Katana, the operating system for multi-channel commerce used by 1,500+ companies across 70 countries, today launched capabilities that run everyday inventory work automatically. Katana now monitors stock across every channel and location, flags items at risk of running out, recommends what to reorder and creates the order, all on parameters each business sets. Teams step in only for decisions that need a person.

The launch builds on July’s release of Katana MCP (Model Context Protocol), which opened the platform to AI tools. Automation of this kind depends on two things. The first is the data underneath a business’ operation: inventory math that is accurate, cost calculations that are correct, and real-time numbers that reflect how a business runs. Katana has built that layer over years and millions of transactions across manufacturing, multi-channel sales, purchasing and warehousing. The second is fit. Every operation runs on rules nobody else shares, what counts as available, how cost moves through a build, what a batch means here, and automation that does not know those rules will confidently do the wrong thing. Katana is set up around how each business works, so the work it takes over is the work that business would have done itself.

The capabilities rolled out over the last month include:

  • Stockout risk that watches every item across the operation and flag the ones that will run out before a reorder can arrive, factoring in each item’s lead time.

  • AI Forecasting turns a business’s own numbers into cross-channel reorder recommendations, explains the reasoning in plain language, and creates the purchase or manufacturing order in one click.

  • Katana AI answers questions about a business’s own data in plain language and saves those answers as dashboards that stay current.

  • Custom Fields let a business track what is specific to it, from customs codes to payment terms, on any record. This is crucial to be able to have any and all business rules captured for your operation to run independently.

  • 150 new 3PL and WMS integrations connect a third-party warehouse and shipping the way you would connect a sales channel, with no manual reconciliation.

  • Katana MCP connects Katana to Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini, so teams can check stock, draft orders and review purchasing from the AI tool they already use.

“In July we said Katana tells you what to do next. Now, Katana can run your operations for you,” said Ben Hussey, co-CEO of Katana. “The everyday inventory work runs in the background, and the system comes to you only when it genuinely needs you. That is only possible because of the data layer underneath it, which we refined using years of experience and millions of transactions to get right.”

What does it mean for inventory to run itself?

For most teams, inventory work is a running to-do list: check stock, spot what is getting low, decide what to reorder, raise the order. When inventory runs itself, those jobs happen in the background, on the parameters the business sets, and only what genuinely needs a human decision reaches a person. Replenishment, routing and alerts all follow the rules of that specific operation instead of a generic template. That is why Katana customers are increasingly not logging in every day. They don’t need to. The value of an inventory system now lies in what sits underneath it.

How does Katana fit a business that does not work like everyone else?

Software built for everyone fits no one exactly, so teams fill the gaps with workarounds in notes fields and spreadsheets. Katana takes a different route. It comes with the core a product business needs, then is shaped around how that business runs, from day one and as it grows. Businesses track what is specific to them in Custom Fields, bring in the spreadsheets they already have as they are, and connect or build anything that is missing rather than working around it.

“I felt like Katana was really clear-eyed about what our needs were, and really able to personalize everything to make it fit our business. Rather than saying, here’s the solution in a box, figure out a way to make it work for your business.”

— Ethan Lemmen, Vice President of Shoreline Manufacturing

What does Katana offer businesses that have outgrown off-the-shelf software?

A lean team doesn’t have hours to set up, maintain and chase software, so Katana takes that work on. Before anything is agreed, a senior Solutions Engineer learns how the business runs, and the scope is set out in a signed statement of work. One team then stays with the business through onboarding, custom builds, go-live, training and support, and the same people stay on afterwards, so when something changes they already know the business and don’t start from scratch. Anything Katana doesn’t do out of the box is connected or built for you, and we keep it working.

Why does this matter?

The complexity is not going away. Tariffs, freight, vendors and channel rules change faster than any team can track, and each change produces more inventory decisions than one person can watch. The question for a small product business is whether that complexity happens to them or works for them. With the right foundation it works for them: the data is clean and structured around how they operate, the everyday work is already running, and the team is free for the decisions that need them.

To learn more, visit https://katanamrp.com/

About Katana

Katana is the easy-to-use, cloud-native Inventory Management Platform built for SMBs that sell physical products. With native integrations to ecommerce, accounting, and shipping platforms, Katana gives entrepreneurs a real-time view of their business and the tools to scale. Founded in Tallinn, Estonia, and with over $3B in gross merchandise value processed annually, Katana is trusted by 1,500+ companies across 70 countries and 75 industries.

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