This article is relevant if you are seeking to have an automated way to build NetSuite reporting based on a geographical region.
Background
NetSuite’s ability to produce reporting based on Department and Class is fundamental for financial and operating reporting. With NetSuite custom segments, we can expand the capacity to include additional dimensions.
During any new NetSuite implementation, we spend time with our clients modeling their business and their reporting requirements. Often times, our clients need the ability to report by geographical region. NetSuite does not have a built-in easy mechanism to report based on a geographical region. However, the customer and transaction address record has some good information that can help us get there.
NetSuite Regional Reporting Approach
In order to support regional reporting in NetSuite, it is important to first produce a map of the world. Here is an approach:
- Address Information: addresses contain geographical information we care about: namely country, state or province, and postal or zip code.
- Map Address Attributes to Region Definition: using country and province, map into a lookup table user-defined region information. For example, if we want to create a region called “USA: West”, we can define that the state of California is in that region. If we want zip code to be an attribute, we can expand this. Click the related image.
- Lookup and Apply Region: sales related transactions, such as NetSuite opportunities, estimates, sales orders, and invoices all can hold address information. Use this address information to lookup the Region and apply more information to respective transactions.
- Bridge Region to a Reporting Dimension: Once we have the region lookup, we can apply that information to the respective reporting region. For example, if we deem NetSuite’s native Class structure to be Reporting Region, we then can automatically set the Class to our region lookup to enjoy our desired reporting.
- Rules for Bill-To and Ship-To: we can distinguish what we do with bill-to vs. ship-to information. For example, for one client, we made the bill-to information reflect the region we stamped on the customer record; but we used the ship-to to reflect the transactional region. Thus, we had flexibility in distinguishing our customers by region independent from our actual sales.
Automating the Region Lookups
The good news is that we built the pattern so that our clients can easily maintain a NetSuite custom lookup table without needing our help. Our NetSuite scripts work behind the scenes to automatically review and looking up the region on transactions in the normal day-to-day course of business. Click the image to see an example of the lookup table.
Get the Region Lookup Application
The region lookup application is one of the many examples of the ways that you can improvise on the NetSuite platform. Like all the algorithms we have previously built for our existing clients, our customers have full access to these software structures license-free to accelerate their implementation. We have bundled this up to make it easy to distribute. Naturally, the software can be adapted to fit specific requirements.
If you found this post valuable, feel free to subscribe to receive notifications of new articles. My ethics are to not send email messages unsolicited. If you are interested in having this software work to help your reporting requirements, let’s have 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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