The honest version

Everyone models the order. Nobody models the run.

The figures below are the vendors’ own published prices and documentation, re-read on 5 September 2026. Every one of them links to the page it came from. Check them yourself; we cite nothing we cannot show.

By category

What each one solves, and where it stops

Categories, not scorecards. Every product below does its own job better than we would.

Craft inventory tools

Solves well: cost of goods for a maker selling on marketplaces, with real material costing and tax-ready reports.

Stops at: it records what already happened. There is no live floor, and a run in progress is not a thing it has.

Cloud MRP

Solves well: planning and purchasing across products and orders, with a clean picture of what to make next.

Stops at: it assumes the recipe is followed. A batch cannot be split mid-run, and lot traceability is a paid add-on on top of the base plan.

Full ERP

Solves well: everything, eventually. If you have the implementation budget and eighteen months, it will fit.

Stops at: the shop with twelve people and no IT department, which is the shop this is for.

Paper and a whiteboard

Solves well: more than software vendors admit. It is free, it never goes down, and the supervisor already trusts it.

Stops at: the recall, the audit, and the question of why this month cost more than last.

scalebatch

Solves well: what happens between the store room and the finished product, with the stop, the scrap and the extra input recorded in the phase where they occurred.

Stops at: it does not ship. Four of the products above will run your shop this month and we will not.

Mechanism by mechanism

The rows that decide it

Mechanism by mechanism

Mechanism	Elsewhere	Here
Split a batch mid-run	Refused by design	The base model
Costing method	Moving or weighted average	Actual lots consumed
See the entry before it posts	Not available	Preview, then approve
Reason on every stop	Free text, or nothing	Seeded list, sortable
Lot traceability	Top tiers only	Every plan
Runs with no accounting attached	Needs the cloud ledger	Standalone or connected
Shipping today	Yes	No. In development

The last row is the one that matters most right now, and it is why this page exists in this shape. Better you find that out here than three weeks into a trial.

Side by side

Eleven questions, asked of four products

Three competitors and not five, because a six-column table is unreadable on a phone. Everything in their columns was read from their own public pages on 5 September 2026, and the numbered link says which page. Where a fact could not be verified today, the cell says that instead of guessing.

How scalebatch, Craftybase/Stocksmith, Katana and MRPeasy answer the questions a batch shop actually buys on.
Question	scalebatch	Craftybase / Stocksmith	Katana	MRPeasy
What happens during the run
Split or merge a batch mid-run, with genealogy	Available Both are endpoints of the lot, and each side keeps its parent	Not documented ¹⁵	“You cannot split one MO into multiple batches” ²	Partial completion makes separate stock lots; splitting or merging a lot is not documented ¹⁰
Scrap and extra material recorded in the phase where they happen	Available The scrap, the stop reason and the extra input belong to the phase, not to the close	Not documented ¹⁴	Actual quantities are reported when a task is finished, in the Shop Floor App add-on ⁴¹	A booking can be increased or returned to stock, and consumption can be reported in real time ⁹
Material leaves the store room when the phase consumes it	Available The declared consumption writes the WIP balance before the lot closes	Not documented ¹⁴	Stock movements are recorded only when the order is completed ³	Booked material is consumed as production is reported, and automatically at the last operation ⁹
Cost taken from the lots actually consumed	Available FIFO, FEFO or manual picking, frozen when the lot closes	Weighted average cost, by design ¹⁶	Moving average cost only. FIFO and LIFO are not supported ⁵	Actual cost of the stock lots, using FIFO or FEFO ¹¹
Hold, release and rework as events of their own	Partly available Hold, release, rework and the recall report are built. Certificates of analysis and dual signatures are not	Not documented ¹⁴	Not listed on the pricing page ¹	Quality control from the Professional plan ⁸
Software that watches the run and raises it to a person	Partly available The stall detector and its proposals run on a five-minute clock. The push to the screen and the email are not built	Not documented ¹⁴	The vendor’s own AI page describes an intention: “Katana envisions a future where AI does more than automate” ⁶	Not documented ⁸
What it costs, and what the price includes
Unlimited users, with no charge per seat	Available Yes. The meter is production orders per month	Yes. Priced by order lines per month ¹⁴	Yes. Unlimited users on every tier ¹	No. Every plan is priced per user, $49 to $149 a month ⁸
What lot traceability and quality add to the bill	Available Nothing. Both are in every plan	Traceability from the Indie plan at $99 a month. Quality is not documented ¹⁴¹⁵	$249 a month for the Traceability add-on, on top of Core at $299. Quality is not listed ¹	Quality control needs Professional, $69 per user per month ⁸
Where they are ahead of us today
Ready-made connectors to a store and to accounting	On the way The channel and accounting providers read today and do not write back. The journal preview is built; the posting is not	QuickBooks, Xero, Shopify, Amazon, Etsy, WooCommerce, Square, Faire, Wix and Squarespace ¹⁷	QuickBooks Online, Xero, Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Amazon and eBay, with stock synced back to the store ⁷	QuickBooks Online and Xero, journal entries included, plus Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce and Amazon ¹³
Scheduling that respects workstation capacity	Not planned Not on the plan. The board forecasts from the median phase time; it does not level a workstation	Not documented ¹⁴	Not verifiable in a public source today	“Follow production schedules in dynamic calendars or Gantt charts”, with capacity and utilisation in real time ¹²
You can buy it and run your shop on it this month	Not planned No. Early access, and nothing on this site takes money	Yes ¹⁴	Yes ¹	Yes ⁸

Two rows are worth reading against us. MRPeasy costs from the lots actually consumed, so on costing method this is a tie and not a win; and it is the only one of the four that schedules against workstation capacity, which is not on our plan at all. The last row is still the one that decides this year.

If your recipe is always followed, buy one of the others.

This exists for the shop where a run gets blended, split, held and reworked, and somebody has to explain the cost afterwards.

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