Item: NetSuite ERP
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

NetSuite is used within our finance department mainly. Other users across our business units have the ability to go into NetSuite and pull up vendor information, bills, and invoices, but finance is responsible for the content, accuracy, and management of the software. It allows accounting to have a consolidated tool for all their needs - including revenue recognition, cost, payroll, vendors, billing, and reporting as well. We use it in FP&A as well in order to get greater detail behind P&L numbers, research variances, and understand the "why" behind some of our monthly drivers.

Pros and Cons

GL transaction detail
Revenue Recognition
Mapping of Accounts
Vendor related information - including backup for bills & invoices

User Interface & Experience
Reporting - specifically data visualization
Modeling - building in assumptions and forecasting tools

Return on Investment

Allowed us to close month-end more quickly and more efficiently
Accountants are able to take on more responsibility as they are spending less time mapping between softwares
Centralized all of Finance's data under one software. Billing, FP&A, and Accounting all use NetSuite for various purposes

Membership in Oracle User Groups

Not a member of any user groups

I am not a member of the user groups listed here - but I have gone to two NetSuite user meetups in San Diego. In one of them we saw how a national tech company uses NetSuite for their financial processes. We met with some employees from the company and shared how we both use NetSuite for various functions. The main take-away (and difference between our companies) was that they were using NetSuite not only for their accounting team, but also for their FP&A team. While our company's FP&A team uses NetSuite, we mainly use it to pull raw data and manipulate that data in another software. NetSuite definitely has a robust user community with events in major cities a few times per year.

Alternatives Considered

Accounting for Mortgage Bankers, Adaptive Suite and IBM Cognos

Netsuite is much more generic than AMB, and can be applied to many different companies across any industry. AMB is meant specifically for Mortgage companies, so they have much more specified reporting and tools. Adaptive is fantastic for budgeting and forecasting, but is not designed to handle GL level details and vendor/billing information the same way NetSuite is. Luckily, the two tools integrate extremely well, so we are able to import our actual financial data from NetSuite over to Adaptive every monthly with relatively little hassle. I have used IBM Cognos in the past as well, but this was more for reporting. While NetSuite has the reporting capabilities, I would say that it's main purpose is as a transaction-level tool for accounting, and reporting demands can be met more easily with other tools.

Other Software Used

Adaptive Suite, Chatter, Salesforce, Jabber, Trello

Likelihood to Recommend

NetSuite is fantastic for accounting purposes. Our accountants are able to map new accounts in NetSuite and have that information pull in automatically. They can also drill into any numbers that don't make sense and understand what bills or accruals drove those numbers and have the ability to pull up the PDF of the bill/invoice in question to identify if it was booked to the correct GL account. All of this can be done in just a few clicks and makes the accountant's job significantly easier. However, it is not best suited for forecasting and modeling. If you are trying to forecast next month or rest of year's numbers, NetSuite is not the ideal tool.

NetSuite - A fantastic tool for Accounting teams across all industries

Software Version

Modules Used

Overall Satisfaction with NetSuite