Download Katana’s free Excel inventory template for small manufacturers
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Managing your business with inventory spreadsheets is a great solution, until you start growing
You can’t track production in real time with inventory spreadsheets
Inventory spreadsheets and templates are static, but your inventory is not. And the more products you manufacture, the more efficient you need to be. At some stage, an Excel inventory spreadsheet will take more time to update than the time it was intended to save you and your team.
Manufacturing resource planning (MRP) software tracks the movement of materials and goods from production to sales, giving you the live insights you need to manage your inventory without the risk of corrupted inventory spreadsheets. Katana helps thousands of manufacturers track their inventory. Try it for 14 days free.
Replace Excel inventory templates with a real-time master planner
While an inventory template can support your product recipes and bill of materials (BOM), inventory spreadsheets won’t get you very far when creating complex products that require subassembly BOMs. The same applies if you are in an industry where batch tracking is essential.
Real-time master production planning software like Katana streamlines your manufacturing processes as they become more complex. Instead of manually updating an inventory spreadsheet, Katana automatically allocates available raw materials and finished products to fulfill orders and prioritizes your production schedule accordingly.
Aligning your team with inventory spreadsheets is a challenge
Getting total task-level control of your production line and sales employees is tricky with inventory templates. While an inventory spreadsheet is great for a team of one or two, the more people making edits and updates to your file, the higher the possibility of mistakes occurring — not to mention all the administrative work.
In short, Excel inventory spreadsheets are not a scalable inventory management system. Both in terms of the time it takes to keep them up to date and the degree of complexity they can help you as a manufacturer. Moving away from inventory spreadsheets is eventually a must, but luckily, manufacturing software can help.
Why make Excel inventory spreadsheets
when you can make products
LIVE INVENTORY MANAGEMENT
The inventory optimization and control you need
Keep track of materials and product stock to avoid stock-outs
- Get total inventory control for finished products and raw materials
- Automate inventory transactions and set reorder points to prevent stock-outs
- Track on-hand, committed, and expected stock amounts in real-time
- Manage product variants and materials in one place
- Monitor your inventory across multiple warehouses Use barcodes to receive stock
REAL-TIME MASTER PLANNING
Production, scheduling, and
resource management in one place
Gain real-time visibility to optimize all your key resources.
- Make accurate manufacturing and purchasing decisions with live data
- Ensure optimal inventory levels at all times
- Prioritize production based on raw material availability
- Get task-level control for effective shop floor management
- Automate manufacturing cost calculations based on your bill of materials and operations
TOTAL SHOP FLOOR CONTROL
Floor-level control from scheduling to task prioritization
Use the Shop Floor App to align sales and production
- Send tasks to the app according to product operations for incoming manufacturing orders
- Assign and reassign jobs to operators who can start, pause, and resume tasks to keep you up to date on production
- View manufacturing order task and ingredient list for every task in the app
- Track time spent on tasks to optimize shop floor activities
- View resource consumption with live material tracking
- Add notes to manufacturing orders to be displayed for related tasks
- Scan barcodes with any smart device to monitor material usage and track batches and products
OMNICHANNEL ORDER MANAGEMENT
Unified B2B and e-commerce sales order management
Sync your sales channels for optimal order fulfillment
- Track the availability of required products for sales orders
- Drag-and-drop order priorities according to material availability and delivery deadlines
- Choose to make to order or fulfill from available product stock
- Identify delivery delay risks and reprioritize to boost efficiency
- Sync sales orders from multiple channels into a single dashboard
- Select and use multiple currencies to automatically convert sales order values
END-TO-END TRACEABILITY
Tracing for batches, materials, expiry dates, and more
Keep an eye on your inventory beyond the warehouse
- End-to-end traceability for materials and products with batch tracking
- Track the expiry date of items and stay in control of expiring stock
- Autogenerate batch and internal barcodes
- Quickly locate items across multiple warehouses, giving all teams access to the same live data
- Trace faulty batches, materials, and products from materials to sold goods for effective quality assurance and recalls
PRODUCTION PLANNING
Routing and matrix BOMs for your variable products
Automate the reallocation of materials based on priorities you set
- Drag-and-drop priorities for manufacturing tasks
- Track availability for required materials for efficient sales order fulfillment
- Identify delay risks related to material supply lead times
- Get accurate expected completion dates to keep sales teams informed
- Have a live floor-level production status overview
PURCHASE ORDER MANAGEMENT
Granular purchase order tracking for maximum visibility
Avoid stock-outs and keep your teams and products moving
- Ensure on-time purchasing based on clear material requirements
- Know when to purchase missing raw materials from suppliers
- Update your inventory to reflect when purchase orders were received in parts
- Track delay risks in your supply chain to keep all teams informed
- Select and use multiple currencies to automatically convert purchase order values
ACCURATE COSTING
Real-time reliable costing made easy
Ensure accuracy with costing features built for precision
- Track manufacturing costs based on your bill of materials (BOM) and production operations
- Create multilevel BOMs with subassemblies for accurate costing
- Make precise pricing decisions based on your product margins
CUSTOM WORKFLOWS VIA API
Custom workflows with Katana’s open API, Integromat, and Zapier
Connect tools and create workflows to streamline your operations
- Sync your inventory data with hundreds of e-commerce, shipping, accounting, and reporting platforms
- Create custom integrations with other apps using Katana’ s open API
- Build your own apps into Katana using our developer resources and open API
- Add apps built by other developers and companies to Katana to define your processes
Why Peace Collective switched to Katana from inventory spreadsheets
When we were managing our on-demand manufacturing with inventory spreadsheets it led to a lot of internal and external issues with our customers. A lot of miscommunication and it was an inaccurate way to track the usage of all our different materials.
Lisa Diep, Chief Operating Officer (COO) at Peace Collective
Fashion and apparel, 25+ employees