NetSuite ID References for Generating Related Child Transactions

This article is relevant if you are working in SuiteScript and you are generating child (created from) transactions.

Background

In our client engagements, we often need to manage the creation of interconnected transactions within NetSuite. An illustrative case is detailed in my 2015 article on crafting targeted purchase orders from sales orders using SuiteScript 1.0. The essence here is our ability to steer the creation of NetSuite records rather than depending on the platform’s default automation features.

During recent efforts to automate vendor bill creation, we encountered sporadic issues. The objective was to accurately link each vendor bill line to the corresponding line on the original purchase order. This need for precise linkage is common in generating linked child transactions, like deriving an invoice from a sales order. We identified and resolved the underlying bug, and this article aims to guide SuiteScript developers facing similar challenges.

Exploring NetSuite Database Lookups and Line References for SuiteScript

As of 2024, our SuiteScript projects heavily utilize SuiteQL (SQL) for querying data. When accessing purchase order details, it’s crucial to distinguish among three key line identifiers. A common pitfall involves confusing the ID with the LineSequenceNumber, as these values frequently coincide.

To clarify this distinction, here’s a sample of SuiteQL and SuiteScript that demonstrates the concept:

/* Inspiration SuiteQL to gather purchase order
information to support creating a vendor
bill and applying the PO line references */

SELECT 
	po.id AS poid
	,pol.linesequencenumber
	,pol.id
	,pol.uniquekey
	,pol.mainline
	,pol.item AS itemid
	,pol.rate
	,pol.quantity - pol.quantitybilled AS qtytobill
FROM transaction po
JOIN transactionline pol ON pol.transaction = po.id
WHERE po.type = 'PurchOrd'
AND po.id = 216
ORDER BY pol.linesequencenumber
 
/* Inspiration SuiteScript to create a vendor bill
to manually craft the line references to a PO */ 
var bill = record.create({
	isDynamic : true,
	type : record.Type.VENDOR_BILL
})

bill.poLines.forEach(poLine => {	
	bill.selectNewLine('item');
	setItemLine('item', poLine.itemid);
	setItemLine('rate', poLine.rate);
	setItemLine('quantity', poLine.qtyToBill);
	/* here are cross references to the PO */
	setItemLine('orderdoc', poLine.poid);
	setItemLine('orderline', poLine.id);
	/* pol.linesequencenumber is only used in array
		reference work, it is not the linking key */	
	bill.commitLine('item');
	}
});
var id = bill.save(),

Here is our understanding of these line reference keys:

1. uniquekey: a database identifier that is for reference only.  It is not used in SuiteScript
2. id: the key the cross-reference work for SuiteScript orderline references
3. linesequencenumber: an array index if you need to work with the object in SuiteScript

Click on the image to see how the values come back from the database and why one may easily become confused as the values between ID and LineSequenceNumber are the same.

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