Features that support businesses

I've claimed that NetSuite's functionality is extensive, and now it's time for me to demonstrate that. You may not have access to all of the features that I refer to in this section. Some are advanced features that are only available for an additional fee. You can verify this by clicking on the Setup button on the toolbar and selecting Setup Manager. A search box will appear, allowing you to search through the entire Setup menu to look for a feature. If you don't find it, you don't have access to it and will need to speak to your NetSuite sales rep:

Setup Manager

If you do have access to a feature, you will find it under Setup | Company | Enable Features.

Some features are self-explanatory; they include the following:

• Accounting lets you use NetSuite as your accounting system in conjunction with ACCOUNTING PERIODS, enabling your company to report financial statements.
• A/R (Account Receivable) is used to manage customers who owe money, so that the company can properly manage its cash flow.
• Cash flow management can also be optimized by paying vendors and suppliers when the bill is finally due, which is managed by the A/P (Account Payable) feature:

Accounting tab in Enable Features

• Companies need to know the number of items that they have in stock. This information is used for selling purposes, as well as to value the inventory on the company's balance sheet.
• For a large company, this may require tracking inventory at many different warehouses, which is achieved by using the MULTI-LOCATION INVENTORY feature. In addition, it may be useful to know where each item is stored within each warehouse, and the BINS feature can be used to help organize each warehouse.
• Inventory is critical for tracking purposes, and is always changing. It is increased when items are received, based on a purchase order that is sent to the vendor; it is decreased when items are shipped to a customer, when a sale is recognized through sales order. This can be tricky when purchasing and selling items in different quantities. A restaurant, for instance, may order Pepsi in crates, stock it in cases, and sell it in inpidual bottles.
• Keeping track of the quantity of Pepsi in stock would require constantly converting cases and crates of Pepsi into inpidual bottles. Luckily, NetSuite does the math for us, using a unit-of-measure feature. In a similar vein, a company may not sell items in the same configuration in which it purchases them from the vendor. Manufacturing requires the purchase of inventory, which is then combined with other components and built into a completely new item then sold to customers.

• NetSuite uses ASSEMBLY ITEMS to keep track of the quantities and values of all of the items in that process. A computer manufacturer would set up RAM, hard drives, CPUs, and so on, as inventory items, and the computers as assembly items. One assembly item uses one CPU, one hard drive, and two sticks of RAM as components. The built transaction reflects that a computer has been built and is available for sale, and there are one less hard drive, one less CPU, and two fewer RAM sticks in the inventory. Many computer manufacturers build to order, so how would that be reflected in NetSuite?
• How would the warehouse manager know to build the new computer? The WORK ORDERS feature provides the warehouse manager with a process to accomplish this. WORK ORDERS can be automatically created when the sales order is entered, providing detailed instructions to build a specific assembly item consisting of specific components. Many items, such as computers, are given inpidual serial numbers:

Setup tab in Enable Features

• The NetSuite SERIALIZED INVENTORY feature will require each serialized item to be identified when that item is received from a vendor, fulfilled to a customer, or transferred to another warehouse or another BIN MANAGEMENT within a warehouse. You may be wondering: Does that require the user to type the serial number in when entering any of the transactions? No; the barcoding feature lets you attach a scanning gun and simply scan the serial number.
• Manufacturers and suppliers of medical devices need to know which specific items were sold to which customers, in the event that there is a recall. LOT TRACKING provides this ability, by assigning lots to a number of items, and automatically tracking where each item is at any time. The CFO is usually reluctant to purchase too much inventory. It reduces cash flow and runs the risk of redundancy. So, how does NetSuite help ensure that the company is purchasing the right amount of inventory to meet customer demand? This can be done manually, by setting a minimum quantity and preferred stock level on each inpidual item. When the minimum quantity level is reached, a reminder pops up on the dashboard, warning the warehouse manager. The reminder is tied to a pro-forma purchase order, which defaults at the correct quantity to order so as to get to the preferred stock level.
• That begs the question: How do we know what values to set on the inventory record?  NetSuite has two options to calculate these values automatically. ADVANCED INVENTORY MANAGEMENT will look at previous purchases and sales to determine the preferred stock level, taking into account the lead time to receive the items, if the vendor is based in China. It even takes seasonality into account, to ensure that a snow blower manufacturer doesn't have a glut of inventory in the summer because the calculation was performed based on purchases in the winter. Whereas advanced inventory management looks backward, demand planning is used to predict future demand, by using quotes and opportunities, as well as analyzing previous sales history.
• Warehouse distributors have defined prices for many of their customers. It is tedious and difficult to ensure that the correct price is being charged, especially since many have over 10,000 items in the inventory. NetSuite's multiple prices feature is used to set up different price levels, such as retail and wholesale. The correct price is set for each price level automatically (when it is a specific percentage of the base price), or can be imported to update the item record. Associating a specific customer with a price level ensures that the customer receives the correct price. Quantity pricing is used to entice a customer to buy more than one item, by providing a bulk discount, enabling a buy-one-get-one-free pricing scenario.
• Many customers ask for a quote prior to purchasing, so NetSuite also includes an estimate feature, which can be printed and sent to the customer for approval. Once approved, the estimate is converted to a sales order, which in turn becomes an invoice.
• NetSuite includes a number of features to optimize the fulfillment of orders. Advanced shipping splits the fulfillment and billing processes into separate functions, so that they can be managed independently by operations and accounting. Pick, pack, and ship splits the fulfillment into three separate steps, enabling multiple users to collaborate easily on the fulfillment. 
• Reports are great, but wouldn't it be nice to drill-down even further, comparing sales by specific lines of business, or expenses by department? NetSuite calls these Classifications, and uses them to tag transactions to a particular department, class, or location, so that the transaction will show reports by that classification. Simply enable the feature and set up your list of DEPARTMENTS, LOCATIONS, AND CLASSES, and they are ready to be selected by your users on transactions. Speak to your department heads about what those picklist values should be, and don't be too concerned about the headings departments, classes, and location, as those can be renamed. So, you can use them for any classifications that you want to report, such as the line of business option that I mentioned earlier. In order to run reports by products versus services versus software, for example, navigate to Reports | Sales | Sales by Customer and change the Column filter from Total to Class, in order to compare the values between classes.
• Software and service companies can take advantage of a number of NetSuite features to solve their core challenges, from expense reports to time tracking to purchase requests, all of which work in conjunction with approval routing and Projects to be billed through to the customer.
• Projects enable a PROJECT MANAGEMENT tool, with a work breakdown structure to ensure that projects are on track and on budget.
• The Service Resource Planning (SRP) bundle helps you to staff projects based on each inpidual resource's existing project allocation.
• Customers often pay for software and services over time, and the advanced financial's billing schedules feature can automate the creation of the bills for you. In addition, the company may not be able to recognize revenue at the time of billing when, for instance, the costs of providing the service will be incurred over a long period, such as in a support contract.
• In that case, revenue recognition can be used to automate the necessary journal entries.

In the event that there is no built-in automation for a specific process that you use, NetSuite offers a series tool that you can use to build that automation. Suiteflow is a workflow engine that enables the administrator to automate processes using point and click. If you require something more sophisticated, Client Suitscript and Server Suitscript can be used to custom-code automation, including automating addition database tables that can be set up by using custom records.