Sortly earned its place by being the cleanest, most photogenic mobile inventory app on the market. Visual asset cards, QR and barcode scanning that genuinely works on a phone, and an interface a new user can pick up in an afternoon. For a small team tracking tools, equipment, props, or simple finished goods, Sortly is hard to beat on ergonomics. The limits arrive when the operation crosses from "we keep track of stuff" into "we make things from other things." Sortly does not have real bills of materials, production orders, multi-location production planning, deterministic MRP, or a movement ledger built for an audit trail. Composite items and quantity changes carry the operation only so far.

If you are searching for Sortly alternatives, the operation has likely moved past the use case Sortly was designed for. This guide walks through the strongest options in 2026 for manufacturers and multi-site operators, starting with the platform built specifically for production rather than for visual inventory.

1. FalOrb (Best Sortly Alternative for Manufacturers)

FalOrb is a real-time, multi-location inventory and production management platform designed for manufacturers and FMCG operators. Compared with Sortly, the difference is categorical rather than incremental. Sortly is an inventory app. FalOrb is an inventory and production system, with the data model, planning surface, and audit trail to support real factory and multi-site operations.

The foundation is an immutable movement ledger. Stock quantities are never updated directly. Every receipt, consumption, transfer, adjustment, and production event creates a permanent movement record, and stock totals are derived from the ledger. That model matters the moment a discrepancy turns into a question, because the system can show exactly how a number moved over time. Sortly's history view is fine for casual lookups. FalOrb's ledger is the source of truth.

Production runs through multi-level bills of materials with full version control. Each finished product can carry multiple BOM versions, with one active at a time. Draft versions can be prepared without disturbing current production, and activating a new version archives the previous one. Production orders lock to the BOM version active at confirmation, which guarantees the materials consumed match the plan the order was created against. Actual versus expected consumption variance is captured per run. Cost rollups happen automatically as component prices change. Circular references are detected with explicit error reporting rather than silent corruption.

Available to Produce calculates how many units of a finished good can actually be manufactured right now, given current material availability, reservations from confirmed production orders, multi-level BOM requirements, and waste factors across every location. When the number is constrained, the system identifies the specific bottleneck material, turning "we can't produce" into "we need 200 kg of this component." MRP runs on four configurable horizons of seven, fourteen, thirty, and sixty days and produces deterministic purchase recommendations with MOQ-aware quantities and order-by dates. A restock intelligence engine layered on top distinguishes between internal transfer, reorder, and redistribute opportunities with urgency badges and one-click actions.

Multi-location is treated as a structural feature rather than a tag. Locations have types, including warehouse, factory floor, raw material store, finished goods, dispatch, and quality control, and health states cascade from individual stock records up through the location and into the organisation view. Transfers are a controlled state machine with reservation, partial dispatch, partial receipt, and automatic flagging on quantity discrepancies. Thirteen alert types are deduplicated per item-location and auto-resolve when conditions clear. Six roles with per-location scoping let head office see everything while a factory floor operator sees only the location they work in. Implementation is fast because the data model fits how operations actually work, not how a single-warehouse app pretends they do.

Learn more at falorb.com or book a 30-minute demo. For a deeper sense of why visual inventory apps run out of road, the piece on why spreadsheet inventory fails at scale covers the same pattern from a different angle.

2. Katana MRP

Katana is cloud-native manufacturing software and the most natural step up from Sortly for a team whose reason for leaving is production. BOMs, work orders, and floor-level material tracking are built in. Integrations with ecommerce and accounting tools are solid. The ceiling sits at multi-site depth and deterministic MRP across planning horizons. For a single-site manufacturer leaving Sortly, Katana is a credible step. Multi-location FMCG quickly finds the limits.

3. MRPeasy

MRPeasy is the entry-tier purpose-built MRP product. Affordable, production-focused, and fast to onboard. For Sortly users whose manufacturing complexity is real but still modest, it is a sensible move. Operations scaling past one or two sites usually outgrow it fairly quickly.

4. Cin7 Core (formerly DEAR Systems)

Cin7 Core is a multi-location inventory platform with light assembly and strong sales channel integration. A meaningful upgrade from Sortly on warehouse features and multichannel selling. Manufacturing functionality is present but secondary, so it suits teams whose primary growth is in inventory and sales rather than production.

5. Unleashed Software

Unleashed is a clean, multi-location inventory platform with strong Xero and QuickBooks Online integrations. A solid step up from Sortly on the inventory side. Production remains at light assembly, so it does not resolve a manufacturing-led move on its own.

6. inFlow Inventory

inFlow is a friendly SMB inventory platform with desktop and cloud options and good barcode and mobile workflows. A natural lateral move from Sortly with more depth on warehouse and stockroom workflows. Production functionality stays at light assembly, so it suits operations that need better inventory rather than real manufacturing.

7. Finale Inventory

Finale Inventory is strong on multichannel inventory management, particularly for Amazon and other marketplace sellers. A useful upgrade from Sortly for ecommerce operations. Manufacturing functionality is basic.

8. Zoho Inventory

Zoho Inventory is the budget cloud option inside the Zoho One suite. It competes at the small-business inventory tier with broader business app integration than Sortly. Manufacturing functionality is minimal.

9. Odoo Manufacturing

Odoo is the open source flexibility option. It can do far more than Sortly across the board, including real MRP and multi-company, at the cost of implementation time and ongoing technical ownership. With internal IT or a trusted partner, it is credible. Without, it becomes a second job.

10. Fishbowl Manufacturing

Fishbowl is the long-standing QuickBooks-aligned manufacturing option. Deeper than Sortly on production, with a heavier and older architecture. Most natural for teams committed to QuickBooks Desktop.

What to Look for in a Sortly Alternative

Sortly migrations usually start with one of two pressures: the operation has begun making things rather than just storing them, or the operation has multiplied locations and the visual app no longer reflects the reality across sites. Sortly is a good product for its category. It becomes a bad fit when the operation moves past it. The replacement needs to match the operation that exists now, not the one Sortly was originally chosen for.

The first test is whether bills of materials are now part of the work. If a finished good has components, and those components have their own components, and the team needs to know how many finished goods can actually be made today, Sortly is structurally the wrong tool. An inventory app that lets you tag a parent and a child is not the same as a system that runs multi-level BOMs with version control, locks production orders to a version at confirmation, and tracks variance against actual consumption.

The second test is multi-location reality. If the team manages several sites with distinct material flows, transfer decisions, and independent local health, the platform needs typed locations, cascading health, location-scoped permissions, and a controlled transfer state machine as native features. Adding more inventory cards to a single-warehouse app does not produce a multi-site platform.

The third test is forward visibility. Reorder points and low-stock alerts answer what is low today. Deterministic MRP across seven, fourteen, thirty, and sixty-day horizons answers what to order this week to keep production running next month. For a fuller treatment, the piece on MRP planning horizons covers the shift in thinking.

Sortly remains an excellent choice for asset, equipment, and simple inventory tracking on a phone. For manufacturers and multi-location operators, the alternatives in this guide carry significantly more of the operational weight.

FalOrb is built for manufacturers who have outgrown visual inventory apps. Book a 30-minute demo or email [email protected].