NetSuite, as good as you want it to be.
March 07, 2018
NetSuite, as good as you want it to be.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
NetSuite Enterprise Edition
Modules Used
- Work Orders and Assemblies
- Procurement
Overall Satisfaction with NetSuite
Our organization is a flower wholesaler in Canada with operations across the country. NetSuite is our ERP and different modules are used by different departments. Our company started using an ERP only in 2015 so, we are still in the process of increasing its usage by more people. So far, the main focus of NetSuite has been in our financial department. This means it is being used in purchasing, invoicing, accounts payable/receivable, and inventories. As far as I know, it addressed everything related to money, and so far we still have to use it more for operational purposes like having real time information regarding inventories, production processes, etc.
- One tool that is outstanding in Netsuite is the search bar on the top. It is extremely easy to use and it will find anything related to your input. You can type a few letters of a vendor, a PO number, etc., and it will find it.
- Netsuite has a very easy way to keep opening tabs that will appear on the lower part on any give page. If you open a vendor's information page, below you will see a tab with options like: Relationships, Financial, System Information, etc.; then if you click on Financial, below you will see another tab where you can see: Currencies, Transactions, Items, etc., and so on. It makes it ease to go back and forth without leaving the same page.
- Shortcut for "Create New". There is this icon with a sheet of paper with a plus sign that when you roll over it will display a lot of different shortcuts for that specific vendor. You can go directly to Contact, email, task, Purchase order, etc. It is very handy and saves time to go to the desired place.
- Netsuite gives you the option of personalize your home screen. You may not use this a lot but it is always good to have it.
- In Netsuite most of the interfaces are not very intuitive. Once you learn the tricks of how to get where you want to go it is easy but most of the times you need to spend a while to find it or have someone to teach you.
- The search bar works better without hitting "enter" after you type something. This is a little counterintuitive because in most websites people is used to hit enter after inputting the information in a search bar.
- The dropdown menus on the top tabs sometimes are confusing. A good example is this: Vendors - > Purchases -> Enter Purchase Orders -> *and here you get two options: "List" and "Search". If you want to input a new purchase order is not clear what you are supposed to chose between "list" and "search". The use of the word "list" in a lot of menus is ambiguous.
- Translating IT tools into net dollars sounds complicated. Certainly having the information on hand translates into labour efficiency even though it's hard to assign a specific dollar value to it.
- Purchasing control is a good example of positive financial impact. Before using NetSuite, we had to to input every single purchase that was being made across the organization. It was impossible to track every operation and sometimes a vendor would get paid in full for an incomplete order. With NetSuite, every order has to be "received" and accounting has visibility on every transaction.
- Production assemblies also has a positive financial impact. A good example was when one of our flower bouquets with very high volume was being input in the system with the wrong number of stems per bunch. Our financial department was able to spot the problem because the remainder inventories after the production assemblies didn't make sense, and we were able to correct the assembly.
- Not a member of any user groups
- aspel
Comparing Netsuite to smaller ERP solutions, standalone software or basic accounting tools would be unfair. Netsuite is a powerful tool that can be escalated to any size and any need most of the companies could have. In our case it is a great option for a medium size company. We may not have global operations, or gigantic manufacturing plants integrated in different continents but it works pretty well managing four branches across Canada with manufacturing operations. I'm certain that we don't use all the modules available but it's good to know that we won't need to migrate to a new ERP when the time comes to use more modules.