A product is simply an item that you sell to your customers. Products can be produced in your workshop, a contractor's workshop, or purchased directly from suppliers for resale. Creating a product enables you to sell it with Sales orders, make it with Manufacturing orders, buy it with both Outsourced and regular Purchase orders, add it to the Product recipe of another product (subassembly), and keep track of its inventory level.

One product can have multiple variants (e.g. color, size). If you haven't enabled multiple variants for a product, it's considered to have a single variant.

The Product card also includes a variant code. If there aren't multiple variants enabled, there is only a single variant code. If a product has multiple variants, each variant has a unique code.

Read more about variants

Product examples: Table, Chair

Notice that attributes like size and color are not used in the product name. We recommend handling those attributes through our variants feature.

In Katana, subassemblies are products, not materials. Each product can be a subassembly and also sold to customers simultaneously. There is no difference between products and subassemblies in Katana. Both are included in the product list and have exactly the same characteristics (including a Product recipe and Production operations).

For each product, you can choose whether you make it, buy it or outsource it. If you enable the option I buy this product, you can start adding those products directly to Purchase orders to purchase them from suppliers.

If you purchase the manufacturing of the products from a contractor but need to track ingredients, enable both I buy this product and I make this product. Then you can add the product to the Outsourced purchase order and track the required ingredients.

Read more about contract manufacturing