Chapter 8: Identifying the Organization's Main Transactions

NetSuite transactions are the heartbeat of the system. We use them to record a business' daily activity. Most NetSuite clients use a mix of standard transactions such as Purchase Orders and Vendor Bills and less common transactions such as Assembly Builds, Item Transfers, and Revenue Arrangements. Understanding what NetSuite offers and helping your clients determine how they're going to use them correctly is your next task.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Grouping records by business process
• Gathering requirements for Record to Report (RTR) transactions
• Gathering requirements for Procure to Pay (PTP) transactions
• Gathering requirements for Order to Cash (OTC) transactions
• Analyzing the other process groups

When performing the steps in this chapter with a client, you will be helping the subject-matter experts for all of the teams who will interact with transactions screens, including the finance and accounting teams, to understand how they will be using NetSuite daily.

Grouping records by business process

There are many ways we could break down the list of activities a business needs to record each day they're in operation. The most common way that's used in most industries today is to label them by the process flow they are most commonly a part of, describing the starting point and the result. For instance, for sales to customers, we refer to the OTC process, since the process starts with an order and ends with the business being paid (hopefully!). We use these labels to describe the processes almost every business has, no matter which industry they're a part of, or where they are in the world.

Important Note

As we progress through this chapter, please note that sometimes, we'll use the word record for things you can enter in NetSuite. These are usually going to be transaction records but may on occasion be something else, such as an item or a support case. We don't want to get too bogged down by those terms here, so just remember that every screen in NetSuite where we create something new and then save creates a record.

When you're gathering these requirements with your client, it may not be necessary for you to explain all the nuances of these process names to your client, but it will help for all of you to have this common language you use and a basic understanding, since you'll need to be able to split up the work and talk to each component separately (and may have different people working on each process with the client).

Here is the most common list of business processes we use today and the ones we'll reference frequently throughout the remainder of this book:

Table 8.1 – The business process names and the names of the related records in NetSuite

These are the business process names we'll use from now on, and as you can see, each process maps to the names of many records and transactions in the system. They're meant to be shortcuts to save time in conversations but please also remember that they're not set in stone – and not every NetSuite client will use all of these processes.

Next, let's start to drill into the main business processes we always need to gather requirements for, starting with RTR.

Gathering requirements for Record to Report (RTR) transactions

The name of this process sounds very generic, but this is for a good reason – it is. You may be thinking, RTR could include anything, but it's meant to convey a sense of the general setup we need to do in the account and then a financial connection. This is a process every business (including non-profits) has since it includes things such as setting up the accounting periods and accounting preferences, and defines how they will use journal entries and perform period closes. This also includes any other sort of around-the-edges adjustments that every business needs from time to time. Whether they sell inventory or collect donations for a charity or trade cyber currencies, every business needs to make occasional adjustments to their accounting.

Here are some topics to cover when analyzing the client's RTR needs:

• How do they want to track accounting periods in NetSuite? (We talked about this in the previous chapter in depth but this is also usually included in the R2R discussion.)
• How does the business record taxes? Get the full list of agencies they must report and pay taxes to.
• Are there are any common, recurring needs for RTR transactions? For instance, does your client eliminate account funds once a month, as part of their period close process?

You'll primarily work with your client's accounting and finance teams for the RTR processes.

Next, let's take a deeper dive into the client's purchasing and A/P billing processes.

Gathering requirements for Procure to Pay (PTP) transactions

Within this process, we cover the purchasing needed to make the company run. If your client is a software company, their PTP transactions may be limited to things such as rent and utilities and computer and office supplies. In that case, their requirements around these transactions should be simple to gather. But many companies have rules they've established around things such as how their employees should make requests for purchases, or which management approvals are needed when these employee requests come in. Approvals are very common for PTP transactions, even when the company has dedicated buyers.

Here are some topics to cover when analyzing the client's PTP needs:

• We need to understand the process flow within the business for the entire PTP process, so that will include purchases, receipts, bills (also known as vendor invoices), and returns and credits.
• Is there any direct communication between the business and the vendors they purchase from? For example, do they need to allow their vendors to log into the NetSuite Vendor Center for any reason?
• Which transactions will require an approval process and exactly how do those approvals need to work? Many times, we can solve these requirements with a simple workflow, but then again, some companies have more complex requirements and levels of approval needed. Now is the time to fully understand how they want this to work and to recommend a simpler approach, if possible.
• How will the client handle the receipt of goods they purchase? Specifically, will they ever need special handling after the receipt (such as splitting up a case into smaller units for sale)? Or will they need to integrate their receipts with any warehouse management service/application?
• Do they ever need to handle vendor rebates?
• Do they need inter-company transactions, where one subsidiary purchases items and then those are transferred to or sold by another subsidiary?

