We have reviewed the 5 most requested NetSuite enhancements as submitted by users in Suite Ideas. Are any of these issues familiar to complaints from your users. We have asked our team what solutions are possible through NetSuite customisations, SuiteFlows or other workarounds.

Here are the top issues logged by users and potential solutions to the problems:

1. Not being able to create a single invoice out of multiple sales orders created for the same customer. For a variety of reasons NetSuite Group Invoicing is deemed to be insufficient. There is not a simple workaround to resolve this issue unfortunately. You will need to either:

• Re-engineer your sales process looking at how sales orders are defined which is unlikely to possible.
• NetSuite can be customised to resolve this issue, but it is not a straightforward fix.
• 3^rd party revenue management solutions such as Zone Advanced Billing can resolve this issue, but they also come with a price tag.

2. Users cannot store multiple e-mail addresses in an entity record (Customer / Vendor / Partner / Contact). This creates blockers when automating the sending of records to people attached to those records. Whilst it would be great to see NetSuite build an enhancement to address this issue, several workarounds can be applied to resolve this.

• Custom Fields can be added to the customer or invoice records to contain multiple email addresses. Add additional emails to the custom fields. NetSuite workflows can be setup to email invoices or sales orders to any email address contained in the custom fields.
• Users can setup email groups using google or an alternative email client. Add all required email addresses to the group and add the group email as the email address on the entity record. This will resolve the issue but requires a NetSuite integration to your email client. You will need to view emails and maintain the groups in the email provider.

3. Users are not able to edit an account’s type or select any other account type even with existing transactions. This can especially cause issues after going live with NetSuite if accounts have not been configured correctly where for example an account was misallocated between fixed assets and current assets, or COGS and expense. Solutions include:

• Maintain the account with the incorrect account type. Reports like the Balance Sheet or Income Statement can be modified to change the financial layout and present the accounts in the correct place.
• Inactivate the Accounts and create new ones with the correct Account Type. Do a manual Journal Entry to “reclass” the Account balance. You may have the option to delete transactions and reload them into the new account if you want the perfect history, but this will be more complicated.

4. Users are not able to assign employees to multiple subsidiaries. This causes issue where employees move subsidiaries for example or may cause issues is directors fees need to be charged across multiple subsidiaries. Solutions include:

• Create a new employee record with the additional subsidiary. You can make a minor change to the new record to avoid any duplication errors. This will help avoid deleting the old employee record and losing its history, however you will have 2 separate employee records.
• Using NetSuite allocation schedules may allow you to leave an employee in the original subsidiary and charge out their costs to the correct place. This may require some new divisions or classes to allow for automating these allocations.

5. Manufacturing and distribution users are not able to Merge Items. For example, if a supplier changes a pack size a new item will be required which does not have the sales history attached creating a lack of visibility for purchasing teams. In addition, new item codes need to be set up, and customers notified who need a new SKU, probably requiring a new Customer Part number. All of these changes can be complicated by customisations. Solutions include:

• Create a new quantity within the existing UOM. Then you can effectively change it. So, it’s still ‘Large Pack’ as UOM, but the quantity is changed from 120 to 110 as the primary UOM.
• Some customisations can be developed in your NetSuite instance to help with this issue.

Have you been experiencing any of these issues? If you have then hopefully our solutions provide some assistance. If you would like any more information on the solutions we have discussed, then get in touch to talk to one of our consultants.