A “user” is an individual who has access to a NetSuite account.
A “role” is a defined access configuration that can be assigned to Users.
Standard Roles
NetSuite provides many standard roles with pre-defined permissions. Most of these roles correspond to common employee positions, such as “Accountant” and “Sales Rep.” Standard roles also are available for vendors, partners, and customers who have account access.
Custom Roles
Standard roles cannot be modified, so it is a good idea to use these roles as templates to create your own customized roles for users in your account. The process for customizing a standard role is easier than creating a new role from scratch. If you assign custom roles rather than standard roles to users, you can make permission changes to users' assigned roles as needed.
There are two approaches to consider when assigning roles to employees:
A user can have more than one role assigned to them. In some cases, it may help to assign the standard role that appears to match their job description then add an additional role such as “Full Access” so they can perform certain job functions that aren’t included in the first role. This lets the user identify the permissions they need, so you can modify their role to include those permissions. Standard NetSuite roles can be customized and saved under a new name, but they cannot be changed directly.
To review the permission differences between roles in NetSuite, go to:
Setup > Users/Roles > Show Role Differences
NetSuite provides three types of roles that provide limited access to certain entities: Employee Center, Vendor Center and Partner Center.
For the most up-to-date information about Permissions, please search NetSuite Help for “Understanding NetSuite Permissions.”
To create a new Employee user, go to:
Lists > Employees > Employees > New
You can return to this record and make changes at any time.
When users log in to NetSuite, they are taken to a screen with three primary elements that can be customized: the Dashboard, Menus and Preferences.
Dashboards can be customized to include content that is specific to the User and their job function. Dashboards are arranged in boxes called “Portlets” and can be pre-configured, published and restricted based on a role. If a user has permission (most roles do), they can customize their own Dashboard content.
Important: For a complete list and description of the types of Portlet or Dashboard content available, please search NetSuite Help for “Portlet Types Table.” |
Portlets can be moved and arranged to the user’s preference. The following section provides examples of how to add, remove and change Portlets. Using the “New Release” portlet as an example, from the Home Dashboard, to:
Menus in NetSuite are based on roles and may vary depending on the user and their role. For example, the standard NetSuite role named “A/P Clerk” features a menu tailored to Entities such as Customers and Vendors, with transaction sub-menus for each.
To provide a consistent user interface among all roles, NetSuite.org recommends enabling the “Classic” interface. To enable the Classic Interface on a non-Administrator role, go to:
Home (icon) > Set Preferences > Appearance
The Classic Menu (also known as the Classic Center) referenced throughout this guide is:
The menu for the A/P Clerk Role, as referenced above and as an example, is:
Individual users can personalize certain elements of their NetSuite dashboard. To access and change personal preferences, go to:
Home (the House icon on the main menu) > Set Preferences
The General, Transaction and Appearance tabs provide the most options for customization from a personal standpoint. A few important notes are:
Important: Once you have live data in your system, NetSuite.org recommends utilizing the SuiteVolunteer program to assist with further development, customization and publishing of Dashboards for employees. For more information visit http://www.netsuite.org/pro-bono. |
Throughout the following section and others, we will reference the Setup menu. When logged in with the Administrator role, the main menu and submenus will appear as follows.
The following sections describe submenus under the Setup menu.
You’ll need to configure NetSuite with information unique to your organization such as the organization name and address, logo, features you need and related information. To do this, you will go to:
Setup > Company
The Company submenu will call out several additional menus that will be used in the configuration process. The following Company menu entries are used to update settings.
Here you will enter your basic company information, upload your logos and set a few basic settings. You will customize your account settings by going to:
Setup > Company > Company Information
Important: This is the logo that displays next to the NetSuite logo in the upper left corner when you’re logged in. The size of this logo space is 144px x 30px. If you do not have a small logo available, you may come back to this step later. |
Update any additional information you would like here or make a note to return and add later. When you are finished adding the information, click the Save button.
Once your account is provisioned, you can log in and enable or disable features in the account. To enable the following features, go to:
Setup > Company > Enable Features
Use the following table as reference to the tabs on the page. You can switch between tabs without hitting Save – just remember to save once you have completed changes to all tabs. Some additional settings outside of the ones listed in the table below may be available and may be selected -- you can leave those at their default settings.
