Which inventory software actually handles your bill of materials?

Odoo treats the BOM as a real manufacturing object. In the Manufacturing app you create one BOM per product or per variant (the oak table and the walnut table don't use the same top), set the quantity it produces, then add components and operations on your work centers. The BOM type is the big switch: "manufacture" creates a manufacturing order, "kit" explodes at delivery with no build, "subcontracting" ships components to a subcontractor. A subassembly can carry its own BOM and its own order.

Here's the trick most people miss. The free plan gives you one app, but any app it depends on comes free too. Manufacturing depends on Inventory. Pick Manufacturing as your free app and you get BOMs, manufacturing orders and stock, for unlimited users. The day you add Sales or Invoicing, everything moves to paid: $31.10 per user/month billed yearly on Standard ($38.90 monthly), with a first-year discount for the initial users.

The catch is setup. User reviews keep coming back to configuration time: units of measure, replenishment routes, work centers. One reviewer said they set up Katana in the time it took to solve a single problem in Odoo. Budget a week of configuration before your first manufacturing order, or hire a partner.

MRPeasy is new to our rankings, and this page fixes that. It's production software for small manufacturers, and the BOM is the starting point for everything. You describe the product, its components and subassemblies, then its routing: the order of operations and the work center that runs each one. When an order comes in, it reserves components, schedules the build on open work centers, and tells you what to buy. COGS adds up materials, labor and overhead.

Pricing is per user with no modules to bolt on: $49/month on Starter, $69 on Professional, $99 on Enterprise, $149 on Unlimited (two users minimum). Paying yearly gets you a month free. For a three-person shop on Starter, that's about $147 a month. But read the Professional list before you pick: that's the plan that adds co-product BOMs (one cut yielding two products), disassembly BOMs and subcontracting. If you send parts out for coating or paint, Starter won't cut it.

Reviews praise the fast rollout and support. The complaints are about a dated interface and reports you can't customize much. Our tip: the trial runs 15 days and extends by 15 more, no card. Use it to enter one real three-level BOM and push a sales order through it.

Katana calls its BOM a "product recipe". You add materials, subassemblies and operations. The strong part is the chain: when a Shopify order lands and a subassembly is short, Katana can create that subassembly's manufacturing order by itself. Product cost adds the average cost of materials and subassemblies in stock, plus operation costs.

The free plan is rare in this space: 30 SKUs, unlimited users, all manufacturing and kit features, no card. For the first 15 days SKUs are unlimited, so you can load a real catalog before deciding. One limit: on Free, Shopify is the only e-commerce channel that connects. Past 30 SKUs you need Advantage, quoted, on an annual contract.

That's where reviews turn sour. Customers on the Shopify App Store describe steep renewal hikes (one says 4x) and pricing tied to sales order volume. Our tip: get the year-two price and the order threshold written into the quote. One technical trap too: Katana doesn't block a recipe loop (a product that ends up inside its own subassembly), but the cost then can't be calculated.

Cin7 Core splits BOMs into two levels. Assembly, included on every plan, covers bundles, kits and disassembly, nested on several levels: a box can hold a subassembly that holds items. But that level ignores work-center capacity and operation order. For real production with scheduled operations, you need the advanced production module.

That's the pricing trap. Standard, at $349/month with 5 users, has assembly but not advanced production. The module is only an add-on on Pro ($599) and Advanced ($1,199), at a price Cin7 doesn't publish. For an actual shop floor, the entry ticket is above $599 a month before the add-on.

In return, Cin7 Core is one of the most complete tools here for inventory itself: warehouses, marketplaces, batches. Our take: worth it if your job is selling everywhere and assembling, not building on work centers.

Zoho Inventory tops our inventory rankings, yet it's fifth here. The reason: its BOM stops at assembly. "Composite items" come in two forms. An assembly creates a finished good with its own stock and removes components when you assemble. A kit groups items at the sale, with no build. A composite can contain another composite, which gives you two or three levels. There are no routings, work centers or production schedule.

The good news is price. Composite items are on every plan, free included (50 orders/month, one user). Standard, at $29/month billed yearly, goes to 500 orders and three users. For a crafter selling gift boxes, it's the cheapest way to keep stock honest.

Two traps from Zoho's community forum. A composite made of one component can't use a quantity of 1, so a simple 1-for-1 relabel won't work. And an assembly needs at least one inventory item: you can add a service like labor, but not assemble from services alone. Our setup: add labor as a service line inside the composite so it shows up in cost.

inFlow is loved for its simplicity, which is exactly how it catches people. Its Inventory plans, from $99/month billed yearly, have no bill of materials. BOMs and manufacture orders live in a separate line of Manufacturing plans.

The first one, Start Up, costs $169/month billed yearly ($199 monthly) with two users. Growth is $399 with five users, Scale $629 with ten. Once you're on the right plan the logic is clear: define the product's BOM, open a manufacture order, components are reserved and then removed from stock when you complete it.

Our tip: if inFlow's interface is why you're choosing it, start on a Manufacturing plan. Switching from Inventory to Manufacturing later adds at least $70 a month. The pricing page doesn't mention multi-level BOMs, so test a real subassembly during the trial if your products have them.

Dolibarr is open-source software you can install on your own server for free. Two bundled modules do the work: BOM, to describe products, and Manufacturing Orders, which requires it. You enable both on the modules page, then launch a build from the BOM. Components are consumed and the finished good enters stock.

It's the only free option here with no SKU, user or app cap. You pay in time instead. An open issue on version 19.0.1 reports a document template error after validating a manufacturing order, and component needs missing from the replenishment tab. Check your version and run a real product through before you commit.

Our take: if nobody on the team can install and update Dolibarr, use DoliCloud's hosted version, from €14 per user/month with a 30-day trial. And compare it with Odoo's free plan, which does more for nothing.