Everything You Wanted To Know About NetSuite Release 2020.2 & How It Will Affect Your Business

“In today’s era of volatility, there is no other way but to reinvent. The only sustainable advantage you can have over others is agility, that’s it. Because nothing else is sustainable, everything else you create, somebody else will replicate.” – Jeff Bezos, Amazon Founder

When it comes to a complete software solution that takes care of all your business needs, NetSuite trumps others in the market for its agility and unified integration that is not only dynamic, but evolving. NetSuite is known to update its features twice a year and NetSuite release 2020.2 is now out. Each release is done in multiple phases spanning several months, as it test-drives the upgrade internally before proceeding with a client-facing release. Each customer therefore is scheduled for the upgrades in Phase 1, 2, and 3. With the upgrades six months apart, you can review release notes at the beginning of the cycle which help in identifying new features and drawing up your test plan. What can come in handy before you make the upgrade is the option to delay the release in case you are in the middle of a critical internal project. Note that while this a paid feature, you will eventually be making the switch.

With the recent NetSuite 2020.2 release out, before going live with the changes, it’s critical for you to understand additions and innovations that will impact your business. Some of the major updates include pre-built SuiteAnalytics workbooks for industry-specific analytics that helps gain deeper business insight, multi-subsidiary entity and functionality to streamline intercompany management of customers and vendors, to finally, an easier way to view key employee milestones with employee timeline. Sounds pretty solid, right? There’s more! Here, we have cherry-picked key feature highlights vis-à-vis five industry types for you to have a better understanding of NetSuite 2020.2 release updates.

1. Key Highlights For Software Companies with NetSuite release 2020.2
   

Simple and easy to navigate design: Promising improved customer satisfaction by giving customers a simple way to manage their subscription, MyAccount Portal (cost-effective, secure way of giving visibility to access their accounts) now allows companies to manage their account information, view order history, pay invoices and modify subscriptions.

Gain insight into recurring revenue streams: With SuiteAnalytics Workbook for Subscriptions, your business gains from powerful insights on recurring revenue for existing and renewed subscriptions. The workbook template can also be sued for out-of-the-box analytics on recurring revenue, churn, upsell, down sell and a lot more.

Ease your subscriptions process with flexible additions: Now you can conveniently change billing parameters, such as billing terms and billing schedules, prior to activation of the subscription. This allow you to reduce the umber of subscriptions abandoned in the system, as the billing account isn’t required until activation. Instead of starting a brand-new subscription you can swap billing accounts as per your convenience.

2. Key Highlights For Manufacturers with NetSuite release 2020.2

Rejigged material requirements planning: For customers who are using NetSuite Demand Planning, MRP (material requirements planning) has been completely re-architected and features a dedicated planning repository that ensures planners can make decisions based on timely and consistent information.

Better risk assessment: The capabilities of intelligent predicted risks now include sales order, providing users with greater insight into potential risks on good that may not be shipping on time. Furthermore, purchase orders can now be identified as being at risk and recommend alternate vendors based on new machine learning algorithms.

Clearer supply allocation: With the latest update you can allow inbound shipments into the allocation of supplies, in context of related purchase orders. The fill rate optimization in turn allocates existing supply to satisfy as many sales order lines as possible based on the given supply.

3. Key Highlights For Wholesale Distributors with NetSuite release 2020.2

All your distribution details are under one place: NetSuite for wholesale distributors now includes the ability to receive, pick up good, and transfer inside a location without bins, including single order picking and multi-order picking at warehouses.

Manage your customers with ease: Thanks to an improved form and flexible approval workflows, the new SuiteCommerce Sign Up extension lets you easily manage the registration and approvals of buyers from your ecommerce store. Managing and approving new wholesale customers to purchase from your ecommerce store was never easier!

Multiple invoices, single consolidation: With invoice grouping you can consolidate multiple invoices into a single invoice that’s delivered to the customer, and also allows payments accepted at the group level to be finally applied to individual invoices. Increase efficiency and improve cashflow with inbuilt accuracy.

4. Key Highlights For Services Companies with NetSuite release 2020.2

Updated notifications for efficient response time: New notifications now include missing actual time, time to approve and expenses to approve. The system also “speaks” to the project manager about activities, project status and potential issues, with inbuilt indicators that make exceptions based on the condition of these indicators. Recommended action on how to resolve project issues, make the whole system extremely agile and responsive.

Achieve More Accurate Budgeting: With the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) users get to save a template more easily in order to create future WBS budgets for similar projects. A real time saver for companies who are looking at managing a number of clients.

Improved feature for better vendor relationship: The Sequential Liability SuiteApp, helps professional services firms gain a unified AP, AR, and Cash in Bank report that supports monitoring and paying off vendor liabilities on receiving payment from customers for related project transactions. This in turn helps manage cash and maintain good vendor relationships, while also collaborating in real-time with project manager on AR and AP balances.

5. Key Highlights For Non-profit Organizations with NetSuite release 2020.2

Better balance sheet reporting: With NetSuite 2020.2 non-profits can create statements of financial position on a custom segment, detailing, most common fund, grant or program. With the automated process, non-profits can auto-balance accounting entries by multiple dimensions and create balancing segments by simply checking the balancing checkbox on the custom segment record.

Streamlined billing and actual costs: Non-profits can now allocate labour expense costs to programs, projects or grant segments via NetSuite SuiteSuccess Social Impact Editions. This allows organizations to streamline the process of billing actual costs to the grantor on cost-reimbursable grants, plus, helps you view and report on total direct costs running a program.

Efficient bank to books management: Gain more with systemised processes like bank reconciliations streamlined the added ability to automatically create and post transaction directly from imported bank data. By doing this you significantly reduce the manual time to process and match you bank data to your books.

Get in touch with us here , for more details on how to navigate the new Suite changes.