Feature Overview: Item Substitution

NetSuite’s Supply Chain Management bundle includes a collection of features that can help drive efficiencies across the entire supply chain. We have covered several of these features on this blog including estimated landed costs, customer part numbers, and engineering change orders. This time, we will be covering the item substitution feature. Through the use of this feature, we are able to enter substitutions, which are alternative items offered to customers when their originally requested item is not available. Capturing this data in NetSuite can be helpful in driving supply chain efficiencies as it helps us analyze where supply failed to meet demand, and also helps us establish relationships between items that are suitable substitutions. Let us take a quick look at the feature and how it works.

Why Use Item Substitutions?

You may want to consider using the feature if you find yourself offering product substitutions to customers. Typically, a substitution will be offered when a product is not in stock. Keeping track of these instances can be tricky, and without a mechanism to record the substitution, this valuable insight can be easily lost. This can impact our ability to respond to supply chain issues in an effective manner. NetSuite’s item substitution seeks to assist in this space by providing a process for capturing these substitutions which can be reported on to provide valuable demand and supply insight.

Entering an Item Substitution

Item substitutions are captured at the order entry level at time of sale. Before item substitutions become available, legwork is needed. Namely, you will need to enable the item substation feature, update any custom roles with the necessary permissions, enable scripts, and create the item substitution records. The item substitution records are responsible for defining the relationship between the original item and its acceptable substitutions. We won’t cover the setup details here but will instead show you how it looks like in the sales order entry step once all preliminary setup has been completed.

1. Navigate to Transactions > Sales > Enter Sales Orders.
2. Enter the Customer and other relevant information as needed.
3. On the items sub-list, enter the item requested by the customer as you normally would.
   1. At this point, you can enter the substitution if known, but this is not required. You may choose to enter the sales order as is and return later once a substation is required. For our purposes, we will record the item substation to demonstrate how the feature works.

4. After entering the original customer requested item, look for the item substitution column. You will notice an icon indicating substitute items are available for selection. Click the icon.

5. You will be greeted by a pop-up, where you can choose from available substitutes. We will also see available inventory for those substitutions, which will be helpful in confirming what is in stock. From here, check the item you would like to substitute in and click submit.

6. NetSuite will replace the original item with the substitute but will retain it for reporting purposes. Save the sales order when ready.

As you can see, the item substitution can not only help us provide suitable substitutions, verify stock for those substitutions, but also helps us retain the customer’s original request. This can help in business analytics and supply chain management by providing us with insight into customer item trends. From this, we can look for opportunities to improve inventory supply management and the customer relationship.

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