopify stores can be connected to your Katana account only if you created a Katana account directly from our webpage and connected the first Shopify store from within Katana (not from Shopify App Store).
Accurate inventory forecasts give you data to track your sales. There are four methods you can use for inventory forecasting:
- Qualitative forecasting
- Quantitative forecasting
- Sales trends forecasting
- Graphical forecasting
Each method comes with perks and cons, but we recommend quantitative forecasting for manufacturers. This method draws data from previous sales, historical inventory trends, surplus stock volumes trends, and seasonality trends.
Since Katana enables data tracking, you can start building your own inventory forecasting system and later connect to reporting tools like Easy Insight.
