ERP Guru (formerly IT-Ration Consulting) - NetSuite Solution Provider

NetSuite 2010.2: The New User Interface

2010-08-19T15:15:00.013-04:00

As version 2010.2 gets ready to be rolled out, the biggest change everyone is talking about is the new user-interface. I just came from a NetSuite webinar that broke down this new interface, and I am very excited by the clean and intuitive design they’ve adopted.

The only stumbling block I foresee with this 2010.2 is custom forms – NetSuite users will have to upgrade all their custom forms. These upgrades can take place at your own pace, and are not automatic.

NetSuite has provided a migration tool to help administrators roll-out their custom form upgrades, which allows for testing, tweaking, more testing, and then deployment only when satisfied. A future blog post will be written on this topic by one of our technical consultants.

And like anything NetSuite, here at ERP Guru we are ready to assist you in any way, be it with upgrading your forms to testing existing scripts and modifications with version 2010.2
Contact us for any and all 2010.2 help.

Apart from the custom form issue, there are a ton of great new features that not only enhance productivity, but make NetSuite even easier to use. The design optimizes the use of whitespace and there has far clearer distinctions between local and global information.

Click on the screenshots below to see a few of the new UI features in 2010.2.

2010.2 Home Screen

Click to enlarge

2010.2 Records

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The Wonders of NetSuite Reporting : The Menu Bar

2010-08-05T09:50:00.010-04:00

For a long time now, we have been receiving request from our fellow NetSuiters on how to customize various reports. While complex customizations do require advanced searches, you can generally use the wonderful menu bar located at the bottom of most reports (financial and sales) to help you reach the Valhalla of reporting.

As you can see from the screenshot below the menu bar alone doesn’t seem to have all that much to offer. However you can unleash the true power of your report by clicking on the "More" link hidden at the end of the filter list.

Click image to enlarge

Clicking the "More" link will display a complete new list of filters for your report. You will have access to Class, Department (one of the most requested), Location, Item and Customer.

The sheer number of possibilities that the "More" link provides you with may prompt you to ask “what are those cute buttons on the right?" Those my fellow NetSuiters are EVEN more customizations for your report!

On the picture below, you can see options to change what is displayed on the report.

Click image to enlarge

If those tips to help you reach better report still does not get you there, customization might be required *wink*. But don't be afraid to experiment with the menu in the reports, you could be surprise how far you can get.

Clicking the wrench button labeled “Options” gives you new display options. "View" allows you to add borders to your report cell or set it as a white page. "Expand Level" allows you to quickly expand or collapse the hierarchy of the report to a particular level and the "Display title" displays your report title. Less obvious is the "Show drill-down ballons" which gives you more information on the record before you click on it.

Located close to the wrench icon is the graph icon. Clicking on it will allow you to generate a column, a pie or a line chart for a better visual reporting. However, exercise caution when using these graphs as they not always relevant to the data shown in report.

Finally, for you out there who still want even more report customization, try using the “Find” box to locate data within a large report as this might save you some time. Finally using the little blue arrows completely on the right will automatically get you to a major category. i.e. Under Assets your first category might be Current Assets. A blue arrow will be provided for every type of Assets of that level.

Don’t be afraid to experiment with the menu options in the reports, you could be surprised how much you will learn!

Blanking Out Prices By CSV Import in NetSuite

2010-08-05T09:42:00.018-04:00

How do you blank out existing prices on your items? It seems like this question comes up on a fairly regular basis. There are a variety of reasons why you would want to blank out prices and today's blog post will demonstrate the most efficient way to do it.

It's actually fairly simple. I use the Multiple File CSV Import to do it, because I've encountered problems trying to clear out prices with Single File CSV Import.

First, we need to create two separate Excel files. Don't forget to save them as CSV (comma-separated values), or it won't be accepted in the CSV Import.

The first sheet, which I call the Master Sheet, simply has one column – your items' internal IDs.

The second file, which I call the Slave Sheet, has the Item Internal IDs (to link to the Master Sheet), the Price Level and the Price. You could also include Price Quantity if you use quantity-based pricing in your NetSuite account.

It's possible to do an item export from NetSuite with this information, and then just divide that export into the two sheets.

Now that we have our Excel sheets, go to Setup --> Import/Export --> Import CSV Records.

In Import Type, choose Item. Then choose the item type for which you want to update prices. You can only update one type of item per import.

For the CSV File(s), first choose Multiple files to upload. For the Primary File, choose your Master Sheet and for the Linked File (Optional) - Item Pricing, choose your Slave Sheet. Then click Next.

Click image to enlarge

On the next page, choose Update in the Data Handling section. Then, click on Advanced Options and check the Overwrite Missing Fields check box. Click Next when you're done.