Tab | Feature | Description | Setting |
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Company | Departments | Record income and expense transactions to the Department dimension. | ACTIVE |
Locations | Ability to record income and expense transactions to the Locations dimension. | ACTIVE | |
Classes | Ability to record income and expense transactions to the Class dimension. | OPTIONAL | |
Projects | Ability to record income and expense transactions to Projects. | ACTIVE | |
Inline Editing | Provides the ability to change data in lists. Much faster updating/editing capabilities compared to opening each record individually. | ACTIVE | |
File Cabinet | Stores documents and files. | ACTIVE | |
Duplicate Detection and Merge | Determine whether or not records have duplicates. | ACTIVE | |
Accounting | Accounting | Enables the Accounting features. | ACTIVE |
A/R | Accounts Receivable includes issuing invoices, accepting payments and running reports. | ACTIVE | |
A/P | Accounts Payable includes entering bills, making payments and running reports. | ACTIVE | |
Accounting Periods | Creates distinct accounting periods; can be calendar or other fiscal year. | ACTIVE | |
Expense Allocation | Account for fixed expenses without splitting them among individual departments, classes or locations before incurring the expenses. | ACTIVE | |
Dynamic Allocation | Dynamically calculate the weight of any statistical allocation, based on the balance of the statistical account through statistical journals, at the time the allocation journal is generated. Also enables you to run multiple dynamic allocation schedules in a specific sequence, or batch. | ACTIVE | |
Consolidated Payments | Allows all payments, credits, and deposits to be accepted either through the highest-level customer in a customer-subcustomer hierarchy or through the individual subcustomer for whom the invoice is entered. | ACTIVE | |
Statistical Accounts | Used in conjunction with Expense Allocations and Allocation Schedules, track non-monetary data and then use this information on reports and income statements to view its relationship with the financial activity of your organization. | ACTIVE | |
Tax | Not Used | ||
Transactions | Estimates | Prepare estimates or quotes to send to customers. Can be used as part of the fund raising and income projection process. | ACTIVE |
Sales Orders | Create and track Sales Orders. Also useful as part of the fund raising and income projection process. | ACTIVE | |
Purchase Orders | Create and track vendor purchase orders. This feature is required for the Approval Routing feature | ACTIVE | |
Advanced Billing | Provides the ability to manage recurring billing on Sales Orders | ACTIVE | |
Billing Operations | Create and manage billing operations, schedules, groups and invoice approvals. | ACTIVE | |
Items and Inventory | Not used | ||
Employees | Expense Reports | Use forms to track employee expenses, including reimbursable. | ACTIVE |
Approval Routing | Route purchase requests and expense reports for approval based on approval limits | ACTIVE | |
Purchase Requests | Allow employees to create purchase requests for approval by supervisors | ACTIVE | |
Time Tracking | Track employee time using single-day time records. | ACTIVE | |
Time Tracking for CRM | Track and bill time associated with Cases, Tasks and Events directly from CRM records | ACTIVE | |
CRM | Customer Relationship Management | Manage all of your business relationships. Includes managing your calendar, contacts, events and tasks. | ACTIVE |
Sales Force Automation | Manage your funding and revenue pipeline, track forecasts, route income opportunities and convert prospects to customers and donors. | ACTIVE | |
Marketing Automation | Create targeted marketing campaigns, measure and analyze ROI and track campaign effectiveness | ACTIVE | |
Opportunities | Track donation and sales opportunities | ACTIVE | |
Lead Conversion | Track leads and convert them to prospects, donors, contacts, opportunities and tasks | ACTIVE | |
Online Forms | Add online form to your existing website to capture new leads and enter customer and donor records | ACTIVE | |
Mail Merge | Perform bulk email operations | ACTIVE | |
Capture email replies | Save replies to email sent from records in NetSuite | ACTIVE | |
Partner Relationship Management | Create and manage records for business and community partners | ACTIVE | |
Analytics | KPI Scorecards | Create Key Performance Indicator scorecards for your dashboard | ACTIVE |
Web Presence | NetSuite can host a basic e-commerce store. These functions will be initially disabled, in order to simplify the menu structure. | INACTIVE | |
SuiteCloud | Custom Records | Collect information specific to your organization that can be integrated with standard NetSuite records | ACTIVE |
Custom Segments | SuiteGL section - this will allow you to segment your accounting data. | ACTIVE |
After you hit Save, NetSuite will ask you for your opening balances. Leave these blank for now, and hit Save. Opening balances will be entered in a later session. |
This feature allows you to change the transaction and entity record names in NetSuite. To tailor your account for nonprofit use, NetSuite recommends changing the standard NetSuite record names. To rename records, go to:
Setup > Company > Rename Records/Transactions
This is only a recommendation, NOT REQUIRED
NetSuite.org recommends that you enable the Auto-Numbering feature for Entity records to help avoid duplicates. To enable auto-numbering, go to:
Setup > Company > Auto-Generated Numbers
NOTE! Auto-Generated numbers can impact the search functionality in fields, to alleviate this issue you will need to set MAXIMUM ENTRIES IN DROPDOWNS to 20.
The General Preferences screen provides important choices related to date formats, default settings for Customer and Vendors records and more. The General Preferences screen manages:
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Here we cover two important and commonly used features.
If you are going to print checks from NetSuite, you’ll want to choose whether you use the “Standard” or “Voucher” style checks. Voucher is most common; it prints a check at the top and two vouchers below. Standard prints three checks on one page. To set the preferred check style, go to:
Setup > Company > Print & Fax Preferences and choose either Standard or Voucher from the Check Printing section.
In most cases, “receipts” or PDF Print Forms are expected to print on the entire page. However, NetSuite does not do this by default. To extend forms to print to the bottom of the page, go to:
Setup > Company > Print and Fax Preferences
Homework: Prior to the next session:
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[1]http://nccsweb.urban.org/knowledgebase/detail.php?linkID=400&category=77&xrefID=1070&close=0