EXPERT: An Overview of NetSuite Reporting

What is NetSuite Financial Reporting?

NetSuite Financial Reporting is a system that supports high-level decision-making in business. By using various analytics and tracking KPIs, your team can ensure accuracy and quality when it comes to making an informed decision. Plus, the reports and dashboards NetSuite offers are completely customizable to best suit your business’ individual needs.

What type of business would benefit from using NetSuite?

NetSuite Reporting can benefit a wide variety of businesses because it is such a large Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. Many of Rooled’s clients using NetSuite are startups, particularly those which are currently experiencing periods of growth. A common path for these startups is starting out by using QuickBooks and then switch over to NetSuite as their business grows, bringing with it heavier transaction volumes that are more inventory related.

However, transitioning over to NetSuite doesn’t always mean that your business has an increased volume of larger transactions. The needs of each client can be considered on a case-by-case basis. For example, if you’re finding yourself facing the need for more advanced reporting such as multi-subsidiary, multi-currency, or consolidated reporting, NetSuite is likely the best software for your business’ needs.

While NetSuite shares certain capabilities with other competing platforms such as QuickBooks, NetSuite goes above and beyond when zeroing in on their specialties. For example, third party app integration. While both QuickBooks and NetSuite can integrate with apps like Bill.com, Expensify, and Stripe, NetSuite alone can integrate with Shopify. NetSuite also has a robust fixed-asset model with an unlimited amount of third-party inventory management systems that can also integrate. Consider that you’re a light manufacturing company. Because there is such an emphasis on productivity and accurate completion, integration is necessary, and we would recommend NetSuite for your company.

I’ve joined NetSuite. Now what?

When you initially join NetSuite, you are tasked with both setting up and assigning roles to each employee or user in the system. These roles can be customized, so you can restrict or grant access and editing privileges. The system is very user-friendly and easy to navigate, which lowers customization costs and requires less reliance upon IT and developers. Because the administrators of the account control what each user can access, when users individually customize their own reports, it doesn’t interfere with the system from the administrator’s point of view.

What are the core benefits of NetSuite?

Customizability

The beauty of NetSuite is its customizability. Users can customize individual dashboards to display the most relevant information to their present task when they log in that do not interfere with those of others.

Security
Your information is more secure when using NetSuite because of your ability to directly control the permissions of each user accessing the interface. If there is any particularly sensitive data, it can be made inaccessible to all but top management and made accessible to others when necessary.

Ease of Use

Thankfully, transitioning over to NetSuite from other platforms like QuickBooks has gotten significantly easier over time. The driving force when it comes to efficiency is how much data the company plans to migrate over. For example, let’s say your company only wants to bring over trial balances (journal entries), it could only take a couple of days to make the switch. If you decide to bring over every transaction from a previous application, it can take significantly longer to perform the data migration. This is because you are likely pulling a higher volume of transactions from several different networks. However, you can achieve the comparative financial statements that you would want from NetSuite by only bringing over a few transactions at a time, so bringing over data in smaller sets is likely the best route to take for many businesses.

Another important thing to note about NetSuite and its accessibility is that clients’ experience with NetSuite can vary vastly depending on how they were trained. For example, they could have a bad experience until they find someone that can show them how to best use NetSuite for their needs. When it comes to custom and consolidated reporting, NetSuite’s offerings are, in Jeff Young’s opinion, the best in the market. This is in part because the program can automate elimination entries at the end of each month by way of a month-end checklist within which you can lock down specific sections that you may or may not want touched by the program.

Reliability

NetSuite’s systems are very robust and reliable. In fact, Jeff believes that many users could pick it up by just watching a demo. Further, NetSuite releases product updates twice a year to ensure that their product is consistently improving itself. For example, the update that is about to be released focuses on AP work, by way of automatically scanning a vendor bill document and subsequently coding it. This update could be major for clients still using Bill.com, as this update could eliminate that need.

Overall, NetSuite Reporting can offer businesses deep financial, statistical, and operational data while also saving time.

With NetSuite, businesses can gain the insights they need to make informed decisions and streamline their operations. NetSuite’s features are easy to use and provide the flexibility businesses need to tailor their reports to their specific needs. NetSuite’s reporting capabilities are second to none, and its ability to integrate with other business systems makes it an invaluable tool for businesses of all sizes.