Click image to enlarge

On the following page, choose both Item Internal ID columns in the drop-downs and click Next.

Click image to enlarge

The Field Mapping page comes next. Make sure to map the Internal ID field from the Master sheet with the Internal ID field in NetSuite. You may also need to enter default values for some required fields, such as the Pricing Currency and Pricing Quantity which I did not include in my CSV files.

Click image to enlarge

Click Next, then click Run (or Save & Run if you want to reuse your import in the future) and you're done!

Find Information FASTER in NetSuite

2010-08-02T16:14:00.007-04:00

Over the past few weeks I watched NetSuite customers retrieve information from NetSuite – they perform a search and then click through two, three, four or more screens to get to what they wanted.

When I saw this, I decided to show them how to use prefixes in the NetSuite Global Search – or as I like to call them “Cheat Codes” – and they were stunned by its efficient simplicity. Below is a quick tutorial on NetSuite prefixes that stems from my experience over that last few weeks.

For example, let’s say I want to find a contact named Tim Smith; he works at the company Smith Supplies. Let’s compare the two search approaches – the long way I was shown by a few of my customers verses using the short way using NetSuite prefixes.

That was wicked simple and fast – or as my customer said, “Show me how you did that!” See the graph below for a list of common prefixes. Note that prefixes can change based on your configuration, but the list below is a helpful start.

Reference:

NetSuite Help: Global Search Prefixes, Tips for Effective Global Searches

Publishing Saved Searches to the Customer Center in NetSuite

2010-07-27T10:22:00.009-04:00

One of the most underutlized features in NetSuite is publishing saved searches to the Customer Center. Creating a Public Saved Search works in the same way as creating a standard Saved Search, except that it allows you to share the information with your customers, partners or employees in real-time.

For example, here at ERP Guru we use publish saved searches in the Customer Center to keep our clients abreast on their projects. When they visit www.erpguru.com they can log-in to our site with the username and password we provided them. Once they are logged-in to the customer center, they are able to see their project status, and how many hours have been dedicated to what.

Our transparency allows our customers to feel secure that their project is moving forward, and it saves us time because we don’t need to send out weekly update emails.

You can publish any saved search to the customer center (transaction history, support cases), and below we will show you how to do it.

Step 1: Creating a new tab in the customer center
We need to create a tab in the customer center that will display our search.

Go to Lists --> Website --> Tabs-->New
Create a New Presentation Tab
Label it something like “My Results”
On the Audience tab select the role(s) that you would like to see this search, in our example, we would select Customer Center
Make sure to uncheck Display In Website

Don’t worry about the other fields, they are not relevant to what we are trying to accomplish.

Step 2: Create a Saved Search
Create a saved search as you normally would. It is important that you check the box Public so that the search is available for publishing.

Step 3: Publishing the search to the customer center

Go to Published Saved Search page which is the Classic Center type is under
Lists --> Website --> Published Saved Search --> New
Give the Published Saved Search a title (this title is what your customers will click to access the information)
Specify the search from the drop down meny
In the Subcategory Of drop down select the newly created tab you created in the previous step. In our example we labeled it “My Results”, so that is what we would select in this case.
On the Audience tab select the role(s) that you would like to see this search, in our example, we would again select Customer Center.

Now, any customer who you have given access to can log-in to the customer center and view your published saved search!

As this topic is bigger and more complex than a single blog post we held a FREE training workshop on the topic. Please contact us if you would like the recording.

NetSuite and Gmail Integration Add-On

2010-07-23T10:40:00.013-04:00

Good news for all the NetSuite and Gmail users out there. ERP Guru is working on a Gmail integration add-on that will be released soon.

Bookmark this space and visit often because whenever we have an update we will post it here.

We're also accepting pre-registration for the beta version.
Contact us if you are interested.

Screenshots

Screenshot 1: When this add-on is installed, you will see this button in the compose email window. Pushing the button opens up a box that lets you search for any type NetSuite record.

Screenshot 2: Search for any type of NetSuite record. Each tab represents a record type. Results of your search are displayed with check boxes and you can select the records you want your email to be attached to.

Formula Fields and Saved Searches

2010-07-16T16:43:00.028-04:00

Formula Fields are a powerful tool that let you combine and manipulate multiple field values within NetSuite Saved Searches. In this post, I will show you how to manipulate date fields, though it should be noted that formula fields can also be used for currencies, numbers and even text fields.

For today, let's use the Formula (Date) field to manipulate the value of a Date/Time field. For example, let's say you want to know the last day of the month in which a transaction was created for an opportunity. First thing you would need to do is create a search for opportunities. Then, in the Results tab, choose Formula Field (type) in the field column of the Columns Sub-tab.

Click on the Formula column of the new field row and then click on the Set Formula button.

