This article is relevant if you need to know the quantities available for a NetSuite item group or kit.

Background

NetSuite offers two abstract item types that leverage a simple component bill of materials to represent a conceptual bundle. I discuss this in detail in my 2015 article, Understand NetSuite Item Groups vs. Kits to Produce Superior Reporting.

The challenge with item groups and item kits is that you cannot see the quantity of these items available easily. The quantities available are theoretical as they must be assembled from sub-components.

Working with clients on these item types in the sales and fulfillment operations, in 2018, I published a technical article to Learn How to Determine the Number of NetSuite Item Groups Available for Sale.

More recently, a couple of clients asked questions to help them in their sales operations. They needed to see item groups (one client) and item kits (another client) just like they can see the availability of standard inventory for their materials planning.

I am in gratitude to work with a great team.  Our senior technical analyst, Boban D., went to work to solve the challenge.

The Recursive Nature of Item Groups and Kits

The challenge with answering this question is due to the possible representation of a parent/child information tree to get at the quantities theoretically available.  NetSuite Saved Search technology is simply not strong enough to easily reach the data to quickly answer the question. With the work my firm has recently produced with SuiteQL (see 2021 article, Render NetSuite SQL Queries Like Saved Searches), we get closer to reaching the data needed.

But we must respect that kits can belong in item groups. In those situations, your available inventory lookup must assess ordinary inventory component items and possible child kits as members. The kits themselves require component lookups.

Hence, the nature of the problem is known as a recursive lookup pattern.  In these cases, your database queries need to “walk” a tree of like-kind elements to discover and further look up more inventory items to graph the information into a logically chained structure.

Central SuiteScript Library to Present Kit/Item Group Information

Boban D. solved the challenge by building a centralized SuiteScript Library that effectively can be passed an array of items and/or locations. The goal is that it returns a well-structured (in this case JSON; click image to see sample) information chunk, which is easy to present to the user via formatted HTML right where it is needed.

See the related screenshots. For ease of understanding, I illustrate a Kit and an Item Group on their item records next to their respective component definition.

Build Available NetSuite Inventory Report with Item Groups and Kits

With the library in hand, it is now possible to produce a single inventory report that can be used to show NetSuite Item Kits and Item Groups as if they are actual items without needing to resort to building or assembling bundles ahead of time.

Click on the image to see the detail.

Leverage Library in your NetSuite Item Group or Kit Workings

Like all the intellectual property we have developed and bundled as accelerators, this library is available in our standard Utilities bundle free of license charge to all of our clients.

We anticipate that our clients may have requirements to present information on NetSuite Estimates, Sales Orders and likely in eCommerce integrations where it is common to bundle products (conceptually) for sale; yet they are stored as separate components in the NetSuite backend that won’t be put together until the time for fulfillment.

If you found this article relevant, feel free to sign up for notifications to new articles as I post them. If you are ready to solve your NetSuite Item Group or Kit available quantity challenge, 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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