As you work with your client's purchasing people to understand their needs, remember what we said earlier about how they're probably not savvy with NetSuite's features yet, so do your best to work with their terms, for now, translating those into NetSuite terms over time.

Next, let's see what information you need to gather from the client's OTC people.

Gathering requirements for Order to Cash (OTC) transactions

When it comes to sales tracking, businesses tend to fall into a few known categories. If they have a retail component or they only sell items via the internet, they will most likely use cash sales to record them in the system, assuming all orders are paid for at the time the order is placed. If they allow sales based on terms (Net 30, for instance), then they'll need invoices, and so on. Spend a good amount of time talking to the sales and other related teams to understand their OTC process thoroughly.

Here are some topics to cover when analyzing the client's OTC needs:

• Do they ever record quotes, or estimates, in advance of a sale? Some businesses will use these as a way to start the sales conversation with their customers or to establish pricing in advance.
• What forms of payment do they accept for sales and when do they offer terms as an alternative?
• Are there ever restrictions on which items each customer is allowed to buy?
• How do they handle pricing on sales? Some of my clients have had pretty complex rules around pricing, making them customer-specific and item-specific, with different prices in effect for varying date ranges. NetSuite has a couple of solutions that can help with situations like this and then there's always the possibility of creating custom solutions when that's necessary.
• Do they need to offer rebates of any sort to their customers?
• Will some items or services be sold via contracts or subscriptions? This is something you should know before you start working with a client, as an output from the sales cycle, but it can occasionally pop up late in the process too.
• Are any items sold via dropships? This is usually easy enough to handle, but it's still important to know when you need to cover this functionality.
• Does your client have any items they rent? For example, college bookstores can rent textbooks to students, directly or via a third-party service. A storage company rents lockers to their customers. Accounting for rents is a special case of subscriptions since they can be very short term.
• How are sales taxed in the places where your client sells? If you're in the US, you might be able to solve these requirements just by installing and configuring a partner bundle since fortunately, all businesses must follow the same local/county/state/federal government rules. Outside the US, things get a little more complicated, so it's always important to have someone on your team who knows the rules for each locale where your client sells items or services.
• Are approvals required for any sales transaction? And who is allowed to edit them, for what reasons, and at which stage in the process? For instance, some businesses will let anyone edit any sales order, at any stage in the process, and then some place restrictions on that kind of editing once the order reaches (for instance) the pending fulfillment stage.
• How do they ship the products they sell? Are integrations needed with any third-party logistics service or warehouse management application?

Work with the sales, customer support, or whichever department processes sales and handles billing to understand the five Ws we mentioned previously; for instance, who does the work? (are there sales reps and sales managers with different permissions, for instance?), where do they do it? (on the phone, in the field, from multiple offices, and so on), and when and why do they make changes in orders? For most of my implementations, we've spent the majority of our time getting the OTC process nailed down, making sure what they enter and how they do that works exactly as the client needs it to since that's their customer-facing part of the business and it has to work perfectly.

There are many more processes to understand and for you to at least briefly talk about with your clients, so let's explore some of those in the next section.

Analyzing the other process groups

If you review Table 8.1 of this chapter, you'll see that the other remaining business processes are going to be relatively more or less important to each of your clients, based on their industry and their specialty within it. Not every NetSuite client uses the cases/issues/knowledge base features, for instance, but those that make them a part of their customer-facing business consider them to be very important indeed.

Let's talk through a few of the more commonly used processes here then, and get an idea of the information you need to gather from the client when analyzing them.

Design to Build

In the previous chapter, we talked about gathering requirements for items, but this process includes more than that. If your client has a manufacturing department of any sort, you might need to understand their need for work orders and assembly builds or more transactions, depending on how deeply they wish to track their shop processes. NetSuite's Advanced Manufacturing features include the ability to track all work in progress, step by step, for instance, if that's needed.

Call to Resolution

For companies with strong customer support departments, NetSuite's case and issue records can be very useful. Talk to the client about who these people are, what types of issues they deal with, and how those things need to tie into their OTC transactions, such as sales orders and return authorization cases. Having issues and orders closely tied together can be a key differentiator for software and other types of businesses.

