A small UK manufacturer replacing spreadsheet bills of materials should treat the headline plan price on Katana, Unleashed or Fishbowl as a starting point, not the bill. All three gate real production capability behind an add-on or a second product line. Katana's true entry cost for manufacturing runs to about £376 a month, Unleashed to £318, and Fishbowl's manufacturing tier starts from £435, roughly three times its £150 headline plan.
Key pointers
- Katana's $299/month Core plan already includes a working bill of materials; the $199/month Manufacturing Management add-on adds routings and cost insight, taking the realistic price to $498/month (about £376).
- Unleashed's £269/month Core plan has no bills of materials, assemblies or work orders until you add the £49/month Production module, per Unleashed's own support documentation.
- Fishbowl's cheapest tier, Inventory Essentials at £150/month, states plainly that it excludes BOMs, work orders and MRP; you need Fishbowl Advanced Manufacturing, quoted from £435/month.
- Check your monthly sales order count before signing. Unleashed's Core and Pro plans both cap out at 100 included orders a month, and the next tier costs another £50 to £350/month.
- Extra seats cost money on two of the three: Unleashed charges £49 to £59/month per user beyond the included 3 (Core) or 5 (Pro); Fishbowl's manufacturing plan is priced by user count from the start; Katana includes unlimited users in Core.
- Get onboarding costs in writing before you sign. They range from a $2,000 one-off on Katana to £329-£4,499 on Unleashed, and Fishbowl requires an implementation package but will not publish a figure.
- All the prices here exclude VAT, and Katana bills in US dollars, so your actual GBP cost will move with your card provider's exchange rate on the day you're billed.
What moving off spreadsheets for BOMs actually means
Running a bill of materials in a spreadsheet works until it doesn't. Costs go stale the moment a supplier changes a price, nobody can see which raw materials are already committed to open work orders, and there is no single record of what a finished product actually costs to build once labour and wastage are counted in. That is the gap all three platforms are built to close: a live bill of materials tied to stock on hand, and a work order or manufacturing order that consumes components and produces a costed finished item.
The three products are not equivalent underneath a similar price tag. Katana and Unleashed are inventory-and-manufacturing platforms built around a single core product, with manufacturing capability added through modules. Fishbowl has split into two separate products, Fishbowl Inventory for businesses that only buy and resell finished goods, and Fishbowl Advanced Manufacturing for those that build, assemble or mix products. An operations manager doing bills of materials on spreadsheets falls squarely into the manufacturing category on all three, which is exactly where the add-on costs sit.
For a small manufacturer, the practical question is narrower than "which platform is best": it is "what does it cost to get a working BOM and work order in front of my team, with the users and order volume we actually have, this month and in twelve months' time."
How each platform gates manufacturing
Katana's Core plan includes basic bills of materials and manufacturing orders as standard, confirmed on Katana's own bill-of-materials feature page, which describes multi-level BOMs with subassemblies and cost-of-goods-sold tracking as core functionality. What Core does not include is the Manufacturing Management add-on, which adds the ability to sequence production into ordered or parallel routings and to compare planned versus actual material and time usage per order, the kind of shop-floor visibility that is usually the whole point of leaving a spreadsheet behind.
Unleashed works differently. Its Production module overview states plainly that BOMs, assemblies and disassemblies are not available without upgrading to Core with the Production add-on, or to Pro, which bundles Production for free. There is no basic BOM tier on Unleashed Core; the feature simply is not there until the add-on is switched on.
Fishbowl draws the line at the product level rather than the module level. Fishbowl Inventory, its cheaper cloud product, carries an on-page warning that its plans "do not include manufacturing (BOMs, work orders, MRP)". To get any of that, a buyer has to move to Fishbowl Advanced Manufacturing, a different platform with its own pricing, minimum user count and quoted deployment cost.
Pricing and cost model
Assume a small manufacturer with 3 people needing system access, one site, and up to 100 sales orders a month, roughly the profile of a business currently running its BOM on a spreadsheet.
| Platform | Plan needed for BOMs and work orders | Headline plan price | Extra to unlock manufacturing | True baseline monthly cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Katana Cloud Manufacturing | Core + Manufacturing Management add-on | $299/month (about £226) | + $199/month (about £150) | $498/month (about £376) |
| Unleashed | Core + Production add-on | £269/month | + £49/month | £318/month |
| Fishbowl | Advanced Manufacturing | £150/month (Inventory Essentials has no manufacturing) | Switch to a different product, from £435/month | From £435/month |
Working the Katana sum through: $299 Core plus $199 Manufacturing Management gives $498/month. At the 29 September 2026 rate of $1 = £0.7558, that is £498 × 0.7558, roughly £376/month, before VAT and before any currency-conversion margin your card provider adds.
