Everything you need to know about the NetSuite 2021.1 release
“Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.”
Theodore Levitt, German American Economist & Editor
Besides the obvious take backs from last year, like the need to be resilient, and pivot at the time of crises, technological innovations that simplified businesses came out on top as critical to survival of the fittest. Leading by example, the NetSuite 2021.1 release promises intelligence and automation at the heart of the upgrade. Growth opportunities have been made accessible in the release designed to optimize financial and business processes, along with enhanced performance and new analytics capabilities. The upgrade is on a rolling basis till April 2021. Here, we break down key release highlights we are excited about and what you need to know about NetSuite Release 2021, vis-à-vis your industry.
- Financial tools that are intuitive, yet flexible: Businesses can now consolidate purchases across multi-subsidiary organisations and generate vendor payments from a single location. Thanks to simplified expense commitments and budget validation, you can now get quicker transaction approvals that are flexible. Additionally, you can validate by automatically creating and posting transactions directly from imported bank data, doing away with time-consuming reconciliation tasks.
- SuiteProjects makes its debut for optimized lifecycle management: Built natively on NetSuite, the professional services automation solution helps project managers gain increased visibility and automation functionality, by initiating purchases directly from projects. You can now set limits for individual expense lines, along with expense report policies that are aligned with company policies and client contracts. Edit and approve weekly timesheets on the go, optimizing your project lifecycle remotely!
- Automated inventory management for enhanced performance: Thanks to the introduction of the NetSuite Pack Station, an additional layer of verification is in place before orders are shipped. You can now track sales and operation activities better through an order allocation by channel that enables order accuracy.
- Stay updated with superior analytics on your platform: With new additions that help monitor and analyse the health of web services-based integrations (like added benefits of internalization and localisation tools and processes) every NetSuite user and administrator experience can feel at ease working locally, while being headquartered anywhere in the world.
Key highlights to look forward to according to the NetSuite 2021.1 Release
Some of the notable innovations across various industries amongst others are:
- Software Companies
- Manage your business model better with new delta charges feature in SuiteBilling global invoicing that allows software companies to create delta charges, for changed to invoiced service periods. What this ensures is that the invoice precisely reflects changes to original invoice amounts, helping you stay on track and simplifying customer invoices.
- Manage your employees better with an assortment of enhancements like employee center, visualisations for individuals and teams, goal format, enhanced onboarding experience, and auto-approve time-off requests function.
- Manufacturing Companies
a) Predict demand and supply better than you did before with autonomous supply planning capabilities. The enhancement reduces strain on the system during busy times with an automated repository refresh. What’s more, new saved search functionality provides ad-hoc reporting, while the Blanked PO schedules and inbound shipment information can be now found in Supply Chain Control Tower.
b) The new warehouse management system (WMS) addition provides companies with the ability to automatically create picking waves, ensuring everything from delivery address, to shipment, is aligned, regardless of peak hour delays. Thanks to better support in invoice and billing, expense commitments and budget validation can now be better managed.
- Wholesale Distributors
a) Increase accuracy with the new NetSuite Pack Station that provides a simple touchscreen interface to boost accuracy and speed. Additionally, you can now easily reserve inventory ahead of a new sales order with the allocation of channels against a blanket PO and FEFO (first expiry, first out) feature.
b) SuiteApprovals, a part of the smart financials and operational automation enhancement now includes email alerts so users can review and approve, or, deny invoices with just a click.
- Services Companies
a) Easily correct weekly timesheets before they are approved by clicking on the ‘retract’ button. Plus, set limits for each project expense lines and navigate everything on a customisable mobile dashboard.
b) Expanded support now allows Service companies to use the Bank Feeds SuiteApp to automatically import financial data from banks in Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. What’s more, the configurable transaction numbering feature enables flexibility, along with dynamic rules that reset each fiscal year.
- Non-profit Organizations
Deliver your mission, every step along the way with new soft credit capabilities that recognize constituents who help bring in donations, making it easy for you to measure the total giving impact of a donor. You can now easily identify donors who have given in the past but haven’t donated the next year, helping you in planning an outreach program that aids your mission.
Thanks to the enhanced balancing segment feature, you can now let users identify or set up notifications when transactions are unbalanced. Plus, project managers can initiate purchases directly from projects, making transactions and approvals visible and transparent throughout a project lifecycle.
What’s not to love about the latest upgrade?
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