inFlow Inventory vs Katana

inFlow Inventory

Stock is kept per product, location, sublocation and lot with expiry dates, FEFO and FIFO lot suggestions, inventory counts that count each lot separately, reorder points controlled per product per location, purchase orders with lot assignment on receipt, and stock levels pushed to the connected storefronts; lot movement history is filterable and exports to CSV, and kits resolve to components via the bill of materials. No captured page states a valuation method, demand forecasting or transfers in transit, and I found no public information on reorder suggestions derived from sales history.

Katana

Movements are tracked in real time across warehouses and storage bins, lots are shown FIFO with operator choice or a manager-locked assignment, unique serial numbers carry adjustment history, expiry dates bar operators from expired batches, reorder quantities are recalculated from stock, forecast demand, safety stock and MOQ, and bundles resolve to components through bills of materials. We found no public information on stocktaking or a stated inventory valuation method, which is what keeps this off the top band.

inFlow Inventory

Goods receipt against purchase orders with lot assignment, pick lists routed through sublocations by configurable picking options, automatic allocations covering sublocations, lots and serials, and named scanner hardware put this above the printed-pick-list floor. The picking options are sublocation-selection rules rather than batch, wave or multi-order strategies, and I found no public information on putaway suggestions, packing verification by scan or weight, or pick and error rates per user and shift.

Katana

Goods receipt against purchase orders, pick-and-pack tasks with QR scanning on any camera device, packing traced to the named operator on the order card, auto-assigned paperless tasks and partial fulfillments split into separate tasks — a solid mid-band picture. We found no public information on batch or wave picking strategies, putaway suggestions or pick and error rates, and the warehouse app is browser-based rather than an installable scanner app.

inFlow Inventory

Labels go out through EasyPost and ShipStation with FedEx, UPS, USPS and Purolator, billing runs through the customer's own carrier-specific accounts — no vendor label markup appears anywhere in the captured pages — and shipment confirmation emails to the recipient are on by default. I found no public information on bulk label printing, tracking numbers written back to the shop, shipping rules that choose the carrier, customs documents or pickup points, and returns are processed manually on a sales order with refund, credit, restock or discard rather than a self-service portal or return labels.

Katana

Inside Katana you print packing slips, store addresses and add tracking numbers; the vendor's own help text says ecommerce platforms often handle shipping so "Katana's shipping functionalities may not be used", with carriers reached through third-party platforms such as Shippo, ShipStation and 2Ship. The returns side is real — statuses from initiated to received to restocked, item-level reasons, Shopify return sync and automatic QuickBooks credit notes — but we found no public information on label creation in the product, shipping rules, customs documents or a customer-facing returns portal.

inFlow Inventory

The captured pages describe a parcel-label setup: shipping integrations name FedEx, USPS, UPS and Purolator through EasyPost and ShipStation, and the only "freight" documented is a cost field on sales orders. Nothing captured shows pallet or groupage booking, spot quotes, transport documents, multi-modal tracking or CO2 reporting — this is an inventory and order system, not a transport management system.

Katana

The only freight-adjacent evidence is that sales orders can store shipping addresses and tracking information for B2B, EDI and project-based orders. We found no public information on pallet or truckload booking, freight quotes, CMR or digital delivery notes, or emissions reporting.

inFlow Inventory

Shop and marketplace connectors, accounting connections to QuickBooks and Xero, a documented REST/JSON read-write API with MCP documentation, and a self-serve export article stating exactly which records leave and which don't — a real exit story, backed by a terms-level backup commitment. The API sits behind select plans and add-ons with support explicitly unable to answer API questions, manufacture orders, attachments and all but billing and shipping addresses cannot be exported, the backup takes up to 30 business days and requires fees paid, and I found no public information on webhooks, EDI, or documented API rate limits and versioning.

Katana

Shop, marketplace and accounting connectors — Shopify, Amazon, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, eBay, QuickBooks, Xero — sit beside an open API with keys and webhooks available even on the free plan, Zapier and Make, and an AI-assistant server; EDI appears only as a custom build on the quote-priced Advantage plan. We found no public information on API rate limits and versioning, or on a documented export of order, stock and shipment history for the day you leave.

inFlow Inventory

A Canadian contracting entity, hosting pinned to a single named US Azure region in Illinois with no EU hosting option in any captured page, and cookie data plus many processors flowing to the United States. The privacy policy does offer EU model clauses and UK IDTA safeguards, annual SOC 2 audit and breach notification, and points to a subprocessor list at a trust-center address whose contents are not among the captured pages, so the processors behind the service remain unnamed on this evidence.

Katana

An Estonian contracting entity, EU hosting stated in the privacy policy, an Article 28 processing contract in the terms, SOC 2 Type II and deletion timelines are all on the pages — but hosting is on AWS with no region named, the subprocessor list is furnished only "upon Client's request", and while the privacy policy says the service is hosted in the EU, the terms say services may be provided from the United States and other jurisdictions; the captured pages give different statements. Google Analytics runs on the public site with an opt-out, and EU-US transfers rely on Standard Contractual Clauses or the Data Privacy Framework.

inFlow Inventory

Tier prices are public (Lite 79, Core 229, Pro 389, Max 539 EUR/mo billed annually, with 20% off for annual billing), volumes are declared unlimited products, sales, purchases and integrations on all plans, and setup packages carry price tags (399, 799 and 2299 EUR) — more than most vendors show. But the 399 EUR onboarding cost is labelled "Optional Required" in the same line, the pricing page quotes EUR while the terms state fees are payable in US dollars and describe subscription fees as non-refundable even as a money-back guarantee is advertised, and the API add-on price, which plans include lot tracking, hardware prices and VAT treatment are not shown in the captured pages.

Katana

The free tier is fully specified — $0, 30 SKUs, unlimited users, API access — and Core is advertised as "starting at $299 per month" with unlimited users and integrations, but Advantage is quote-only and the terms add per-sales-order usage fees under an "exponential decay pricing model" plus per-location fees "as posted on the Web Site" without any figures on the captured pages. VAT treatment, advance billing, non-refundability, auto-renewal and the 30-day fee-increase notice are stated plainly; the per-order fee that decides a real annual cost is not.