One of the more powerful aspects of the NetSuite business management platform is its capacity to make meaningful modifications without requiring a programmer. A business analyst can model the business requirement using the built-in tools to capture and manage key information specific to any organization.
We modified our NetSuite instance to track a key information requirement relative to our practice. Since we have both employees and vendors (contractors) that we staff on our engagements, and our rates vary depending on the specific fee arrangement, we need to track both the costs of our resources and the agreed upon rates we charge to our clients. This can be done well with NetSuite Advanced Projects. But if you do not have that module, this may be a nice enhancement.
This requirement is easily satisfied within NetSuite. We created a custom record type which we called “Resource Rates”. This simple record type has the following structure:
- Customer (cross-reference)
- Vendor (cross-reference)
- Employee (cross-reference)
- Rate (numeric)
- Cost (numeric)
To make this structure useful, we created tabs and sublists so that we could see the following information in the appropriate areas of the system:
- For each client, list both employees and contractor with their respective cost and rates
- For each employee, list all clients they are staffed and their related rates
- For each vendor, list all clients with costs, rates, and computed margins
We utilized the built-in permission features to limit information visibility to only administrators to be sensitive to costs and rates.
With these structures in place, we can now use script to enhance our billing practices to automatically pull in rates on our invoice forms. Admittedly, this customization will require more skill than the typical business analyst possesses. Nonetheless, productivity standards are much greater in this environment due to nature of the platform customization tools.
Stay tuned for more information on scripts to drive invoicing.
Marty Zigman
Holding all three official certifications, Marty is regarded as the top NetSuite expert and leads a team of senior professionals at Prolecto Resources, Inc. He is a former Deloitte & Touche CPA and has held CTO roles. For over 30 years, Marty has produced leadership in ERP, CRM and eCommerce business systems. Contact Marty to set up a conversation.
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