Compare / Head to head
Katana vs Fishbowl
The cloud-native, Shopify-first MRP against the QuickBooks-adjacent one that will run on your own hardware. This decision is really about what your books look like.
Checked 3 September 2026
We are not a neutral party, and you should read this knowing that. Rutba makes software that competes with both products on this page, and there is a section about us at the bottom. Everything above it is written from what each vendor publishes about their own product, dated, with no prices reproduced and nothing said about anyone’s roadmap, finances or customers. If we have described either product incorrectly, tell us and we will correct it and say that we did.
The actual decision
What you are really choosing between.
Whether your accountant is on QuickBooks Desktop (Fishbowl) or on QuickBooks Online / Xero and your storefront is Shopify (Katana). Almost everything follows from that.
Katana
Katana Cloud Inventory
A cloud manufacturing and inventory platform aimed at small D2C brands and job shops: bill of materials, make orders, live inventory across sales channels, and shop-floor cards for operators. Sold per user in tiered plans, integrated with Shopify, WooCommerce, QuickBooks Online, Xero and about eighty other tools by first-party connector.
Fishbowl
Fishbowl Inc.
Inventory management and manufacturing for QuickBooks and Xero users, sold per site (rather than per user) and available in cloud or on-premise editions. Bills of materials, work orders, multi-warehouse stock, purchasing and barcode/mobile scanning are the core; Fishbowl Advanced adds asset tracking.
Head to head
Where they actually differ.
Only the rows that differ. A comparison table padded with things both products do equally well is a table designed to be long rather than useful.
| Katana | Fishbowl | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it lives | Cloud only. | Cloud or on-premise. On-premise is a real, supported product. |
| How it is licensed | Per user, per month. | Per site, with warehouse and mobile add-ons. |
| The books it is designed for | QuickBooks Online and Xero, cloud-first. | QuickBooks Desktop, deeply. Also QuickBooks Online and Xero. |
| The floor | Cards and browser tabs. | Windows client with mature barcode and scanning gear. |
| The store | Two-way Shopify sync, first-class. | Connectors, mostly through third parties. |
Which to pick
Real reasons on both sides.
A matchup where one option never wins is not a comparison, and every reader can tell.
Choose Katana if…
- Your store is Shopify and your accountant is not on Desktop
- You want a cloud product with an active roadmap
- Team headcount is modest and per-user pricing is cheaper than per-site
- The floor works from tablets and phones already
Choose Fishbowl if…
- QuickBooks Desktop is the source of truth for accounting
- On-premise is a hard requirement (air-gapped, regulated, or IT policy)
- One or two sites and many users - per-site pricing is a real saving
- The floor is warehouse scanning and Windows equipment
And now the part where we talk about ourselves
Where Rutba fits, on the same axes.
Constrained to what the comparison above actually examined. If neither product was measured on something, we do not get to win it here.
The ledger is ours, so the model question changes
Neither Katana nor Fishbowl is your accounting system. Rutba Books is. That removes the QuickBooks-Desktop-versus-cloud question from this decision entirely, because the ledger is not somebody else's.
Own-instance without going cloud-only or Windows-only
A Rutba licence runs on your own instance if you want it, without giving up the browser experience or the modern stack. That is a middle position neither of these has.
If you looked at us
The products this comparison touches.
With their real availability labels, which apply inside a comparison exactly as they do everywhere else.
Rutba Manufacturing
Available nowManufacturing & MRP software
Versioned bills of materials with work centres on every routing step, a regenerative MRP run that nets against real inventory and pegs plan to demand, and a shop-floor terminal that reports work in progress from the bench where it happens.
- Versioned bills of materials with effectivity, where-used and a change record
- Work centres with capacity, calendars, and a labour basis for costing
- A regenerative MRP run — nets on-hand and reserved, respects lead times, plans by lot policy
Includes: Manufacturing · Planning · Shop Floor · Quality · Maintenance
From $32 per user / month
Rutba Inventory
Available nowInventory management & warehouse (WMS) software
Stock levels, multi-location transfers, stocktakes, and valuation — the single source of truth every other part of the business reserves and deducts against.
- Live stock across unlimited locations and bins
- Transfers with in-transit visibility
- Scheduled and rolling stocktakes with variance reporting
Includes: Stock · Warehouse Control
From $22 per user / month
Rutba Books
Available nowAccounting & bookkeeping software
Invoicing, bills, banking and reconciliation on one side; the ledger, tax, budgets and the financial reports on the other — fed automatically by every sale, pay run and stock movement happening elsewhere in the business.
- Two apps on one ledger - the daily bookkeeping surface and the accountant’s workbench, neither hiding anything from the other
- Sales invoices, bills, receipts, supplier payments and credit notes, with per-line tax
- Bank statements read in whatever your bank emits - CAMT.053, MT940, OFX/QFX or CSV - and matched, with reconciliation that must reach zero
Includes: Books · Accounts
From $14 per user / month
Keep comparing
Both of these against us, and against the rest.
Written to the same standard: sourced to what each vendor publishes, dated, and naming where each one wins.
The pillar
Rutba vs Katana
The MRP-for-makers category leader by momentum: cloud, self-serve, and integrated with Shopify and QuickBooks by design rather than by connector.
The pillar
Rutba vs Fishbowl
An older, QuickBooks-adjacent MRP and inventory platform, sold per site and available on-premise - the closest thing to a QuickBooks manufacturing edition.
Other head-to-heads featuring Katana or Fishbowl
Head to head
Katana vs MRPeasy
The category leader by momentum against the value option that has been doing the same job for a decade. Both are focused MRPs; the decision is what you want next to the MRP.
Head to head
MRPeasy vs Fishbowl
The cheap cloud MRP against the older on-premise one - a comparison usually decided by whether the accountant is on QuickBooks Desktop.
Weighing these two?
Tell us which way you are leaning and why. We will tell you honestly whether we belong on the shortlist at all — there are comparisons on this site where the answer is no.