The ability to manage your sales, manufacturing and outsourcing processes based on order priorities gives you the operational flexibility you need in a modern business. When circumstances change (e.g., a customer requires a product sooner, materials arrive late from suppliers), you can simply drag-and-drop Sales and Manufacturing orders, or change the Expected arrival date of Outsourced purchase orders to adjust their priority. Your production schedule, tasks, materials, and products will be recalculated automatically based on the new priority.

How the priority of Sales Manufacturing and Outsourced purchase orders affects product and material commitments takes a few minutes to comprehend fully, but it's good to learn and easy to apply once you understand it.

In Katana, Sales orders (listed on the Sell screen), Manufacturing orders (found in the Schedule tab on the Make screen) and Outsourced purchase orders (found in the Outsourcing tab on the Buy screen) have priority levels.

Depending on the situation, changing the priority of an order on Sell screen will also affect the priority level on the Make screen and vice versa.

There are two types of Manufacturing orders in Katana: Make-to-Order and Make-to-Stock. Both are found in the Schedule tab of the Make screen, allowing you to manage your production priorities in a single view.

Read more about creating Manufacturing orders.

A Make-to-Order Manufacturing order (MO) is linked permanently to specific Sales Order (SO). The priority of these types of Manufacturing orders is automatically synced with their linked SO, so changing the SO's priority will automatically update production priorities in the Schedule tab and vice versa.

A Make-to-Stock MO isn't linked to any SO. Changing the priority of a SO won't affect the priority of these Manufacturing Orders and vice versa.

Sales items availability displays whether the required product for a specific SO is In stock, Expected, or Not available. The priority of Sales orders in the Sell screen has a different effect on the Sales Items availability of a SO depending on whether the products required by the SO are Made-to-Order or Made-to-Stock (there is no Sales Items availability status for Manufacturing orders).

If you create a Make-to-Order MO for products required by a SO, the Sales Items availability status won't be dependent on the SO priority. These Sales orders expect products from a linked MO and, thereby, don't reserve any products you have available In stock or being Made-to-Stock.

If you haven't created a Make-to-Order MO for a SO, the Sales Items availability for this SO is calculated based on the priority of the SO. Higher priority Sales orders reserve products in your stock or products expected from Make-to-Stock Manufacturing orders or Outsourced purchase orders (OPO) first. This means that even if you have some quantity of the required product In stock, the Sales Items availability for this particular SO might still show Not available if another higher priority SO has already reserved the same product.

Read more about Sales items availability.

Ingredients availability displays whether the required ingredients for a product on a SO, MO or OPO are In stock, Expected, or Not available.

Ingredient availability is displayed for Sales, Manufacturing and Outsourced purchase orders. While Ingredient availability on a MO provides stock information to the production floor, on a SO it is especially relevant for Make-to-Order businesses because it gives immediate information about the availability of materials required for making customer-ordered products. On the OPO Ingredient availability indicates whether sufficient quantity of ingredients is available at the contractor's location.

The Ingredient availability status is always calculated based on order priority. Materials aren't permanently linked to any orders, so even if you have the required ingredients in stock, the Ingredients availability for a particular order may still show Not available if a higher priority order has already reserved the same ingredient.

Again, both Sales orders and Manufacturing orders reserve materials you have In Stock or Expected but are displayed in separate lists (Sell screen and Make screen > Schedule tab), which don't always match.

For example:

Katana applies the following principles to Ingredients availability calculations:

Read more about Ingredients availability.