Build Quantity Controls to Vendor Bill / Customer Invoice Input

This article is relevant to NetSuite users that want to enhance logic on their forms.

Minimize Errors with Good Input Controls

In my days as a Certified Public Accountant, my orientation was around controls and information reliability.  Naturally, anything that could be done to help prevent the “garbage in, garbage out” phenomenon was welcomed.

When entering bills in NetSuite, a simple control is to count up the quantities of the line items.    For example, suppose you are a tire store and you are buying a  number of tires of different sizes each with a different line item.  You know you bought 100 tires but they are scattered across 5 lines. A total quantity will help you see that you have entered a total of 100 items to prevent input errors.

This use case can work on sales orders, item receipts, vendor bills,  and pretty much where ever you have header and line item information.

Leverage NetSuite SuiteScript

I thought this would be a good example of how to use NetSuite SuiteScript to achieve the objective.  It should be straight forward enough for beginners to understand.   I will not go into how to install the script through deployments — instead, the code sample can be used as a template for your logic.

Code up Custom Quantity Field

Instead of creating a permanent custom field, dynamically generate a field that lives only when the form is loaded.  Code this up to UserEvent BeforeLoad event.

function VendorBillUserEventBeforeLoad(type, form, request){
	if (type != 'delete'){
		var itemqty = form.addField('custpage_item_qty_total', 'float', 'Sum Item Quantity:', null, 'items');
		itemqty.setDisplaySize(10);
		itemqty.setDisplayType('inline');
	};
};

Code up Summing Logic

Now use this client code snippet on the Recalc event.

function VendorBillRecalc(type){
	var qty = 0;
	for ( var i = 1; i <= nlapiGetLineItemCount('item'); i++ ) {
		qty = qty + parseFloat(nlapiGetLineItemValue('item', 'quantity', i));
	};
	nlapiSetFieldValue('custpage_item_qty_total', qty);
};

Summary

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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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