It's easy to track who brought in a sale if there is a one sales rep to one transaction relationship. NetSuite easily accommodates for that with the sales rep field on all quote, opportunity, and sales transactions records. For many companies, it takes a whole team to close a sales opportunity; the team can consist of any combination of the sales rep, accounting person, sales operations person, or even the sales manager. Wouldn't it be great to compensate and track each person's contribution to a sale? NetSuite has a team selling feature that will do just that.

NetSuite is a very powerful and adaptable ERP platform.  There are some fundamental processes that NetSuite is built around, such as Order to Cash and Procure to Pay.  These fundamental processes make sure the transactions are validated, related, and traceable.  The adaptable part is the countless customizations you can make to the system to help mold and improve the system to your business needs.  As a rule of thumb and best practice, it’s best to maximize the native functionality.  If there is a need for customization, then here are some guidelines to help you decide if the customization is adding value or not.   

How do you know if you need intercompany transactions: Intercompany Sales Orders and Purchase Orders? Typically if you have multiple subsidiaries that provide goods and services between subsidiaries, you will need intercompany transactions in NetSuite. Many companies use spreadsheets to track the amounts to remove from financial statements so that the revenue or expenses are not double counted when multiple subsidiaries’ financial statements are consolidated. NetSuite has native functionality to help record, manage and reconcile these types of intercompany transactions automatically.

As a NetSuite User, Administrator or Implementor, you don’t have to be a professional accountant. However, knowing some basic concepts helps you understand how your department or function impacts the company’s financials. With some basic accounting knowledge, you can validate if the item or transaction is configured correctly, meaning is it hitting your financial statements the way that it should. For the non accountants, there are 2 accounting concepts that are helpful: a basic accounting equation that always have to balance plus the use of debits and credits.

How many times have you created an intercompany bill and lost track of if you created the corresponding intercompany invoice to offset? Or you are doing your audits and take forever to find the corresponding intercompany transaction?

 

A common headache for our Client's accounting departments month end process is expense allocations. It's often time consuming and having to remember or keep track of the allocation methodology used each time. NetSuite has an Advance Financial tool that does just that automatically.

 

A challenge for Non For Profit NetSuite Clients are the numerous segmentations that can be applied in a transaction. A Donation, Pledge, or Grant record could require multiple segmentations to help the Client manage funds that are coming into the organizations; many funds have specific applications or restrictions on how it can be used. If used improperly, it can cause Client to lose the funds. SuiteKey is designed specifically to help the User more efficiently enter data on a transaction level.

Whether you have in house developers or working with NetSuite Partners, it is good to have some standards around testing implementations and new customizations. Generally, for brand new implementations or customizations, the testing advice is the same though the individual cases may be different.

If you are thinking of implementing NetSuite's Fixed Asset Management Bundle, you will most likely have existing assets that are currently being depreciating. These are the Mid Life Assets that you will need to bring into the Fixed Asset module. I want to share with you some tips and tricks that have helped me when I've uploaded assets for customers.

As much as we plan and prepare, most projects will run into situations that throw either budget, schedule, or both off tracks. Sometimes you can save the go live date or budget and sometimes you need to make a change. This is where the project manager is worth their weight in gold. Generally speaking, there are 3 stages a project manager goes through when a project is off track. How well a project manager handles each stage is a direct impact to the success of the project.