NetSuite provides companies with so many great options to manage their business. In this article, I am going to cover an introduction to workflows and how you can manage both simple and complex processes with this powerful tool. I have found many users need some guidance when it comes to how to approach a workflow to streamline internal processes and adhere to policies and procedures.
As a result, I’ve put together a few common tips and tricks to remember when creating a workflow.
Determine if Alternatives Exist via Roles, Permissions
Often, it may be as simple as restricting forms and/or fields to a set of users based on the requirements of a business process. When looking at your current process, ask yourself and your team if restricting particular fields and updating forms would accomplish the same goal.
Example:
Only Sales Managers will have the ability to approve sales orders, and all sales orders must be approved by the sales manager.
A potential solution to this requirement could be to:
- Restrict the Sales Order ‘Status” field to Sales managers to “Edit” and all other roles to “view” thereby restricting the status change to managers.
- Make the default Sales Order status on the sales order as “Pending Approval”
- Create a reminder on the Sales Manager dashboard that will show “Sales Orders to Approve”.
Map out the Process
If you don’t have experience mapping out a business process via flow charts, that is ok. Get out your whiteboard and draw out the process step by step.
If you are mapping out the approval process, make sure you include the workflow process of a rejected and approved process.
Also remember to keep focused on the business process you are addressing in the workflow. NetSuite cannot initiate workflows on 2 different documents/forms at the same time (Purchase Order and Sales Order), so be sure to map the processes separately.
Define the Parties/Roles/Users Involved
Once the process is mapped out, define what users will be interacting with the workflow process. The best business practice with this configuration is to ensure workflows are referencing roles, rather than employees or users.
The users within NetSuite should be defined to roles that will have specific approval privileges. If everyone in your organization is assigned to the same role, it would be good to realign your NetSuite users with Roles that represents the company's organizational hierarchy.
Define Trigger Points
When should the workflow Start and End? When should the approval workflow transition from one user to another? What actions, amounts, users should trigger the Workflow Start?
Make sure you define the criteria on your notes for each step of the process. Also, it if you need the workflow to automatically change values on the form such as the default sales rep or Warehouse locations, make sure you document those requirements.
Please Note: When changing field values via workflow, try to use field validation/sourcing on the form rather than workflows for this purpose. This will reduce the processing time of the workflow.
Validate Data Location
Once you have outlined everything above, you can note where all the information will be referenced in NetSuite. In the example of approval limit, you can document that approval limits will be in the Employee record, or you can pull the Sales Rep from the Customer record.
If you need information that is required for the workflow, but no fields exist in NetSuite to reference, now is a good time to update your records to input this necessary information. You can create the fields on the required forms, and perform CSV imports to fill in the fields.
Before you go any further with configuring a workflow, run through the list of required fields/data that NetSuite will reference. It is important that you spend some time updating records, otherwise you will realize late into the process that you cannot create a workflow to match your business process.
That’s it for the introduction. Feel free to comment or reach out with any comments you have. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Stay tuned for my next blog, where I will guide you through the configuration guidelines and tips and tricks to configuring your workflow successfully.
If you need help setting up your workflow, or interested in NetSuite please feel free to reach out to us.