You will be presented with a pop-up that has three fields: Function, Field and Formula.

The Functions drop-down offer you multiple SQL functions. For our example we will choose "LAST_DAY" because we want to know the last day of the month in which a transaction was selected.

"Last_Day(date)" should now have automatically been copied in the Formula field.

Next, we will choose our field in the Field drop-down. In this case, we want the Date Created. Choosing it will copy the field into the Formula field.

You may notice that Fields are always surrounded by curly brackets, whereas Functions have parentheses at the end of their names.

Now if we were to leave the Formula as is, we would get an error. The (date) means nothing so you need to use your cut/paste skills to move the {datecreated} into the parentheses of the LAST_DAY function (see screenshot below).

Regardless of what information you are trying to manipulate you will always have to delete the word that's in the parentheses and move what's in the curly brackets into the parentheses. A complicated but necessary fact.

We're done! Click on the Set button, click Add (or Done) on the column you've added, click Preview on your search and voilà, for each opportunity you can now see the date of the last transaction.

To become comfortable with formula fields and their effects I suggest playing around on a Test Saved Search and experimenting. Formula Fields give you endless possibilities and only by playing around will you be able to see just how powerful this feature is.

Intergrating your Telephone with NetSuite

2010-06-28T14:00:00.008-04:00

An interesting product we recently discovered over here at ERP Guru is the Flexor CTI for NetSuite by Camrivox. This product integrates your VOIP telephony with your CRM – making the life of a sales rep. a lot easier! With this tool, you can track and log phone calls, and if the caller exists in your database, you can jump to their record with the click of a button.

Other interesting features of the Flexor CTI include:

Click to dial
On screen pop-up of calls
Log calls directly in the contact’s record

Our overall experience with the software was very positive. We opted to start with the 14-day trial, and in a matter of minutes, Flexor Manager was operational. The user interface is clutter-free and fairly simple to understand without having to read the user guides.

In our configuration, we tested the Flexor CTI software with a Polycom IP device. When an inbound or outbound call occurred all the matching records in the NetSuite were displayed.

If no matching results were found, we were able to create a contact on the fly. To do so, we selected and opened a contact (by double clicking on it), and then chose one of the options shown below:
As the last option shows, Flexor CTI can be configured to create journals automatically for outbound and inbound calls. This can be very useful when managing a sales team and monitoring if your team is generating enough calls to customers.

Out of the box most of the options selected will suit a majority of users. However, it is also possible to customize the software according to specific needs. For example it's possible to automatically open a contact window when an inbound/outbound call occurs or wait until the user clicks on the button provided for that purpose. Number patterns can be created and actions can be performed or not when these patterns occur (call divert, journaling options).

Cart Abandonment

2010-06-04T15:29:00.006-04:00

How many times have you visited a webstore, added items to your cart, and then for any number of reasons (phone rings, baby cries, wife calls you for supper), you stop what you are doing an abandon your cart. This ever-common behavior is known as Cart Abandonment, and if you are an online vendor then you yourself know how often this phenomenon happens.

What if, as an online vendor, you were able to reach out to those customers who had abandoned their carts? What if those very same customers were able to provide you with valuable feedback and that would help reduce your cart abandonment?

Here at ERP Guru, we recently came across a tool created by the company Barilliance that empowers online stores with those abilities.

Basically the tool can be configured to send an email to customers after they have added products to their cart BUT not checked out. The email sent to these "customers" can be customized to either act as a reminder for them to go back into their account and checkout or you can configure the email to gather feedback and understand why those clients chose to abandon their cart.

Integration with NetSuite

The integration process of the Cart Abandonment tool with NetSuite is fairly simple. All you need is to register on the Barilliance website and add their script your website.

Adding the script is easy enough. If your role is that of STORE MANAGER, simply click on WEBSITE --> APPEARANCE --> THEMES. From that window click the EDIT link beside your website name and add the script to the ADDITION TO <HEAD> box.

You can access and customize your customer email via your Barilliance portal.

Simple as that!

Discounts: Functional Details and Best Practices

2010-05-20T10:13:00.000-04:00

Today I'm going to talk a bit about discounts – there are different ways you could go about discounting orders in NetSuite and in this blog post I’ll show you what I think is the most functional.

So, let's say I have an order as such as:
Item 1 - $100
Item 2 - $200

Let’s say you would like to offer your customer a $30 discount on this order. One obvious simple way is to change my order to:
Item 1 - 100$
Item 2 - 170$

This will work – your customer is indeed only going to pay $270 rather than $300. But this solution is short-term and does not take into consideration the customer experience or your records keeping. For instance, using the above method you are not able to:

• Show the customer how much money he is saving over the normal price.
• Track your discounts, so that at the end of the year (or sooner!) you can run reports to see how much money you discounted away (and why).

