Finance Enhancements in NetSuite 2023.1

A survey conducted by cfo.com in November 2022 revealed the challenges in NetSuite and some solutions for them. The majority of the respondents expressed their concern over the financial crisis, cash flow and staff shortage. To address these challenges the executives, especially CFOs, cited a strategy that gives priority to technology.  

According to 83% of respondents, there are higher chances of critical hiring needs in the first half of 2023. To handle workforce issues, they recommended increasing technology adoption. Nowadays, nearly three-quarters of firms have started to invest in technology to reduce manual labor. Companies rely on technology to protect profit margins by doing more with less.   

NetSuite 2023 Release 1 provides valuable and time-saving features that assure more automation and flexibility than ever. These features aid finance leaders in their activities.  

User-friendly Accounts Payable Automation

Numerous drawbacks were found while manually entering vendor bills during the Accounts Payable (AP) process. It was discovered that it required a significant amount of time as well as manual labor and frequently resulted in errors. Hence, it led to higher overhead costs, loss of saving opportunities and more chances of fraud.   

With the automation of the entire bill capture process, firms can avoid the risks associated with manual data entry in AP. Interestingly, NetSuite 2023 Release 1 also aims to improve AP automation by providing an option for firms to upload vendor bills. The companies can simply email the bills to NetSuite to make use of this option. Bills sent via email are converted into digitized versions automatically, eliminating the need to manually enter the vendor details or drag and drop the scanned copy into the bill capture workspace.   

AI/ML-based object detection and optical character recognition are provided for scanning bills in NetSuite 2023.1. Essential details, including vendor name, PO number, ordered items, quantity, and price details, are cross-checked with the purchase order after transforming into digital text. The latest update allows the user to edit subsidiaries, swap lines between items and expense tabs, and alter taxes and shipping cost total amounts. This feature empowers organizations with better flexibility and control over scanned vendor bills.  

NetSuite AP Automation got a great revamp with better features for its payment automation skill. This improved feature offers banking services from HSBC to permit quick and error-free vendor payments from within NetSuite. Along with this, NetSuite 2023.1 revises the process via automated journal entries and offers an updated approval routing workflow. Hence, when a company pays the vendor through the bank, NetSuite automatically creates a corresponding journal entry for that transaction. As a result, the firm can avoid manual labor in recording transaction details. Missed or late payments bring a raft of problems to the companies. Apart from late fees, they can affect credit and damage the vendor relationships between the firms. If the companies are keen to maintain the vendor details properly at each stage, they can easily avoid these pitfalls in their operations.  

With the improved new vendor approval routing, the user can now embed approvals into the payment automation feature of NetSuite. With the updates, the creation of new vendors or any changes made to existing records of vendors or banks will be assessed in the approval routing process to confirm the accuracy of the information. Along with ensuring the details required for vendor payments are accurate, NetSuite 2023 Release 1 prevents the creation of fake suppliers.  

Automated Price Change for Subscription Renewal   

For the firms, the manual subscription renewal process is a time-consuming task. Hence, companies with subscription pricing options have to automate their renewal processes to reduce the administrative burden. NetSuite’s new feature in 2023.1 helps SuiteBuilding users apply a percent hike to a customer’s renewal pricing automatically. The users can set these increases while creating a subscription or at the time of renewal. They can either automatically select the percentage uplift from the subscription plan or set this increase at a line-item level. This new global invoicing preference is critical in determining whether to follow inflation or implement the new catalog pricing. With a user-friendly setup and flexible preferences, the revised renewal feature guarantees subscription revenue growth to all business models.   

New Improvements to Rebates and Trade Promotions  

NetSuite 2023.1 helps customers ease the process of attracting and retaining clients through rebates and promotions. SuiteApp's improved features for Rebates and Trade Promotions help businesses mechanize rebate and trade promotion calculations on kits and assembly items along with standard inventory items. This comprehensive application of rebates and trade promotions assures authentic and efficient manual calculations on more item types.  

NetSuite 2023 release 1 also introduces a major update to the recalculation behavior in Suite App that allows users to edit a quantity or price on sales transaction lines without affecting previous agreements. If the quantity or price is revised, agreements in process on the transaction line will be retrieved and easily recalculated, averting the possibility that those calculations are no longer considered valid after a change on the transaction line.

More Authority Over Tax Exemptions 

Tax-exempt companies and subsidiaries can disable tax calculation in NetSuite 2023.1. This option helps the companies opt out of tax calculation and recording on NetSuite. Now, companies do not need to bother about calculating and recording taxes. The new update helps them assign links to a subsidiary, categorize it as tax-free, and avoid the assignment of a tax engine by disabling such calculations on transactions for that nexus. This flexible feature helps firms run both tax-exempt and tax-registered businesses within a single NetSuite account.

Enhanced Capabilities Around Indirect Cost Allocation  

NetSuite 2023.1 assures improvement of capabilities around indirect cost allocation for the not-for-profit segment. This new update permits firms to record a provisional or agreed-upon rate for a custom segment, like a grant. These companies can specify which direct costs on the custom segment are allowed under the agreement and set any amount limits. With this update, indirect costs are calculated automatically and uploaded to the custom segment monthly. Users can easily view the total amount, including indirect costs attracted to the custom segment, at any given time through this user-friendly interface. The update empowers organizations to recover indirect costs from a custom segment. 

NetSuite, a cloud-based ERP system, has emerged as one of the most reliable platforms for organizations to operate their operations. To learn more about NetSuite and to address issues in your company's procedures, contact Jobin and Jismi.