Hire to Pay

For most of the clients I have implemented, we set up employees, import their list, restrict permissions to the right roles/people, and we're done with this process. But for companies who have more requirements around things such as payroll or sales commissions or recruiting, we need to dig deeper to understand how they perform these activities. When necessary, we can add the SuitePeople package, but it's also common to bring in a set of third-party SuiteApps or bundles to add to NetSuite's native functionality in these cases.

Marketing to ROI

When you're working with a company that has a one-person marketing team, there's not a lot to set up in NetSuite here. But when the company does a lot of marketing in-house, you need to understand things such as how they handle their campaigns, upsells, and possibly promotions, depending on which team owns that within the company.

Return to Credit

We're calling this out separately from PTP and OTC because some companies have much more going on with returns than the average business. For businesses such as clothing retailers, allowing returns is a big part of the business, so we can't skimp on defining the processes they follow. In these cases, there are typically lots of rules to be implemented in NetSuite, including how many returns a customer can make in a defined period, or exactly how each item is to be processed when received as part of a return. This can be complicated by things such as rebates and discounts as well since the amount to be returned has to take those things into account.

Project to Delivery

Businesses that provide services (such as deliveries or consulting) will typically either use NetSuite's Project feature, subscribe to OpenAir if they're large enough, or have chosen another separate project management tool, outside of NetSuite in some cases. If they're using NetSuite for this, then you should come to understand how they create new projects, how they staff them, and what they need to keep track of. For many businesses, cost and time are the two main metrics, but we can also set up tracking for other things as required. This is yet another case where having someone who specializes in services work, and also knows all of the related NetSuite features well, really makes a difference in the success of an implementation.

Web to Order

For clients signing up to use NetSuite's SuiteCommerce or SuiteCommerce Advanced features, you need a team of e-commerce specialists to analyze their requirements and to build them out into the software. This can include setting up multiple websites, domains, and all the other related features, and we very commonly receive at least a few customization requests from these clients. When a company sells via the web, they want that user experience to be very easy and frictionless, so getting this right takes a lot of experience. Don't try to take on an e-commerce implementation by yourself, without having someone more experienced to guide you, in other words.

These processes are the main ones covered by features within NetSuite, but your client may have others, which are just as critical to their business. As always, whenever you're talking to them about anything, use your active listening skills to try to pick up on any mention of something new/different they're going to need, and always spend at least a few minutes exploring anything that sounds interesting.

As you can see, there's potential here for needing to have a lot of conversations with each client, but don't feel overwhelmed. You can do it and you will succeed with your clients if you learn to break down every problem you encounter into manageable tasks, and then tackle them one at a time. The larger your implementation team is, the more you can divide up this work. Your team's size should scale with the size and complexity of your clients.

Summary

In this chapter, we started by understanding your client's business processes by breaking them down into categories (PTP, OTC, and so on). Then, within each category, we got to know how the business functions – who does the work and how they do it. It's at this stage in every implementation project that we get to understand what makes our clients unique, and this allows us to tailor the system to their exact needs.

Once you've completed a few NetSuite implementations for a variety of clients, you start to think you've seen it all, but don't fall into that trap – every business has at least a few elements that make them unique and it's part of your job to make sure you hear your client's description of their processes fully, and then to ensure those elements are mapped into NetSuite successfully. You have to understand their processes first so that you can move on to the next phase, which is where we start to configure the system to meet all of the client's requirements.

In the next chapter, we will move on from gathering requirements to configuring the NetSuite account to meet the client's needs. We will learn how to use SuiteBuilder's various features to define custom records, fields, and forms. (We finally get to do some hands-on work!)

Self-assessment

Take a moment now to think back over this chapter's content and test your understanding of the topics covered here. Think about how you would apply the following concepts to your day-to-day work:

1. How would you respond to a client who tells you that they sometimes buy things from a company, but they also sell things to that same company, and they want to have them set up just once within their account?
2. The senior accountant for your client lets you know that occasionally, they will personally need to enter journals into the system that no other employee should be able to view. What should your response be, or how can you help meet this requirement?
3. Your client's business has a high sales volume, with something like 5,000 new orders placed on an average day. What special questions should you ask in cases like this? (And how should this affect your designs for setting up their orders in the system?)
4. A business uses Quotes to work out deals with their customers, and they will need to be able to combine multiple Quotes into one order, regularly. Is there a native feature in NetSuite that can help with this, or how could you meet this requirement?
5. Your services company client wants to be sure that every project is directly tied to any related Sales Orders. What's the best way to ensure this happens in their NetSuite account?