Sneak Peek for Services Firms: NetSuite 2021 Release 1 Delivers Additional Automation and Insights

If there’s one thing that all project-based businesses, such as advertising agencies and IT services firms have in common, it’s a marketplace that’s quickly evolving for both clients and employees alike.

Both groups are craving new forms of engagement through remote capabilities and will likely want to see more for the foreseeable future.

Efficiency and productivity through added automation and business process insight will be at a premium. The NetSuite 2021 Release 1 continues to deliver these capabilities, providing the agility and resilience services firms need. 

Optimizing the Project Lifecycle

• NetSuite 2021 Release 1 brings the debut of SuiteProjects, a professional services automation solution built natively on NetSuite. SuiteProjects combines capabilities in project management, resource management, project budgeting and project accounting, providing complete visibility into, and control over projects and billable resources. When combined with NetSuite CRM, financials and SuitePeople, SuiteProjects becomes the finishing touch on a comprehensive single platform for running a services business.

  

• With project purchase automation and visibility, project managers can initiate purchases from projects, access project views of purchase transactions and route purchase approvals. This fuels collaboration between purchasing and project management, and project managers can use the simplified user experience to easily view the impact of purchases on projects.
• Employees can easily correct weekly timesheets before they’re approved by clicking on the new “retract” button, preserving precious minutes for employees, approvers and administrators alike.
• Enhancements to expense report policies make it possible to set limits for each project expense line, as well as filter control of policies based on billable lines. The controls and notifications ensure alignment with company policies and client contracts.
• The customizable mobile dashboard, which supports all NetSuite dashboard tabs, makes it easy to add, remove and reorder portlets. The redesigned mobile user interface includes expense and time tracking, as well as a KPI scorecard. Services companies can track and manage NetSuite data more easily than ever from a mobile device, with responsiveness in either tablet or landscape mode.

Smart Financials and Operational Automation

• With centralized purchasing and billing, purchases can be consolidated across multi-subsidiary organizations and generate vendor payments from a single location. This simplifies purchasing, reduces order volume and automates corresponding cross-charges, resulting in better spend management and increased productivity.
• The configurable transaction numbering feature enables flexibility, with dynamic rules that reset each fiscal year. Each year begins with automated numbering and subsidiaries steadily gain control over document numbering.
• Expanded support now allows Services companies to use the Bank Feeds SuiteApp to automatically import financial data from banks in Asia, Australia and New Zealand.
• SuiteApprovals now includes email approval so staff can review, approve or reject transactions with a simple click in an email, bringing flexibility and agility to transaction approvals. Those actions can be reviewed and audited in the accompanying email approval log before any system updates.

Managing Modern Business Models

• The new delta charges feature in SuiteBilling global invoicing lets users create delta charges when invoiced service periods are changed. With invoices precisely reflecting changes to original invoice amounts and credit memos rendered unnecessary, it reduces changes and simplifies customer invoices.
• Revenue can be reversed and manual corrections become a thing of the past with SuiteBilling ‘voiding usage’ functionality, which automatically credits voided usage against a previously billed charge.