For a small NZ manufacturer on Unleashed ($449 a month NZD), Cin7 Core or Katana, the builds worth paying for sit around the stock system: quote intake, job status and purchase approvals. $4,000 to $8,000 each, fixed price.
Makers and fabricators with under 20 staff, on Microsoft 365, already running Unleashed, Cin7 Core or Katana for stock, bills of materials and purchasing, but still losing hours to what happens before an order exists and between the shop floor and the customer: a quote request that arrives without the drawing or the delivery date, a job nobody can see the stage of, a purchase request that waits for the owner to notice it. Those gaps sit outside the stock system, and they are what these builds fix. Everything runs remotely, priced flat before anything starts. See who Kove is for and who it is not for the wider fit.
Each of these is one build at $4,000 to $8,000. None replaces Unleashed, Cin7 Core or Katana; they take over the parts of the week a stock system was never meant to hold.
| Build | What it does | Stays in the stock system |
|---|---|---|
| Quote and order intake | A form asks for the drawing, quantities and delivery date before the request reaches you, creates a job row in a SharePoint list and acknowledges the customer at once. | Stock on hand, costing, bills of materials, the sales order once it exists |
| Job status board | A tablet app on the shop floor moves each job through your stages (cut, assemble, finish, dispatch). A flow tells the customer and warns you in Teams when a promised date is at risk. | Stock allocation and the costed job |
| Purchase approval and reorder alert | A purchase request above a limit you set goes to the owner for approval on their phone, and a scheduled flow lists items under their reorder point each morning. Every decision is logged. | Purchase orders, supplier records, receiving |
If you want the stock and jobs register itself owned outright rather than rented, that is a bigger build on Dataverse, $8,000 to $18,000, covering stock on hand, jobs and simple bills of materials. It does not attempt landed cost or multi-currency stock valuation. That comparison is in Unleashed alternatives for NZ manufacturers.
Published prices, each read from the vendor's own page on 22 September 2026. Currencies are the vendor's, nothing converted.
| System | Published price a month | Currency | Read more |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unleashed | Core from $449, Pro from $819 | NZD | Unleashed pricing NZ |
| Cin7 Core | Standard $349, Pro $599, Advanced $1,199 | USD | Cin7 Core pricing NZ |
| Katana | Free up to 30 SKUs, Core from $299 | USD | Katana pricing NZ |
Side by side, and where each starts charging for manufacturing depth: Unleashed vs Cin7 Core vs Katana. The builds above cost the same whichever of the three you run, because they read and write next to it rather than inside it.
From the NZ small business software census, Kove's observed-signal tables on 5,357 NZ firms with a website on file, collected June to September 2026:
| Signal | Firms identified | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Mail platform, all firms | 1,821 firms | 67% Microsoft 365, 33% Google Workspace |
| Staff-size band, all firms | 1,573 firms | 1 to 5 staff 56%, 6 to 10 21%, 11 to 20 10%, 21 or more 12% |
Kove's census does not publish a manufacturer cut. Its sector groups are builders, electricians, engineering consultancies and legal services, and no group under 30 firms is published, so I have no manufacturer figure to quote and will not guess one. What the whole file does show: two in three firms with an identifiable mail platform run Microsoft 365, and about three in four of the firms with a staff-size signal have 10 or fewer people. The file leans towards trades and professional services, so read these as a floor for what a small NZ firm already owns, not a manufacturing benchmark. Every Business plan carries the seeded Power Platform rights the builds above run on: a flow or canvas app against SharePoint, Outlook and Excel, no extra licence, unless a premium connector is involved.
Three things that sit outside a stock system: a quote and order intake form that collects the drawing, quantities and delivery date first, a job status board with a late-job alert, and a purchase approval flow with a daily reorder list. Each is $4,000 to $8,000, fixed price, on the Microsoft 365 you already pay for.
No. The builds sit next to Unleashed, Cin7 Core or Katana and leave stock, costing and purchase orders where they are. Writing straight into the stock system through its own connection can need a premium connector, which is the licence line below.
Core from $449 a month and Pro from $819, both NZD and both excluding tax, as at the 22 September 2026 check of Unleashed's own pricing page. Detail in Unleashed pricing NZ.
For stock on hand, jobs and simple bills of materials, yes: a register on Dataverse is $8,000 to $18,000 to build plus NZ$32.40 a user a month. It does not do landed cost or multi-currency stock valuation. See Unleashed alternatives.
Rarely. The three builds above run on SharePoint lists and standard connectors at no extra licence. Dataverse comes in only if you want the register itself rebuilt, or several people editing related tables all day.
If your catalogue is under 30 SKUs, Katana's free plan may already cover you, and a build would be money spent on a problem a free tool solves. If the stock system already sends the alert you want, switching it on is the honest fix, and I will say so on the call. If you are one or two people making to order, a shared spreadsheet and a phone reminder usually beat a $4,000 build until the volume of jobs makes the missed ones expensive. The fit here is the maker who has outgrown the spreadsheet and is losing jobs in the gaps, not the one who needs an ERP.
Every price is fixed and agreed before I start, with nothing added later for scope you did not ask for. Full tier detail on the services page. Other sectors: electricians, building firms, engineering consultancies, law firms.
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