Unleashed's sum is simpler because it is quoted in GBP throughout: £269 Core plus £49 Production module is £318/month, again excluding VAT. That covers 3 users and 100 sales orders a month; go over either and the cost climbs (see below).
Fishbowl's £435/month is a starting figure, not a fixed price. Fishbowl states that Advanced Manufacturing is "priced by users & deployment" and "always confirmed by quote", for teams from 2 users upward. A 3-user team should expect a number at or above £435/month once quoted, not below it.
Cost drivers beyond the base plan
Two of the three platforms add cost as usage grows, which matters for a business scaling off spreadsheets rather than staying small.
On Unleashed, the 100 sales orders included in Core or Pro cost nothing extra, but going over that allowance means paying for the next tier: £50/month for up to 500 orders, £140/month for up to 1,500, £220/month for up to 3,000, or £350/month for unlimited orders. Extra users beyond the 3 included on Core cost £49/month each (£59/month on Pro).
Katana's Core plan is usage-based on sales orders and inventory locations too, but the exact per-order and per-location rates only appear inside an interactive calculator on Katana's pricing page rather than as published fixed figures, so a buyer should get the calculator's output in writing before committing to a volume estimate.
Fishbowl's Inventory tiers step up by user count and feature set (Essentials at £150/month for 2 users, Growth at £310/month for 5, Scale at £550/month for 10), but none of those tiers include manufacturing regardless of how many users are added; only the separate Advanced Manufacturing product does.
Vendor and option comparison
| Criterion | Katana Cloud Manufacturing | Unleashed | Fishbowl |
|---|---|---|---|
| BOMs and work orders included at entry | Yes, in Core; routings and cost insight need the add-on | No, needs Production add-on on Core (free on Pro) | No, needs a separate Advanced Manufacturing product |
| Currency and billing | US dollars, monthly or annual | GBP, monthly or annual | GBP, Inventory tiers shown annual only; Advanced quoted |
| Users | Unlimited on Core, no per-seat charge | 3 (Core) or 5 (Pro) included, then £49-£59/month each | Priced by user count from the outset on Advanced |
| Sales order or usage limits | Usage-based via calculator, rates not published | 100/month included, £50-£350/month for more | Not usage-capped on Advanced; Inventory tiers cap by feature, not orders |
| Support | 24/7 included on Core | Standard £59/month or Premier £159/month, extra | Implementation package required, price not published |
| Best fit | Teams that want manufacturing basics in the core price and only need routings/insight as a clear add-on | Teams that already know they need Pro's bundled forecasting and BI, or can live within Core's 3 users and 100 orders plus the Production add-on | Teams with complex multi-warehouse, 3PL or EDI needs where Advanced's wider feature set earns its higher floor price |
| Who should not choose it | Businesses that need fixed, predictable GBP pricing without currency risk | Businesses expecting BOMs to be included in the cheapest plan | Businesses wanting to start cheap and grow into manufacturing later on the same plan; that path does not exist on Fishbowl Inventory |
No single platform wins outright. Unleashed's Core-plus-Production price of £318/month is the lowest of the three, and it is quoted natively in GBP throughout. Katana sits in the middle at roughly £376/month once its dollar price is converted, but that conversion is an estimate, not a guaranteed UK price. Fishbowl is the most expensive route into manufacturing capability specifically, but its Advanced platform includes deeper multi-warehouse, EDI and traceability tools that the other two price as separate add-ons or omit.
Editorial analysis
The pattern across all three vendors is the same: entry-level plans are priced to look attractive in search results and comparison tables, and the feature that a manufacturer moving off spreadsheets actually needs, whether that is routing insight, a basic BOM, or manufacturing at all, sits one paid step above the headline number. That is not unusual software pricing practice, but it means a like-for-like comparison has to start from the plan that includes manufacturing, not the cheapest plan each vendor lists first. An operations manager comparing quotes should ask each supplier for the exact monthly price of a working BOM-and-work-order setup, at the user count and order volume they actually have, in writing, before treating any headline figure as comparable.
Sources
- Katana Pricing - Katana MRP
- Bill of Materials Software with Inventory Management - Katana - Katana MRP
- Inventory Management Software Pricing | Unleashed - Unleashed Software (The Access Group)
- Production Module Overview - Unleashed Support (The Access Group)
- Inventory Management Software Pricing UK | Fishbowl - Fishbowl
- 1 USD to GBP currency conversion - Xe
- Help Guide for Building Your Small Business Software Stack and What You Actually Need - Compare the Cloud