A better way is using NetSuite Discount Items. These item types allow us to specifically create an item than can be added to transactions, and cause a discount. They can be configured as percentages or flat amounts.

Using Discount Items allows us to show the customer how much money they are saving, as well as being able to track exactly how much money you discount as you do business.

To access the Discount Items, click List ---> Accounting --> Items. Select NEW, and you will be given a list of items to choose from. Select DISCOUNT ITEMS.

When creating Discount Items, you also have the option of posting the amount discounted to a specific GL Account (very convenient because you can then view that specific account to see all the discounts at once), or you can subtract the discount amount out of your Accounts Receivable account. Both methods are viable, it's really just a matter of preference.

Please keep in mind that Discount Items are different than Price Levels. When you have specific pricing for specific classes of customers, that's Price Levels. Discounts should be used when you need to lower the price of an order for unplanned reasons (special agreement with a customer, when running specific marketing campaigns, etc.)

But my point is - when discounting, don't edit the price of the item. Use a Discount Item!

2010.1: Three Cool Features You May Not Know About

2010-05-04T11:34:00.011-04:00

When it comes to the 2010.1 upgrade for NetSuite, it seems everyone knows about the well publicized features such as SuiteFlow. However, there are a lot of juicy new features that aren’t getting the attention they deserve, and unless you had the time to diligently read through all the Release Note, you may have missed them.

Not to worry, I did have the time to read all the Release Notes, and below are three of my favourite new features that seem to be flying under the radar. I’ve included the Release Notes link under each one for your information.

1- Customizing Tax Label on Printed and Emailed Transaction Forms
YAY! You can now customize how the tax label appears on your transaction PDF printouts! And I really like the way NetSuite implemented this, it's super flexible.

Basically, under Setup -->Accounting -->Set Up Taxes, you'll find a new field called "Print/Email Tax Label Format" and you can enter whatever format you want in there. You can show only the label (i.e. the word "Tax" itself), the actual tax item or even just the rate – any combination of the three is possible. You can also dictate the label of the field, so for example, you could write it as "Tax for your state: {rate}".

Pretty neat feature! This kind of flexibility has been on several of our customer's wish lists for a while.

>>Read more in the Release Notes .

2- Standard Report Alternate Ranges Now Relative to Report Date

This has the potential to be a very powerful tool, though I would say you would have to already be comfortable with Reports to use this feature to its maximum.

To summarize, say you wanted to show a report of your sales by customer category (perhaps Direct vs Reseller), and you wanted the report to show you trends for 90 days before today in 15-day increments –well, you can now do that!

>>Read more in the Release Notes

3- New Permission for Making Non-GL Changes to Transactions

A quickie but goody – you can now hand out Role Permissions to your users that will allow them to make Non-GL impacting changes on transactions in closed periods.

So for all sorts of little things like making changes to the transaction memo and item descriptions, you can give this permission to a user so they can make these changes without having to reopen the period. Incidentally, you're also guaranteed the person making the change won't accidentally make a GL Impact when editing the transaction – always a source of concern!

>>Read more in the Release Notes
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You can find the complete list of new releases (there are tons of them!) by checking out the entire Release Notes.

NetSuite unveils SuiteFlow for version 2010.1

2010-04-27T11:14:00.006-04:00

One of the most anticipated new features in NetSuite 2010.1 is SuiteFlow, a tool that allows users to customize a workflow without the use of script. As it uses a graphical interface and is quick to set-up, it can greatly simplify tasks and save users a lot of time.

The module was written and developed by NetSuite founder Evan Goldberg. In his own words, “SuiteFlow uses the same logic as scripting, but takes out the intimidating use of scripts”. Attendees at last week’s NetSuite Partner Conference (SuiteCloud2010) got a firsthand demonstration of the module with Evan in the driver’s seat.

Even though SuiteFlow is being released in beta, this module is a complete and ready to use tool. The only foreseen changes for version 2010.2 are the opening up of more actions.

What can SuiteFlow do for me?

Built as a finite-state machine, it facilitates both single step and multiple step processes. Each step of the process can be clearly defined within a workflow with ample conditions and actions that suit most needs.
Each individual workflow is linked to a specified record and can be triggered by a schedule, or the creation/modification of a record. Conditions can be set on the initial workflow trigger for every action within a state and on each transition between states which allows skipping or repeating steps when required. Additional fields can also be added on the workflow and state.

Current Actions Available in SuiteFlow

Locking a record to prevent editing for the duration of a specified state
Subscribing to a record in order to access other records
Initiating a workflow to act upon the same base record type
Opening of a page to a new or existing record of a specified type
Opening an html page
Adding a button for workflow management
Returning a user error
Setting a field display label
Setting a field to mandatory (very useful for NetSuite fields which were otherwise not noticeably mandatory)
Setting a field display type in order to disable, inline or hide a field
Sending an email
Sending a campaign email
Creating a record
Setting a field value
Running a script

With many more actions and conditions planned to appear in 2010.2 this new tool is sure to become increasingly indispensible and popular.

