In my previous blog posts, I’ve highlighted NetSuite’s saved search functionality and shown how you can use them to create dynamic reports to improve visibility into all business areas.  While you can create highly-customized saved searches that use joins to other records, formulas to perform automatic calculations, and even include SQL statements for advanced requirements, there are some instances where saved searches don’t entirely fill an organization’s reporting needs.  In those cases, you can leverage NetSuite’s custom report capabilities in order to bridge the gap.  In this post, I’ll share the basics of report customization in NetSuite and show how standard reports that are already available in your environment can be transformed to align with your specific needs.

The ability to quickly and easily create custom fields in a variety of types in order to meet unique business requirements is one of the things that sets NetSuite apart from other ERP platforms.  In addition to creating checkboxes, open text fields, and date fields, NetSuite also allows users to source custom lists or existing records as drop-down lists using the “List/Record” field type.  In some cases, it is beneficial to give users the ability to select from all available values within the drop-down field.  At times, you may only want to expose a specific sub-set of data in the drop-down list in order to prevent mismatches and make it easier for users to the desired value.  By taking advantage of the Sourcing & Filtering options, you can limit the available values in a List/Record field to only those that apply at the time of entry.  In this blog, I’ll walk through setting up the Sourcing & Filtering options to create dynamic drop-down fields and share a few practical examples of using this functionality.

Data is not the most exciting topic to write about.  Those of you in charge of data may have nightmares of bad data, duplicate data and missing data inputs.  You may be working with data that live in different databases (systems). You may have a complicated yet effective excel spreadsheet that puts it all together for the company to use as business intelligence, but if you go on vacation, you may not be sure if anyone else can run the reports.

As you may have caught on by our previous blog posts, we really love NetSuite saved searches at Concentrus.  Saved searches have many uses and are one of the easiest tools to learn and use in NetSuite.  It doesn’t matter if you are an everyday user or log in occasionally to get the information you need, saved searches give you the tools to get the data you need, how you need it and when you need it.