Here is an overview of the segments we will build and what they will be used for:
Dimension | Purpose | Example Values |
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Department | For expenses, indicates which function in the organization spent the funds. For income, indicates who earned the funds or what they were restricted for. | Development, IT, HR, Program |
Location | Used for physical inventory locations. Regions (Optional Custom Segment) will be utilized for Office Locations or Regions across the country. | Chicago, San Francisco |
Class | An additional standard segment to be used as required by the organization (i.e. Cost Center). No specific use is identified here as other segmentation requirements (identified below) will be handled with custom segments. | |
Projects | Used for Grants, Fund-Programs and Internal Projects when it is required to track Scheduled Tasks, Time, Percentage of Completion, and Expenses. (This may require the purchase of the Project Management Module). |
Here is an overview of the segments we will build and what they will be used for:
Dimension | Purpose | Example Values |
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Restriction | Determines allowed use of funds. Used to track fund restriction placed on donor or grantor funds. Examples of restrictions include temporarily restricted for use/purpose, unrestricted, permanently restricted, etc. This will be set at the transaction column/line level. | Unrestricted, Temporarily Restricted, Permanently Restricted |
Fund/Program | Used to track the organization’s funds - programs (i.e., initiatives and their children). This will be set at the transaction column/line level. | Program A, Program B, Fund A, Fund B |
Functional Expense | Used to track the functional area for expenses - include: Management and General, Fundraising and Program. Functional Expenses can be used to allocate expenses. | General Administration, Program Services, Fundraising |
Time Restriction | Used to set a use year on a revenue transaction. This segment is not a date-year but rather, a numeric representation of the year for reporting purposes only. | 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 |
Grant | Specifies each Grant from a Funder. Used to track transactions by Grant; this will be set at the line level for both revenue and expense transactions. | Grant A, Grant B |
Revenue Type | Groups different income into streams | Contributions, Event revenue, Fee for service, Membership, Sale of goods |
Revenue Subtype | Refines list of Revenue Type | Cash Donation, Event Donation, Grant, Individual Membership, Program Service |
Region | Used if there is a need to track transactions by Regions or Offices (use Locations exclusively for Inventory). | United States, Illinois, Chicago, Wicker Park |
This segment is used with your employee records to match your org chart and department structure to the financial transactions and reports.
To create Department and Sub-Department records, go to:
Setup > Company > Department > New
Enter “General Administrative” in the name field
Hover over the down-arrow on the blue Save button to show the Save and New option
Repeat these steps to add the remaining Department and Sub-Department values, replacing the with your own.
Location is available for tracking physical inventory and categorizing entities such as vendors, customers and employees. To create a new Location, go to:
Setup > Company > Locations > New
NetSuite.org recommends the following structure for Locations. If your organization has multiple locations, continue entering them using the following structure as appropriate:
NetSuite now enables the use of “Custom Segments” to further classify and report financial data. For our nonprofit grantees, we will add the following custom segments:
Restriction
To create a Restriction, go to:
Repeat the steps in the Creating Custom Segments section above to create the following custom Segments and values:
NOTE! You will need to create a Fund\Program value of "Unrestricted". You will use the "unrestricted" value on income transactions which are not restricted by the donor or expense transactions not tied to a Fund\Program. If you leave the field blank instead of using "unrestricted" it will be impossible to tell which transactions are truly "unrestricted" or are just missing the Fund\Program.
To create a Fund/Program, go to:
And/or (decide best structure to represent your fund\program structure)
To create a Functional Expense, go to:
To create the Grant custom segment, go to:
Revenue Type:
Revenue Subtype:
Time Restriction:
This menu introduces several settings and options related to Accounting features. Many of the settings here aren’t required for basic accounting—they’re used for more advanced financial functions. This section describes only those basic required accounting setting.
Accounting Lists in NetSuite are essentially values that populate dropdowns throughout the system. The values can be changed and customized to suit your specific business requirements. The types of Accounting Lists include:
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In order to properly account for payments received by cash or check, the Payment Methods must be set to Undeposited Funds.
To set the Payment Methods to Undeposited Funds, go to:
Setup > Accounting > Accounting Lists
When we import data later, the Terms imported with Customer and Vendor records must already exist in NetSuite, and the verbiage must be identical in the Import file and NetSuite. If the import file has a term called “Net 30 Terms” and the version in NetSuite is called “Net 30,” the import will fail. As with any import where the value is already in NetSuite, the terminology must be exact.
To ensure that the Terms in NetSuite match the Terms you offer and that you may be importing later, go to:
Setup > Accounting > Accounting Lists
To create new Terms in NetSuite, go to:
Setup > Company > Accounting Lists
Expense categories are not required to set up financials, but they can be helpful later. Expense categories are simple terms used on expense reports and bills that tie to the chart of accounts. Expense Categories will be used to populate Accounts and Department, Class and Location on revenue and expense transactions where users can select an item or expense category.
