Materials are the items you use to manufacture products. Materials can be added to Product recipes, included in Purchase orders, and have their inventory levels tracked.
Note: Do not confuse materials with subassemblies - both are used in Product recipes, but subassemblies are items produced in your own workshop and classified under products in Katana, while materials are purchased directly from suppliers.
Materials are purchased directly from suppliers and lack product features like Product recipes or Production operations.
One material can have multiple variants (e.g. color, size). If multiple variants aren't enabled for a material, the material is considered to have a single variant. Read more about variants.
A material card also includes a Variant code / SKU. If multiple variants aren't enabled, there is only a single variant code. If a material has multiple variants, each variant can have a unique code.
Example materials: table leg, tabletop.
Note that the variant attributes (e.g. color, size, type) are not included in the material name. We recommend using our variants feature.