Be sure to register for our FREE SuiteFlow webinar happening on Thursday, May 20 at 1:00 p.m. EST.

****REGISTRATION IS NOW CLOSED******

Synchronizing data between NetSuite and other systems

2010-04-19T11:26:00.000-04:00

NetSuite truly is a complete business system, but every so often we have clients who use a company built database to store their customer data. They need to synchronize that data with their NetSuite instance.

The Talend Integration Suite comes with a CDC (Change Data Capture) component that was designed for enterprise-grade data synchronizations. We find it to be an extremely reliable tool.

For the purposes of this post, we’ll have a look at the CDC component for synchronizing a PostgreSQL and NetSuite database. (NOTE: There is a CDC component available for most databases).

Talend will create a CDC table and a CDC view for each source table that it is fetching information from. Triggers will be set to watch for inserted, updated or deleted records. Multiple subscribers can watch for these events, that’s why there’s also a table created to manage subscribers.

This configuration is a one-time set-up. Once it’s done, the CDC component will read from the CDC tables associated to the source tables and extract all insertions, updates and deletions.

These events are then transmitted to your middleware workflow so that it ends up in NetSuite, the target system.

Problems happen when the source schema is modified. For example, if a field is renamed, the CDC component needs to be adjusted, or else the middleware workflow will cease to function. But for a schema that is likely to be fixed over time, this component is very useful.

Let’s give it a dry run. Assuming that my source database is now in sync with my target system, the database will look like this.

A record is inserted (record 3), two updates are done (record 2) and a one record is deleted (record 1). The source database now looks like this:

The events are logged in the CDC table, and when the connector is run, the following output is produced (see image below). For the sake of the demonstration, the modified data is simply outputted on the screen, but it could be handled in many other different ways:

We see that the new information (record 3), the deleted information (record 1) and the updates for a given record (2) are properly outputted from the CDC component!

I hope that the overview of this tool will be of use to you!

GL Impact of Selling Non-Inventory Items

2010-04-12T14:32:00.002-04:00

Hi everyone!

This is a pretty exciting time for IT-Ration Consulting, as we're slowly changing our name to ERP GURU. The new name really represents us better as a whole, and I think our clients will agree.

Today I would like to take some time to talk to you about how to get a non-inventory item to post to your GL in NetSuite. As some of you may know, non-inventory items are items that you sell but do not keep in stock. What's important to keep in mind is that unlike regular inventory items, even if you receive a non-inventory item, it does not affect inventory asset, nor does it impact the cost of goods sold (COGS).

As you can see in the screenshot above, when you receive a non-inventory item, you cannot specify the rate at which you receive it. If you check the GL Impact of the item receipt and item fulfillment, you would also notice that the non-inventory item has no impact whatsoever on those records.

In order to circumvent this NetSuite default, I suggest you create an assembly item instead.This method will allow you to take into account the purchase prices of both inventory and non-inventory items when impacting COGS and inventory asset accounts.

Our New Name is Here!

2010-04-01T09:43:00.003-04:00

IT-Ration was founded in 2005 and in a short time grew to become one of the largest NetSuite partners worldwide. With growth comes a change in both identity and focus. To reflect this new path, IT-Ration will be re-branded as ERP GURU.

The Story Behind the New Name

The decision to change directions was made last year by Martin McNicoll, president and founder of IT-Ration Consulting. With the assistance of the marketing experts at CloudRaker, IT-Ration delved into the nitty-gritty of who we are and where we want to go.

The essence of our business is to provide professional ERP assistance. When a client contacts us, they are immediately connected to an expert. The majority of our consultants are Engineers, or have a Master’s level education in Computer Science. Customers continually told us how much they appreciated both the technical and business process guidance we provided to help them grow their business.

Slowly the image of a Guru emerged and we went with it. Several ideas were bounced around, and after extensive research and customer feedback, the name ERP GURU came into existence.

The plan in the next three months is to make the transition. Slowly but surely you’ll notice IT-Ration Consulting morph into ERP GURU and a new website is on the horizon with a ton of user friendly features, as is a new look.

One thing that won’t change is our commitment to be the very best NetSuite Solution Providers with the ability to solve problems both large and small.

Credit Card Processing Bug Discovered

2010-03-29T10:39:00.001-04:00

An important issue has recently come to our attention that we think everyone should be aware of. It is in regards to cash sales with a credit card.

