Roast batch and order tracking

> Cost: Freemium. Katana is free for up to 30 products (SKUs) with all features, unlimited users and the API. Beyond that you need Advantage, a custom annual contract (by quote); traceability, the shop floor app and the AI connector are listed under it.

Honest note: Rule-based software, not AI. Katana's numbers (nearly 60% on-time, 30% inventory, up to 40% efficiency) have no baseline. I did not find them copied from another Katana story on the pages checked, but they are vendor-published and unverified. The story names no setup steps beyond the integrations.

Prerequisites

• A Katana account (the free plan works for a pilot of up to 30 SKUs).
• Your product recipes (what goes into each item and how much), current stock counts, and supplier lead times.

Step-by-step setup

Step 1. Connect Shopify. In Katana: Integrations Marketplace → Shopify → Connect, enter the store name, Authorize, Install. Map each Shopify location to a Katana location, import products, then Activate sync. Katana pushes In stock minus Committed back to Shopify.

Step 2. Connect Xero. In Katana open Integrations Marketplace, find Xero, click Connect, sign in to Xero and click Allow access. Then Katana's four-step setup: pick the default status for invoices and bills it creates (Draft, Submitted for approval or Approved); tick whether to sync sales orders, purchase orders or both and choose the Xero revenue and cost accounts; map every Katana tax rate to a Xero tax rate; choose whether to import Xero customers and suppliers; click Done. A new Invoice column appears on the Sell screen and a Bill column on the Buy screen. Only one accounting integration can be connected at a time.

Step 3. Build each product as a recipe. Open Items, open the product card and add its recipe (bill of materials: every material or sub-product and the quantity) and its operations (the manufacturing steps, with production time). Break the process into steps per product, so each step knows what it uses. A sub-product with its own recipe can be an ingredient of the finished product, and Katana can create manufacturing orders for those sub-products automatically.

Step 4. Turn on batch (lot) tracking. Open Items, open the item card and in the tracking section choose Batch / lot numbers. Existing stock becomes "unbatched", so assign it to batches. Add expiry dates on the batch where the product is perishable. Find a batch later under Stock → Batches, where Traceability Explorer shows where it came from and which orders it went to.

Step 5. Run the master schedule. Open Make → Schedule. Every manufacturing order sits in one list, top = highest priority. Drag an order up or down and Katana instantly re-reserves materials and recalculates production deadlines. The Ingredients column shows In stock, Expected or Not available for each order, so a shortfall is visible before you start. Click Not available to see which material is missing. This reservation by priority is what Katana calls auto-booking: nothing is tied to one order, higher-ranked orders just claim material first.

Step 6. Set reorder levels and alerts. Open the Stock screen, filter to one location (the columns only show for a single location), click the Safety stock column for an item and type the level. Katana checks every morning at 8 AM and posts a Bell notification when calculated stock (In stock − Committed + Expected − Safety stock) reaches zero. Open it to see the affected items and use the quick buttons to create a purchase order (materials) or manufacturing order (products).

Easier: let your AI do it

Katana has an official MCP server, a secure plug that lets an AI chat like Claude or ChatGPT read and update your Katana data with your permission. Katana's pricing page lists it under Advantage.

1. The account owner has access by default. To give someone else access, open your profile → Team → pick the user → Admin tab → switch on Access to MCP.
2. In Claude, open Customize → Connectors, click +, then Add custom connector. Name it Katana, paste https://mcp.katanamrp.com (no slash at the end), click Add, then Connect and sign in to Katana. It also works with ChatGPT.
3. Ask things like "Which materials will run short for this week's manufacturing orders?" It can read, create and update records, but it can't delete anything.

What success looks like

You know how much green coffee you have and when to reorder, and batch expiry is tracked per roast.

Common issues & fixes

• Imported stock looks wrong: run old and new systems side by side for a short time and reconcile with a stock count before you switch off the old one.
• Shopify stock looks low: open sales orders count as Committed.

Optional: Maintenance

• Weekly: check batch expiry dates on the Stock screen.

Copy-paste prompt

Use this with any AI chat. It helps you set safety stock levels.

I roast coffee. Weekly demand by product: [PASTE]. Supplier lead time for green beans: [DAYS]. Suggest a simple safety-stock rule for each material and show the formula you used. Do not invent numbers I did not give.

Sources

• Case: Katana case study (specialty coffee roaster). Credit: the roaster's supply chain manager (vendor-published).
• Katana pricing
• Katana MCP overview
• Katana Help: Connect Katana to Claude (MCP)
• Katana Help: Connect Shopify to Katana
• Katana Help: How to connect Xero to Katana
• Katana Help: Enabling item batch tracking
• Katana Help: Restock notifications