NetSuite’s Advanced Projects module is for growing professional service organizations.  What most will not see is the power of planned time entries to project future revenue flows.  As you use Advanced Projects to track project economics, the task structure and the resources assigned represent a powerful capacity to see how revenue will be earned over time.  By working with the availability percentage, and a resource’s work calendar, NetSuite will spread planned time entries into the future in a straight-line fashion.   These planned time entries can be summarized by week, or month, suggesting how revenue will be earned which can provide insight into future cash flows. Here are key considerations:

1.  Planned time entries adjust automatically as actual time is entered via time-sheets or task dates are changed.  This means that project managers need to actively assess the expected total work remaining relative to the actual work recorded.  Most mature service organizations will perform this assessment weekly.

2.  There is a limited amount of shaping possible on how the time will layout into the future.  NetSuite’s model is good for project economics.  But if you need high precision in tasks, dependencies, and schedule, we recommend you use Microsoft Project, or similar.

3.  For a single task, if you make availability too tight, NetSuite may complain it can’t make enough planned time entries by day.  In this case, break the task into smaller segments.  Manipulate the task / resource availability metric to let NetSuite project the target end date.

4.  At the time of this writing,  NetSuite’s new pivot function (in beta) appears to not work against time entries.  To see how project revenue will be earned in monthly buckets, we can use formulas to get planned time entries, dates, month numbers, and then cross-tab on that number to conveniently see a revenue forecast.  For now, it is best to export this Saved Search information to Excel and use a Pivot.

If you are seeking to expand your visibility into resource capacity and future revenue via NetSuite‘s Advanced Projects, let’s start a conversation.

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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