First a little background information: When you create a Sales Order (SO) using a credit card, the SO will verify the funds on the card, which means it freezes that amount of money – the card isn’t actually charged. The money on the card is in effect set aside for you and the customer no longer has access to that amount. So if the customer has a $100 limit on their card and you freeze $80 they can only spend a further $20 or the card will be declined.

In NetSuite, you always create a cash sale when processing a credit card. If the charge is $50, you freeze the money and then that frozen money becomes a charge. The problem is the Charge Credit Card checkbox. If for whatever reason this box is not checked when you save the order, and then you return to the SO to edit the transaction and click the checkbox, the Cash Sale will immediately charge the card. This charge will not be linked to frozen funds from your original entry. So if the original SO verified $50, and then edited SO charged $50, you have effectively tied up $100 instead of $50.

The freeze is always released in about 3 days or so, but during this period the customer’s card is carrying an inaccurate balance which could result in them being declined for other purchases.

NetSuite is aware of this issue, but I am told this is not a Defect but an Enhancement Request.
The number I have is 119430 if you want to go vote on it.

This error seems to only be happening for users using Payflow Pro as their credit card gateway, which is being dropped by NetSuite anyhow. Payflow Pro users will still be able to continue using their services, which is why it is important to be aware of this issue.

Viewing Items Sold in Kits vs Items Sold Directly

2010-03-23T10:41:00.015-04:00

It may be of interest for you to know how many items you have been selling directly versus how many items you've sold as part of a kit. The following search is a good starting point to get this information:

Item Search

CRITERIA:

Transaction: Posting = True

Transaction: Account Type = Income

COLUMNS

Formula (Text) decode({memberitem},'',{name},{memberitem}) - GROUP

Formula (Text) decode({memberitem},'','Direct','Part of Kit') - GROUP

Formula (Numeric) decode({memberitem},'',{transaction.quantity},{transaction.quantity}*{memberquantity}) - SUM

This search will output three columns:

The item name
If the item represents the total quantity sold directly or as part of a kit
The quantity sold

So if you have a certain item that you sell directly as well as part of a kit, the item will be displayed on two separate rows - one row for the total quantity sold directly and one row showing the quantity sold as part of kits.

If you want to see the total sales amount, well, you'll have a bit of a decision to make. For direct sales it's no problem, just grab the Amount field. But items sold as part of Kits do not generate their own sales amount; the Amount is the amount of the entire kit. So you'll need to determine what the value of an item sold within a kit is. You could just grab the standard Base Price off the item record, which probably makes the most sense. If you would like to do this, add the following line to your columns:

Formula (currency) decode({memberitem},'',{transaction.amount},{transaction.quantity}*{memberquantity}*{memberitem.price}) - SUM

There are a couple of restrictions to note here:

This will not work if you have kits within kits
This search does not show the parent kits - only their members
This search grabs all transactions hitting Income accounts, so this includes things like credits, which would appear as negatives here

To explain the formulas a bit, you'll notice I use decode() a lot. Decode works in the following way: decode(value1, value2, value3, value4) -> IF value1 is equal to value2, THEN output value3 ELSE output value4. So what we do here is check if there is a value in a member item, and then output one value or another depending on if we're dealing with a kit or not. Following this logic, you should be able to add other fields as you want.

Hope this helps!

Using the SurveyGizmo Integration Add-On

2010-03-08T16:29:00.005-05:00

With our latest NetSuite add-on recently added to NetSuite’s SuiteApp listings we thought a quick tutorial would be apropos. Luckily one of our amazing consultants created an online video tutorial that demonstrates this nifty add-on. Thanks Mathieu!

If you are not familiar with SurveyGizmo, you can get a free trial here. SurveyGizmo is one of the best online survey tools available. I use it all the time both professionally and personally. The options available with this tool are amazing. I highly recommend it if your company ever needs to send out surveys.

The benefit of purchasing our integration add-on is that you don’t have to switch between NetSuite and SurveyGizmo anymore. You can send, organize and compile all your results right from NetSuite!

Request a demo or purchase this add-on directly from our website, or visit NetSuite's SuiteApp store for more information!

Personalizing NetSuite

2010-03-02T11:13:00.002-05:00

One of the best things about NetSuite is its flexibility. While many users have set up a personal color scheme, added shortcuts and KPIs there are a few other options that are often neglected but could definitely enhance your NetSuite experience.

On the center tabs click HOME then SET PREFERENCES. On that screen you’ll find a couple of neat preferences you can set for yourself (I repeat, for yourself. These settings will only affect YOU, no other NetSuite user).

Look under the first tab, GENERAL, and check out the Defaults header on the right side. You’ll find a handful of options, but today we will concern ourselves with "Show Internal IDs", "Only Show Last Subaccount", "Only Show Last Subentity" and "Only Show Last Subitem".

