inFlow Inventory vs Katana

inFlow Inventory

Stock is kept per product and location with transfers and full counts, reorder points and purchase orders, and updated levels pushed to every connected storefront — and the batch side is genuinely deep: lots with expiry dates enforced FEFO, serials, per-lot counts, expiry e-mails and a sales traceability report I could hand a customer mid-recall. It stops short of the top because reordering runs off manually set points rather than documented demand forecasting, and no inventory valuation method or multi-entity ledger appears in the pages we read.

Katana

Stock is booked as real-time movements across locations with batches shown in FIFO order, expired batches blocked from operator picks, unique serial numbers with adjustment history recorded for traceability, reorder points and safety stock with forecasted demand, and bundles and kits resolved through bills of materials. Channel sync runs against Shopify, Amazon and WooCommerce so sales update stock automatically. I find no public information on stocktaking or cycle counting or a stated inventory valuation method, which keeps this just below the top band.

inFlow Inventory

Goods receipt against purchase orders with lot numbers and expiry dates at the dock, pick lists sorted to an efficient path through sublocations, and picking allocations that stop two temp workers grabbing the same units, with scanning on any phone, USB scanner or their named rugged Smartphone Scanner. We found no public information on batch, wave or multi-order picking, putaway suggestions, packing verification, or pick and error rates per user and shift — the number I actually run my shifts by.

Katana

The Warehouse App gives my Monday temps exactly what I want: dedicated operator logins with no cost or pricing visible, receiving tasks straight off the purchase order, picking and packing tasks on a phone or tablet camera, storage bins, batch pre-assignment locked for the operator, and it records who received or packed each order. What I don't see is picking strategy like batch or wave picking, putaway suggestions, or pick and error rates per shift, so it stops short of the level I run my shifts by.

inFlow Inventory

Labels go out through EasyPost and ShipStation for FedEx, UPS, USPS and Purolator, billed straight to our own carrier accounts with rates visible before purchase, shipment e-mails to the customer when the carrier collects, and returns handled in-app with restock, discard, refund or credit. We found no public information on rules that pick the carrier automatically, customs documents beyond a VAT/Tax ID field, branded tracking pages, or a self-service returns portal.

Katana

Returns are handled in-product and properly: every return ties to the original sales order, with separate received and restocked statuses, item-level corrections with reasons, flexible restocking and automatic credit notes in QuickBooks Online. For outbound parcels Katana leans on Shippo, ShipStation and 2Ship integrations, and its own shipping page notes the ecommerce platform often handles shipping instead; I find no public information on label printing inside Katana, shipping rules, customs documents or a customer-facing returns portal.

inFlow Inventory

We found no public information on pallet, groupage or truckload freight booking, forwarder quotes and tenders, transport documents such as CMR or delivery notes, or emissions reporting. The shipping pages we read cover parcel carriers through EasyPost and ShipStation, with freight appearing only as a cost field option on sales orders.

Katana

Sales orders can hold shipping addresses and tracking numbers for B2B, EDI and project orders, and a native 3PL connection exists with inbound shipment visibility listed as coming soon. Beyond that I find no public information on pallet or truckload booking, forwarder quotes and tenders, CMR or delivery-note documents, freight invoice checks or CO2 reporting — pallets would still be booked by phone and e-mail.

inFlow Inventory

Ninety-plus named connectors including Shopify, Amazon, WooCommerce, Square, QuickBooks, Xero and Zapier, plus a documented REST API that reads and writes and an MCP server for Claude — though the API sits behind a paid add-on and support only escalates API questions to the developers. Leaving is documented but clunky: record-by-record CSV and Excel exports with named exceptions the vendor itself states (manufacture orders, attachments and settings cannot be exported), and after termination a written request can take thirty business days with all fees paid first. We found no public information on webhooks, EDI or documented API rate limits.

Katana

The connector list covers the shops and marketplaces I sell on (Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Amazon, eBay), QuickBooks and Xero for accounting with purchase orders converted to bills in one click, Shippo, ShipStation, 2Ship and a native 3PL link, plus an open API with managed keys and webhooks, Zapier and Make, automatic order-import triggers and an AI assistant hook. EDI appears only as custom engineering under the Advantage plan rather than a standard feature. I find no public information on documented API rate limits and versioning, or on a documented export of orders, stock movements and shipment history when the contract ends.

inFlow Inventory

The contracting entity is Archon Systems Inc. of Toronto, and customer data is hosted in Microsoft Azure's North Central US region in Illinois, with many processors based in the US and cookie data transferred to the US — a non-European chain on every link that matters to me. It is at least open about it: EU model clauses and the UK IDTA are cited, SOC 2 is audited annually, a subprocessor list is published at their trust centre, and the customer is named controller of their own data.

Katana

The contracting entity is Estonian (Katana Technologies OÜ), the terms themselves serve as the Article 28 data processing agreement, an SOC 2 Type II audit by an independent auditor is published, and deletion of closed accounts within three months is stated. However, the captured pages give different figures for where systems sit: the privacy policy says the service is hosted in the EU with databases in the EU, while the terms say systems and service providers may be located in the European Union, the United States and other jurisdictions. The third-party provider list is only handed over on request rather than published with locations, which sits a step above the mid band but well short of end-to-end proof.

inFlow Inventory

Every inventory tier is public — Lite 79, Core 229, Pro 389, Max 539 EUR per month billed annually — with team sizes from 2 to 20, priced onboarding (399 EUR one-time required, 799 EUR optional onboarding and training, 2299 EUR implementation, 169 EUR/hour extra training) and labels billed directly through our own carrier accounts rather than through inFlow. I still could not price the API and MCP add-on, team members beyond the tiers, the scanner and printer hardware or the VAT treatment, and the captured pages give different figures for refunds: the terms state fees are non-refundable while the pricing page mentions a money-back guarantee.

Katana

The free plan is fully priced at $0 with a 30 SKU limit, unlimited users, locations and integrations, and the terms spell out monthly, quarterly or annual billing commitments, taxes excluded, advance payment, auto-renewal, 30-day notice on fee increases, and per-sales-order usage fees on an exponential decay pricing model. But the decay price list and the additional-location fee are only referenced as posted on the website without figures, the Core plan appears only as a $299 per month starting figure, and Advantage pricing is a conversation. I cannot compute a full year's cost from what is public.