This week was about the everyday feel of running a store on Kaniva: finding things fast, seeing where each order stands, and moving a store in without retyping it. Pricing got simpler too.
New this week
A fresh admin, with dark mode
The admin has a new look: clearer type, one main button per page, calmer cards and tables, and a navy sidebar.
- Dark mode follows your computer or phone. Pick Auto, Light or Dark under Appearance, plus three colour palettes: Kaniva Blue, Graphite and Workshop Green
- Printouts, packing slips, invoices and PDFs stay light, and your storefront is unchanged
- Pages fit phones: headers and filters wrap, and wide tables scroll inside their card
Find anything, faster
- Search anywhere with Ctrl+K (⌘K on a Mac): pages, orders, products, customers, contacts, purchase orders and work orders. Type a product name to list the orders that contain it
- A simpler sidebar, grouped into Home, Sales, Catalog, Inventory, Manufacturing, Customers & CRM, Money, Reports and Website. Click a group's name for an overview page with a live number on each card, such as orders to ship or low stock
- Favorites: star any page to pin it to the top of your sidebar
- One Settings page with a card for every setting, and a ? on every page that opens the matching part of the manual
- One order number everywhere, and every revenue figure says whether it includes tax and shipping
Your own order steps
Every order now shows its steps across the top, with one button to move it on. The defaults are Paid → Building → Packed → Shipped → Delivered.
- Add, rename and reorder steps at Settings → Order steps, such as "Powder coat". Each step can show to customers and email them
- Orders move themselves when they're paid, packed, labelled and delivered
- Build stages for build-to-order items are yours to edit too
- Customers see the steps on their order page and tracking page
Move your products in from Shopify
Products → Import has a Shopify tab. Upload Shopify's product export, or connect your Shopify store directly so stock levels always come across. Either way you see a preview first, and nothing changes until you click Import.
- Brings options and variants, prices, SKUs, stock, weights, categories, tags, SEO fields and photos
- Existing products are skipped unless you choose to update them, and nothing is blanked or duplicated
- Kaniva only reads from your Shopify store
Supplier feeds keep stock and cost in step
Catalog → Supplier Feeds reads a supplier's stock file from a web link, a file server or an upload, and applies it every hour, every 6 hours or once a day.
- Pick the columns, then do a dry run that shows how many products would change before anything is saved
- Stock can hold back a few units or be capped. Prices only change if you turn that on, and never below MAP
- A file that looks wrong is held for you to check instead of being applied
One simple price
There are now two ways to pay, chosen from your Billing page: Pay As You Go at $0 a month plus 2% of sales, or a flat Monthly plan with no platform fee. Both include everything, with Manufacturing, CRM and Accounting now part of Monthly. Point of Sale is included on every plan, and the free trial is 30 days with no card. The Pricing page always has today's plans and prices.
Setup follows how you sell
A new store opens Setup, which walks it through store basics, accepting payments with Connect with Stripe, shipping, the first product and a preview.
- Tell Kaniva whether you build to order, ship products or sell downloads, and Setup matches it. A downloads shop skips shipping
- Every new store has instant quoting ready: customers upload a drawing or 3D file and get a price
- When Setup is done, it points you to your first real order
A better storefront
- A new Shop page shows your categories as tiles with pictures and product counts. Categories can now have their own image
- Search matches every word you type, including category names, so "xj battery tray" finds the tray filed under the Jeep Cherokee XJ
- The Trailhead theme has a calmer charcoal and rust look, a Customize tab for its homepage blocks, wording and colours, swipeable product photos on phones and a folding category menu
- On phones, checkout shows the order summary before payment, product lists keep two columns, and page numbers show the pages either side
Smaller things that add up
- Product form tabs (Basics, Pricing & Cost, Inventory, Shipping, Media, Visibility), with unit cost and a margin that updates as you type
- Bulk actions on Orders (print packing slips, mark shipped, change status) and Products, and Saved views on Orders, Products and Inventory Items
- A tidier order page with one Ship button and a More menu
- Money → Transactions puts income, expenses, bills and invoices on one page, with a Needs attention panel, and Year-End totals now match the Profit & Loss
- One CRM activity feed for calls, emails, meetings, notes and tasks
- Each purchase order lists its own receipts, and items can go on the purchase list straight from Inventory → Items
- Live Board and Floor Kiosk sit under Manufacturing in the sidebar
- Tools connected to your store can now read stock levels, refund, cancel and mark orders shipped
- On kaniva.io: a new look, a Contact page, a free migration request form covering up to 500 products and 5,000 customers, and a public list of what's new
What's next
Card readers at the counter, and more for the shelves and the shop floor.