Before starting a manufacturing order (MO), it’s best to physically pick and reserve ingredients from your warehouse. This ensures all required materials are available at the workbench, preventing delays and confusion on the shop floor.
Note: To perform ingredient picking, the Advanced Manufacturing add-on is required.
Enable ingredient picking
Before picking, enable the feature in your settings:
Click your profile name (top-right) and go to Settings
Choose Manufacturing.
Toggle Ingredient picking ON.
Note: Enabling this feature prevents MOs from being partially completed, and doesn't allow MTOs to be completed from sales or ecommerce orders (these MTOs will be unlinked).
How to pick Ingredients for an MO
Once enabled, follow these steps:
Go to the Make screen and open an MO.
In the Ingredients table, click Pick all (top-right of the table).
Katana will try to reserve all listed ingredients.
If all are available, they’ll be picked instantly.
If some are out of stock, you’ll be prompted to pick only what’s available.
Ingredient picking status
After picking:
The Ingredients table will show one of these statuses:
Not picked – nothing picked yet
Partially picked – some ingredients picked
Fully picked – all ingredients picked
If the status is Partially picked, you can click Pick all again when the rest of the ingredients are available for picking.
A new Picked column shows how much of each ingredient was reserved.
The Availability column will show Picked next to the ingredient name when it’s reserved.
You can return later and click Pick all again once more stock becomes available.
Bin-level picking
Pick stock from specific bins (which includes batch and serial number data).
How it works
A traceability indicator is shown next to each material's quantity.
Manual assignment:
To assign bins and traceability to a material:
Click the traceability indicator (or the arrow on the left of the item name) to open the traceability row.
Select a bin and a batch for that line.
Note: consumption of serial numbers is not currently covered.
For items without traceability, only select the bin.
Several fields may prefill automatically depending on your setup:
If there is only one batch in a bin, you can select the bin, and the batch is prefilled
If a full batch sits in one bin, you can select the batch, and the bin is prefilled
Auto-assignment
To assign bins and traceability to a material automatically:
Select materials with checkboxes — partially or all.
Click the Auto-assign button above the table.
All traceable quantities get batches and bins assigned based on availability at the moment of assignment.
Assignment currently happens based on FEFO.
You can re-assign traceability at any time — by selecting the materials and pressing Auto-assign again or by adjusting assignment manually.
What happens once bins are assigned
The quantity is reserved for that order. On other documents, you will still see the full quantity alongside the available quantity (full minus reserved), so you'll know how much stock is committed elsewhere.
When the MO is set to Partial or Done, the quantities are consumed from the selected bins.
If the MO is reverted, the quantities return to their bins but remain reserved for the order. To fully release quantities, remove the bin information from the order.
What happens after production
If you use more ingredients than picked, the MO status will revert to Partially picked.
When the MO is marked as Done, Katana:
Increases stock for the finished product.
Returns any unused ingredients to inventory.
Links the returned ingredients to the MO in Inventory Intel.
Real-world example
Alex, a Production Manager, creates an MO for a custom walnut desk.
He uses Pick all, and walnut planks, screws, and glue are reserved immediately.
But drawer handles are missing. Thanks to early picking, he discovers the issue in time.
He orders the missing parts right away, avoiding production delays and keeping the schedule on track.
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