Item: NetSuite ERP
Rating: 9
Author: Ian Goodenough

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use it as our central GL database. We have a lot of different kinds of technology solutions that we use around it, but at the end of the day, everything needs to feed into NetSuite. It's our single source of financial records and everything like that. The big thing that NetSuite addressed for us was the multi-subsidiary. So in real estate development, we have every single one of our projects as a different entity. We have multiple different operating companies as well. We have subsidiaries of those that need to consolidate and eliminate inter-companies and all of that. And so that was our big problem solve for NetSuite. We moved from QuickBooks desktop previously, and so it saved us a ton of time there.

Pros and Cons

I already mentioned the intercompany, which saves me a ton of time. Being able to book entries across multiple subsidiaries all at once is a huge time-saving. I also really value the way that it integrates with some other technology solutions, and I'm going to shout out to Ramp right now. I implemented that last summer and for credit card spend and being able to not have to spend hours reconciling credit card and having all the data feed right into NetSuite instantly without any kind of reconciliation needed is a huge time save. And it's not just Ramp that does that. We've used Stampli as well for AP and it does that. We recently implemented Rippling to handle HR and payroll. And so that's one of the big things. And that was a big selling point for me too, was being able to find these other solutions that can automate and make us very scalable. But they all talk nice. With API direct kind of integrations with NetSuite.

I think there's the challenge of NetSuite of just navigating how big it is. It's also, I don't think it's always the most user-friendly platform. I feel like I've been implementing still for two years of just learning how to, there's so many different things you can do, which is great and that's what I really like about it, but it's also not the most intuitive or user-friendly software.

Return on Investment

It's just been positive of just time saving, finding different automations of our processes, being able to get better visibility into our financials too, whether it be at the individual project levels or whether it be through classification of data, customizing reports to get better insights to cash flows. And then time saved too of, I mentioned the intercompany elimination and being able to close and all that type of stuff, which saved me hours and hours that I would have to do at the end of the year. But also having the multi-book is really powerful too in that we report on our operating and say our real estate valuations. But at the end of the day, being able to have separate kinds of tax books as well to be able to quickly be able to reconcile to when I'm giving information to my tax accountants at the beginning of the year helps get to our investors, which is a whole big thing. It's just all of those little things add up and the big thing is saving time while also still giving us the visibility and insight that we need to better run our business and just better monitor it.

Alternatives Considered

QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise, Yardi Voyager and MRI Property Central

Key Insights

Do you think NetSuite ERP delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with NetSuite ERP's feature set?

Yes

Did NetSuite ERP live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of NetSuite ERP go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy NetSuite ERP again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Rippling, Ramp, Stampli

Usability

N/A

Support Rating

N/A

Likelihood to Recommend

In our business where it's really well suited is not only our multi-subsidiary management, but also being able to creatively. In real estate, we have things like carried interest and different investment valuations. It's been really unique in that I can keep all of those in one account, but using different classifications I can break out which investment is worth which amount I can break out between the dollars we've put into it versus what our valuation, our current quarterly valuation is of it. Being able to get a snapshot picture of all of that without having to pull together a bunch of different Excel files and all of that has been another big improvement of ours. One place that it's definitely lacking (and we've had to, and this was part of my whole ERP search process): so we have an in-house property management company because we build apartment complexes and then we have to manage them. I was trying to find an all-in-one solution and I looked at things like Yardi or MRI didn't like them as much for the intercompany and other things, the things that I love about NetSuite. So we've had to, I've realized we just have to work in two different systems. We have a separate property management system for the property-level books, and then I import them into NetSuite. But I think that's just kind of one of those things that it just is not going to be able to do everything.

NetSuite ERP Review

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with NetSuite ERP