As with any other leading cloud ERP provider, twice-annual updates are a core feature of using the cloud. Delivered automatically and with minimal hassles compared to their legacy counterparts, cloud ERP providers offer hearty, feature-rich updates built to make your job easier.

And now that August is upon us, so are the updates for two of our vendor partners. Today, we would like to explore just some of the big improvements coming to NetSuite in Release 2.

Big New Features and a Lot More Automation

As discussed in the NetSuite Podcast, users and leaders will be treated to a variety of new features set to improve the way they work. From employee management and supply chain innovations to financial and operational excellence enhancements and new developer tools, NetSuite 2020 Release 2 offers a variety of new functionality designed to help companies position themselves for future success.

Here are just some of the big improvements, broken down by the focus:

Finance and Operations: Smarter Intercompany, Better Banking, Organized Invoices

Many businesses expect big things out of the finance side of an ERP application, as it’s the area through which nearly everything flows. From making the intercompany accounting process easier to consolidating invoices, NetSuite Release 2 2020 offers the following to help you work smarter and faster.

Easy Invoice Grouping Speeds up AR

One of the more time consuming tasks within NetSuite has been the process of manually grouping invoices. As with any manual process, the lack of automation slowed down business operations, reduced visibility, and made the process unnecessarily inaccurate. However, NetSuite introduced a new feature to improve this—invoice grouping.

Invoice grouping enables the consolidation of multiple invoices into a single invoice that’s delivered to the customer, and it also allows payments accepted at the group level to be applied to individual invoices. Invoice Groups work in SuiteFlow, appear in searches and reports, and can appear on customer statements while allowing you to set up custom numbering, customizing the form, and accepting customer payments.

Intercompany Charge Automation and AP/AR Netting

Whether used to segment business centers, operate internationally, or deliver additional control over a variety of subsidiaries, use of intercompany accounting is often a necessary part of running a business. In turn, NetSuite has added the following features to make your job easier:

  • Intercompany cross charge automation enables accounting teams to automatically post cross charge transactions between subsidiaries. This automation reduces the manual effort and accelerates the accounting period close process.
  • You can easily net intercompany receivables and payables with a new feature that enables accountants and controllers to offset mutual intercompany open balances and auto-generate intercompany netting settlements. The result is fewer open intercompany transactions and reduced manual effort to manage open balances.

Automated Bank Reconciliations

Another tool used to automate business processes, you now have the ability to automatically create and match account transactions with imported bank data. This improvement will make transactions faster and easier, and you can use rules that enable you to create and match deposits and charges for GL bank accounts and charges and refunds for credit card accounts.

Currency Exchange Rate Types

Another feature designed to make your job easier and often to improve cash flow, the introduction of currency exchange rate types allows users to save multiple currency rates for a given pair and date. When enabled, this allows up to three active currency rate exchange types.

Employee Management: Engage Employees, Facilitate Expense Reporting and More

Another core feature used by NetSuite clients is the employee management functionality. From engagement to performance management to expense reports, NetSuite is bringing a variety of new features to their employee management functionality.

Improve Performance Reviews with SuitePeople Performance Management

Especially in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, it became tougher to track people. From metrics to goals, HR leaders needed to find out new ways to connect with employees and track productivity. To address this, NetSuite introduced their SuitePeople Performance Management tool to give HR leaders a central place to easily administer the performance review process that not only enables greater performance management efficiencies, but also helps employees stay engaged with goal creation, monitoring, measuring and recognition for achievements. 

The performance management functionality allows employees and managers to create and set goals, that are achievable, meaningful, and connected to the work that an employee does. Using performance metrics, managers can track progress and automatically bring up this information when review time arrives.

Expense Easily: American Express Credit Card Integration and Better Controls

Even though we may not be back to traveling for business, at some point this will tick back up. To help make business travel easier, NetSuite introduced Expense Report Integration for American Express Cards and provides new ways to deliver compliance.

  • Expense report credit card integration enables the population of NetSuite expense module expense lines directly from American Express corporate credit card accounts streamlining the process, increasing user adoption and reducing data entry errors.
  • Automated controls and notifications on expense reports ensure compliance on company policies and contracts. This results in fewer unapproved overages and limits excess expenses.

Supply Chain Improvements

For those in the product-focused industries, supply chain products are built to deliver a variety of benefits. NetSuite has built its Supply Chain solution to handle the evolving needs of your business, delivering connectivity and control over materials, inventory, and more.

Material Requirements Planning Takes Demand Planning Further

For customers using NetSuite Demand Planning, the new material requirements planning (MRP) solution delivers enhancements needed for the modern product-focused business. This solution has been completely re-architected for performance, featuring a dedicated planning repository designed to help planners make decisions based on timely and consistent information.

Granular Control with Planning Workbench

Designed to help you slice and dice data with ease, the new planning workbench gives you visibility into data by product line, plan, location, user-defined item categories and groups. In turn, users will be able to avoid shortages and surplus, this can help users notice the most pressing issues that persist in the manufacturing process.

Prevent Potential Risks to Supply Chain with Predicted Risks

Sales order predicted risks will provide users with greater insight into potential risks on goods not shipping on time. With these predicted risks highlighted, companies can achieve better customer retention by identifying potential issues and addressing them in a proactive manner. The system also provides alternate vendors based on new machine learning algorithms.

See Orders in Context with Supply Allocation

Being able to understand your orders in more detail can help you minimize risk. With Supply Allocations, you can allocate and optimize both inbound shipments and purchase orders in context, helping customers to ensure that the allocated quantities are reconciled across these two sources of supply.

Warehouse Management Solution Picking without Bins

Another ease of use feature, WMS picking without bins allows the user to receive, transfer and pick goods via a handheld device without having to define and manage bins. Customers can leverage NetSuite WMS in either warehouse or store locations in order to avoid the overhead of managing bins. This will help to save time and speed up filling processes.

Get to Know More About NetSuite

As a leading NetSuite partner, we’ve established a genuine methodology to help maximize every dollar of your ERP budget and ensure NetSuite is meeting your needs. Learn more about our NetSuite support and optimization services.

Another big release for NetSuite users, these enhancements are going to help you do your job more effectively and stay ahead of the competition. Looking to learn even more? Stay tuned for our look into the industry-specific enhancements and contact us for a free consultation.

Additional Resources

What are Product-Based Businesses Getting from NetSuite’s Latest Release?

Implementing NetSuite in Manufacturing Facilities

NetSuite FAQs: Our Most Popular Tutorials