The "Show Internal IDs" is useful if you plan on doing CSV updates, or if you want to start dabbling in SuiteScripts. Internal IDs are the unique record keys in NetSuite, which allow you to uniquely identify a record. It really only comes in useful when you're doing more advanced technical stuff like I mentioned, but if you are going down that road, this option is indispensable.

The next three – "Only Show Last Subaccount/Subentity/Subitem" options are useful if you have really long parent-child hierarchies on your records, and you only care about seeing the last level. For instance, if you have Customer A - SubCustomer B - Contact Bob, and all you want displayed on your transactions are "Contact Bob", tick the "Only Show Last Subentity" field. Again, this is really just a personal preference and keep in mind this may cause you to see records in a slightly differently than your colleagues.

One other really useful option that I personally always have on is under the REPORTING/SEARCH sub tab. On the right side, there is "Show List When Only One Result". If you don’t have this ticked, when you run a search that only brings up a single result, NetSuite will bring you to the record, rather than displaying the regular search result screen. By ticking this box, you'll ensure you always stay in the search results screen rather than being brought to the record found.

There are many other options, of course, under SET PREFERNCES, so don't be shy about scrolling over the field names to see the pop-up help screen. You might find a few easy tweaks you really like!

Publishing a form that Contains a Saved Search

2010-02-19T12:54:00.005-05:00

Here’s a little tip that might be helpful if you want to publish a form that contains a saved search. One of the reasons you might want to use a published form that contains a saved search is the ability to use search filters. This published form can then become available on your website or employee centre, saving search time for those users.

First of all, you need to make sure that you have the Advanced Web Search module in your NetSuite, and that the module is enabled. To enable it, go to the Web Presence section under Setup – Company – Enable Features.

It’s important to note that in order to do this, the saved search you wish to add needs to have been created using the Administrator role. If the saved search if you want to add wasn’t created using that role, then unfortunately publishing the form isn’t possible.

I hope this tip proves to be useful in your day to day business!

NetSuite Release 2010.1 Preview

2010-02-12T14:26:00.001-05:00

I just finished viewing the Developer Preview Webinar where NetSuite unveiled their 2010.1 upgrade and wanted to share a few thoughts with you.

According to NetSuite’s release schedule, a very small percentage of customers will receive their upgrade in early March, the majority will be upgraded in mid-March, and everyone should be running 2010.1 by April 23.

Among the changes in the latest version, the webinar outlines three, with a Workflow Manager being the highlight. Basically, this brand new feature allows you to define your own custom workflow utilization for records.

For example, with Sales Orders you would have the ability to create specific conditions that need to be met before it can move onto the approval process. Perhaps phone calls need to be made, or even just ensuring that the right boxes have been checked.

NetSuite did reinforce that this new feature is a beta version. They expect it to stay like that until at least 2010.2, and are hoping for tons of feedback from users. Beta or not, NetSuite really nailed the layout and user-interface on the head with this feature!

NetSuite 2010.1 has also enhanced their SuiteBundler. When installing a bundle, there will now be a column for the status that will give you the download status and percent complete. Increased security has also been added. NetSuite customers can now create a Developer Role for someone installing their bundles as opposed to granting Full Access or Administrator rights.

Finally, enhancement were made to SuiteScripts. You will now be able to add scripts that dictate behavior in the shopping cart. For instance, if you are selling cameras 2 for 1, and the client only adds one camera to the cart, the second camera will automatically be added. Same goes for discounts, or restricted shipping access for certain addresses.

Speaking of SuiteScripts, remember that if you have had any modifications done by us, it is a recommended best practice to get them tested with 2010.1 beforehand. Contact us for more information on how we can create a test action plan for you.

Kit/Assembly Costing

2010-01-06T08:18:00.007-05:00

A lot of people often ask how to display costing information derived from Members for their Kits or Assembly items.

Since a few versions ago, Netsuite exposed a join in Saved Searches that now allows you to build searches to get this information. In this post, I'm going to go through the steps to show you how to get this to work for simple cases.

First, you need to create an Item Saved Search as follows:
CRITERIA
Type any of Assembly/Bill of Materials, Kit/Package

RESULTS
Name
Member Item
Member Quantity
Member Item : Average Cost
Formula (Currency) with formla being {memberquantity}*{memberitem.averagecost}

At this point, you're going to have a search that outputs, for every one of your Kits/Assemblies, all of the member items and what those member items are worth for the parent, this worth basically being Member's Average Cost times the Quantity used in the Kit/Assembly.

Continuing on, you probably just want to see a single value for each Kit/Assembly. So in order to do this, you are going to add Summary Type values for the columns, as follows:

RESULTS
Name -> GROUP
Member Item
Member Quantity
Member Item : Average Cost
Formula (Currency) with formla being {memberquantity}*{memberitem.averagecost} -> SUM

If you run your search, you should now be seeing every Kit/Assembly as 1 line with a cost figure next to it. That's your costing derived from member items!

