What is the best inventory software for manufacturers?

MRPeasy is the only tool on this list that gives you, on its entry plan, what a manufacturer actually shops for: bills of materials, manufacturing orders, purchasing driven by those orders, and lot traceability. Most competitors put lots two tiers up or sell them as an add-on.

Pricing is per user: $49 a month on Starter. Professional, at $69, adds subcontracting, quality control and serial numbers. Enterprise, at $99, unlocks the master production schedule and multiple sites. From user 11, seats come in packs of 10 for $79 a month, which keeps it affordable when everyone on the floor needs to clock work.

The catch, according to user reviews, is the interface. Three clicks where one should do, dashboards and reports you can barely customize, limited custom fields. One reviewer also wanted sub-assembly orders to be created in a cascade instead of by hand, and another hit a snag where a prepayment invoice would not reach Xero until it was paid.

Tip: the trial runs 15 days, and MRPeasy extends it by another 15 on request, still with no card. Save that second half for your messiest scenario: a three-level product, a supplier lot you need to recall, and a rush order that has to jump the queue.

Katana is the friendliest tool here. Bills of materials, manufacturing orders, material consumption and product cost by operation all sit in a visual planner, and a Shopify brand can connect its store the same afternoon.

The pricing page is two lines long. A free plan with no card, every feature and unlimited users, capped at 30 SKUs and one connected store, Shopify. Then Advantage, quoted per customer on an annual contract, with onboarding and a dedicated success manager included.

Price is what keeps coming up in Shopify App Store reviews: customers describe steep jumps at renewal and add-ons billed on top. Those figures come from reviews, not from Katana's pricing page. On the plus side, the official pricing page includes batch and serial number tracking on both Free and Advantage. Recent reviewers also say support now often starts with a chatbot.

Tip: for the first 15 days, the free plan takes unlimited SKUs. Import your full catalog and BOMs on day one. Before signing Advantage, get the second-year price and the list of what is included (locations, order volume) written into the quote.

Odoo sells its apps one by one, and its "One App Free" plan is a real opening for a manufacturer. Pick Manufacturing as your free app: it depends on Inventory, which comes along at no cost. You get BOMs, manufacturing orders, lots, serial numbers, multiple warehouses and reordering rules for unlimited users.

The moment you add Sales, Purchase or Accounting, the free plan ends and every app moves to Standard at $31.10 per user per month in year one, then $38.90.

Two traps come up on the Odoo forum. Confirming a manufacturing order reserves its components, so confirming too early locks material a more urgent order needs. And costing: Odoo updates the cost of a finished product on its own under FIFO or average cost, but its valuation report shows an average, not a per-lot cost. Per-lot valuation takes a community module (stock_valuation_fifo_lot).

The real cost is setup time. One reviewer got Katana running faster than he fixed a single issue in Odoo. Tip: in make-to-order mode, a confirmed sale creates the manufacturing order and the scheduler cascades orders and purchases for missing sub-assemblies. Turn it on for one product for a month before rolling it out.

Stocksmith is Craftybase under a new name: same team, same software. It is built for people who make what they sell online, candles, jewelry, soap, ceramics. It deducts materials every time you make a batch and works out the cost of goods for each product, which is the first thing users praise in reviews.

Plans start from $20 a month and climb by order-line volume: 1,000 lines a month on Indie ($99, or $83 billed yearly) and 5,000 on Business. Paying yearly saves roughly 17%. The QuickBooks sync only comes with Growth, at $349 a month, which matters if your accountant lives in QuickBooks.

The catch is the order-line cap, the most common complaint. It is also not a factory planner: no capacity planning, no subcontracting.

Tip: size your plan on December order lines, not your monthly average. For a maker who sells gifts, the holiday rush is usually what pushes you up a tier.

Cin7 Core grew up in multichannel distribution and added production on top. Assembly (a finished product built from components) is included on every plan, and so are batch tracking and expiry dates. That alone makes it worth a look for food and cosmetics.

Material requirements planning comes with Pro, at $599 a month for 10 users; on Standard ($349, 5 users) it is an add-on. Advanced production, with stages and resources, is a paid add-on on Pro and Advanced only, not available on Standard; its price is not published.

The catch is the entry price and where it goes next. Customers describe repeated increases at renewal, and getting live takes a real project.

Tip: if most of your production is one-step assembly (a gift box, a kit, a simple build), Standard is enough. Move to Pro the day you need purchasing calculated from your order book.

inFlow is a great purchasing and sales tool, and it does manufacturing too, but only on its Manufacturing plans. BOMs and work orders are not in the regular inventory plans, so the tier that unlocks production starts at $169 a month billed yearly for two team members.

Each extra member costs $29 a month, and serial numbers are a $39 monthly add-on. On lots, the pricing page contradicts itself: listed in the comparison, missing from the plan tables. Get it confirmed in writing for your plan.

Two limits show up in reviews. inFlow will not let a product be used to make more of itself (a sourdough starter, scrap fed back into the next run). And there is no simple view of what has not been picked yet for a work order.

Tip: if you recycle your own offcuts, set up the recycled material as a separate item. It is the simplest workaround for the circular reference.

Business Central covers inventory, purchasing, sales and accounting, and manufacturing arrives with the Premium license. That is the priciest jump on this list: Essentials is $80 per user per month, Premium $110. Essentials can assemble items from components, but production orders need Premium.

The good news for a plant: people who only look things up or log time can use a Team Members license at $8. So the real bill depends on who actually creates orders and purchases.

The catch is that nobody installs it alone. Setup goes through a partner, billed separately from the licenses, and that is what drives your first-year budget.

Tip: list by name who truly needs Premium. Often two or three people do; the rest of the floor can run on Team Members licenses.