This week was about finding the right part. Shoppers can shop by their vehicle, customers can price a 3D print from their own model, and the shop can photograph a bin and have its contents listed and put into stock. Order handling got tidier too, from phone orders to shipping each box.
New this week
Vehicle fitment: Shop by vehicle and My Garage
A parts store can now say exactly what each part fits, and shoppers see only the parts for their vehicle. Nothing changes on a store until it adds vehicles.
- Catalog → Vehicles lists the vehicles you sell parts for. Link each vehicle category once (Kaniva reads the make, model and years from names like Jeep Cherokee XJ 84-01) and every part in it fits that vehicle. A category named like a vehicle links itself when you create or rename it
- Each product has a Fitment page for anything a category doesn't say: another vehicle, a submodel or engine, some of the years, a position or a note. Universal marks a part that fits anything
- Import fitment from a spreadsheet, or from an ACES file once your store has a VCdb subscription connected
- On every theme, a Shop by vehicle picker lists only the vehicles you have parts for. Product pages say Fits your … or Doesn't fit your …, and signed-in customers keep their vehicles in My Garage
- Parts that aren't for a vehicle, like a tool holder or a T-shirt, show no fitment box and stay in the shop list when a shopper has picked a vehicle
Instant quotes for 3D prints
Customers can upload an STL, 3MF or OBJ model and get a price worked out by slicing it on your printer's settings: grams of filament at your price per kg, print time at your hourly rate, plus handling and setup. Set it up in Catalog → Custom Parts → 3D printing.
- Customers see the model in 3D on your build plate, pick the filament, color, quality and strength, and the price follows as they choose
- Best way up turns the model to need little support, and customers can Pick the bottom themselves. Support adjustment and Support removal match the price to how you print supports
- A model set up for several colors, or anything the instant price doesn't cover, can be sent as Request a quote. You answer with Send price, and the customer gets a link to order it at your price
- A paid 3D print becomes a work order with the customer's model and choices on its own BOM, ready to slice and print as usual. Print jobs lists each one and its next step
- Laser and routing quotes are now priced from the uploaded drawing itself, part by part, so a sheet with several different parts charges each at its own quantity
Bin catalog: photograph a bin and stock it
Inventory → Bin catalog → Open station: scan a bin's tag, put the parts under a USB webcam or a phone and press Space, a foot pedal or Take photo. Kaniva reads each photo, labels and printing included, and lists every item with its name, specs and quantity. It needs Advanced Inventory and bins.
- Items it's sure of go straight into stock in that bin; the rest wait on Review (Enter confirms, E edits, D deletes)
- A barcode scanner works on the station too: a product barcode adds one to the bin
- Search everything in your bins from one box, with the bin code in large type, move items to another bin, or print a bin's contents sheet
- Photos are read with your own AI key from Settings → AI, or Kaniva's with a free number each month
Marketplaces, and Etsy
- Catalog → Marketplaces lists every product against every marketplace you sell on: live, not listed, or what the marketplace refused. On a product's page, the Marketplaces box shows where it's listed, with List on eBay or Manage on eBay
- Etsy is available on request. Connect your Etsy shop at Settings → Etsy, choose the shipping profile, processing profile and return policy new listings use, and set markup, stock buffer and quantity cap the same way as eBay's. Listing on Etsy comes next, and anything that costs money there will always be a free draft first, then a step that shows the fee
Write with AI on the product page
The Write with AI card drafts a product's name, descriptions, SEO title, meta description, keywords and photo alt text from its photos and the fields you've filled in. You keep the fields you want, and nothing is saved until you press Save. It never makes up measurements or fitment. Available on request.
- Free drafts each month: Pay As You Go 25, Solo 100, Shop 200, Enterprise unlimited. Past that, the owner can turn on extra drafts at $0.10 each on the Billing page
- Gallery photos' alt text now shows on the storefront
Phone orders and tickets
- On Orders → Phone order, change any line's price and take an amount or a percentage off the whole order with Discount. The staff notes record what was changed
- The phone order customer search finds anyone who has ordered from you, by name, email or phone, including customers without an account on your store
- Customers & CRM → Tickets has tick boxes and a Source filter (Phone (AI), Chat, Email), to close or delete many tickets at once without emailing the customers. Callbacks work the same way
- Settings → CRM → Close Old Tickets closes tickets nobody has written on for the days you choose, each night. Off unless you set it
Shipping each box
- Every box without a label has its own Ship button on the order page and the packing page, including a box packed after the order already shipped
- Tracking you type with Update Fulfillment stays when you buy or void a label later, and voiding a label takes off only that label's number
- Apps connected to your store can record packages shipped outside Kaniva, box by box, and can only add tracking, never replace yours
Counting stock and kanban cards
- When a count finds fewer parts than expected while open orders want that part, Kaniva asks whether the missing ones were already pulled for those orders. Yes moves them to Packing, so nothing is counted as lost twice
- A kanban card scanned by someone on a staff PIN goes on the purchase list, and asks only once. Cards on a purchase order you email or mark as sent show On Order
Smaller things that add up
- Checkout offers only the payment methods you've switched on in Settings → Payments
- A shopper who registers on your store gets a welcome that lists what customers really have: order tracking, back-in-stock alerts, and downloads if you sell them
- Feature requests and bug reports from Feature Requests reach the Kaniva team by email again, and so do our replies to you
- List search boxes keep every letter you type while results load
- The packing station's box buttons wrap neatly when the box is narrow
- Clearing a printer's bed or inspecting a failed plate ends its fault on the Live Board
- The chat widget, phone receptionist, ticket triage and receipt scanning moved to a newer AI model that costs a third less
- Supplier invoice scans on the Bills tab now count as scans in OCR Usage, at the same price as a receipt. A scan that fails isn't charged
On kaniva.io
- /compare sets Kaniva beside Katana, Shopify with Katana, Fishbowl and inFlow, and every competitor price shows the date it was read with a link to that company's own page. The Shopify comparison now uses monthly prices
- /industries has pages for off-road and aftermarket parts, metal fabrication, welding shops, CNC and plasma parts, and metal art
- kaniva.io/llms.txt is a short plain-text summary of Kaniva for AI search tools
- The privacy policy now says kaniva.io uses Google Analytics cookies and that we never sell personal information. The terms name Minnesota and US federal law
Security and reliability
- Routine security updates were applied this week
- Orders placed before stock was held per order now hold their parts like any order today, so counts and packing treat them right
What's next
Listing products on Etsy from the Marketplaces page, and more of the shop floor joined up with the store.