Continuing on to make this cuter, here's what you can do. In your search, go on the Available Filters tab and add "Internal ID" as a filter. Save the search and make sure to make it Public and also tick in the box "Available as Sublist View" in the search headers.

Next, go under Setup->Customization->Sublists. On the Item tab, select your Search, give it a Label, select a Tab, and tick in Kit/Package and Assembly/Bill of Material.

This will add a subtab on your Assembly and Kit items that will display the Cost. Very handy!

Now, if you use Units of Measure or if your Member items are kit or assemblies themselves, or you want the cost info to be in a field, the above will NOT work. For these more complex cases, you don't have a choice other than using Suitescript to calculate in a much more in-depth manner your costing. As luck would have it (-wink-) IT-Ration has a Add-On module that does just this! You can find this module on our Website here.

How to quickly mass Clear transactions

2009-11-26T16:21:00.006-05:00

Here's a little time saving tip for Clearing transactions, a little on the odd side - but it does work.

Now, this is probably not for companies comfortably up and running that are periodically reconcilling. This is more for people who haven't been reconciling and would like to Clear a whole bunch of lines all at once. I'm sure someone somewhere has a need to do this...

To mass Clear transactions, create a Reconciliation for all those transactions (Bank->Reconcile Bank Statement or Reconcile Credit Card Statement). Just reconcile everything you want to clear and hit save. Now, go back on that date, and delete the reconciliation you just made.

This will cause the transactions to unreconcile, but they will stay Cleared.

Reconcile every line to clear

Delete the reconciliation. Lines remain Cleared, but not Reconciled.

How to text-wrap transaction column fields on printouts

2009-10-30T10:34:00.006-04:00

A recurring problem people have is, when printing a transaction, Netsuite will truncate long fields rather than text-wrap them on multiple lines.

Surprisingly, there's no way to tell Netsuite you want a certain field to text-wrap.

However, if you follow these little steps, you'll be able to create yourself a text-wrapping field to display any column you want.

Create a Custom Transaction Column field.
a. Type = Text Area
b. Store Value = uncheck
c. (optional) Display Type = Disabled
d. Default Value = to_char({fieldid}) where fieldid is the internal id of the field you want to text-wrap

Once you've created this field, you have a bit more work to do -

Customize any transaction form that you want to print
a. Add the field you just created to Printing Fields
b. For this to work, the original field MUST still be checked in Printing Fields... but you don't want it to appear, since you replaced it with your super-duper text wrapping field. So in the Width of the original field, type "0.0001"

Ta-da! Text wrapping. The only ugly part remaining is that on the user interface, users will see both fields. Unfortunately, there's no way to hide the field in the GUI in a way that won't stop it from correctly showing on printouts.

Searching on Transactions affecting Inventory

2009-10-20T09:37:00.003-04:00

It can often occur that you want to run a Saved Search to find all transactions affecting inventory, like when maybe you want to see the consumption history of a certain item, or whatever.

In most accounts, this can be trickier than it sounds. Your first reaction may be to simply add a criteria on Transaction Type and select the transactions that normally affect inventory - Inventory Adjustments, Transfers, Item Fulfillments, etc.

But (and if you didn't know this, this is important to know) there can often be times where you booked an Invoice, or a Bill, or a Credit Memo without first creating the SO/PO/RA and then the corresponding Item Fulfillment or Item Receipt (i.e., a "standalone" Invoice/Bill/Credit Memo).

This means that your Invoice/Bill/Credit Memo is affecting inventory. So ok, you may think, you need to add these Transaction Types to your search. Nope, wrong. Cause then you'll be double-counting your inventory impact in cases where you have a Fulfillment AND an Invoice. Ok, so then filter on just Invoices? Wrong again, then you'll be missing out on all the Transactions that have been fulfilled but not invoiced. What's a boy (or girl) to do?

Well, you can follow this neat tip. Add the following criteria:
Is Posting = True
Account = Inventory Asset (make sure here to actually select the Inventory Asset account you're using, as per your Chart of Account. There may be more than 1, which is alright).

This way, you are 100% certain to grab only transactions affecting your inventory, because you're looking at the inventory asset account. That doesn't lie. If something goes in or out of your inventory, it will definitely have an impact on your inventory asset. And by saying Is Posting, you are basically weeding out Sales Orders and Purchase Orders and other non-impacting stuff.

So a quick example of a complete search using these criteria might be:

Transaction Search
CRITERIA
Is Posting = True
Account = Inventory Asset

COLUMNS
Date
Type
Number
Item
Quantity
Item Rate
Amount

Enjoy!