Example Expense Categories:
Important: This menu features options that are critical to your setup and need to be set accurately before adding transactions to the account. |
The remaining settings are typically assigned or chosen based on organizational policy.
The Duplicate Number Warning checkbox found at the bottom of this screen is an important feature that is sometimes disabled because of electronic payments made to multiple vendors. If your accounts payable department uses the same payment ID or confirmation number for multiple vendors, they may receive frequent warnings that the number is already in use. This box will disable that feature.
The Duplicate Number Warning feature may also be disabled on a per-user basis. Users may change this preference by going to:
Home > Set Preferences > Transactions
The screenshot below lists the accounts and account types that are included with NetSuite when it is provisioned. Some accounts will vary based on the state or country in which your organization is based.
Important: Do not delete these existing accounts. Many are used in system workflows. |
Integrating the Unified Chart of Accounts
During the process of setting up the Chart of Accounts, you will import a group of accounts that are based on the Unified Chart of Accounts (UCOA). [1]The Unified Chart of Accounts for nonprofit organizations is a chart of accounts freely available to any nonprofit organization, accountant, or consultant. The system is designed so that nonprofits can quickly and reliably translate their financial statements into the categories required by the IRS Form 990, the federal Office of Management and Budget, and into other standard reporting formats. In order to more easily take advantage of future NetSuite nonprofit product enhancements, we recommend you use the UCOA Chart of Accounts format.
Important: To learn more about the Unified Chart of Accounts, please visit http://nccsweb.urban.org/knowledgebase/detail.php?linkID=400&category=77&xrefID=1070&close=0. |
The general process for setting up your Chart of Accounts in NetSuite is as follows:
During this session, we will rename the existing accounts. Following session 2, you will prepare your chart of account import files and import them.
To rename existing accounts, go to:
Setup > Accounting > Chart of Accounts
Click the Edit link to the left of the accounts listed below and add the numbers and change the names exactly as shown:
Original Name | New Name |
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Checking | 1000 Cash |
Accounts Receivable | 1100 Accounts Receivable |
Accounts Payable | 2000 Payables |
Sales | 4000 Revenue from direct contributions |
Important: This section assumes your organization is not in the midst of changing its Accounting Periods. NetSuite can accommodate that change but the process for creating the “interim” accounting period is not described here. |
This section describes how to set up Accounting Periods. To set up Accounting Periods, go to:
Setup > Accounting > ManageAccounting Periods
Important: The following sections are to be done prior to starting Session 3. |
The most critical part of the migration from QuickBooks to NetSuite is the transfer of data, including Customers, Vendors, the Chart of Accounts and Items.
We will provide instructions to export data from QuickBooks, prepare it with Microsoft Excel and import it into NetSuite. When completed, the following will be available in NetSuite:
The Chart of Accounts export from QuickBooks will include a list of the accounts with the following detail:
To export the Chart of Accounts from within QuickBooks, start QuickBooks and go to:
The Customer file will include the following fields:
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From within QuickBooks, export the Customer record by going to:
Reports > Customers and Receivables > Customer Contact List
The Vendor file will include the following fields:
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From within QuickBooks, export the Vendor record by going to:
Reports > Vendors and Payables > Contact List
The Item list will include the following fields:
Lists > Item List
The following section describes how to prepare files that have been exported from QuickBooks so that they can be imported to NetSuite.
Before starting this process, be sure that you have completed renaming the existing Netsuite Accounts. This was done in the Chart of Accounts section of Session 1.
The Chart of Accounts is imported in two files; one that includes the parent accounts and another that include the sub accounts. The parent import uses the UCOA COA Import file provided by NetSuite.org. Your accounts will be imported as sub-accounts to the UCOA parents. To prepare your accounts in the UCOA format, do the following:
NOTE: NetSuite.org highly recommends integrating your existing chart of accounts in the UCOA structure as described above. If you prefer to integrate your existing chart of accounts as is, please see Appendix
As with the exported Chart of Accounts, the Customer and Vendor export will include empty columns that you will need to remove, and other columns that you will need to clean up. Fortunately, these files typically do not require the multiple steps for cleanup or import that the Chart of Accounts requires. For more information regarding Customer and Vendor data types and object relationships, please review Session 3.
In the Customer and Vendor exports, look for potential issues with the exported data including:
To make updates easier to apply later, do the following:
OPTIONAL
Customers and Vendors can be imported as either Company or Individual types. To indicate the type of entity you are importing, add a column titled “Individual” to the imports. If an entity is an Individual, put a T in the field. For all others, put an F in the field to indicate they are company types.
Important: If an entity is imported as an individual, it must contain values in the First and Last Name fields. If an entity is imported as a company, it must contain a value in the Company field. If an import results in an error due to duplicate names, append a number to the end of the customers last name or to the company name and import just those records again. |
Items are imported based on the Item type. Item Types included Inventory, Non-inventory, Service and Other. The majority of smaller organizations work with non-inventory or service items. Non-inventory is usually an item or service you sell, but that is not routinely purchased, stocked and resold. Donations might be considered non-inventory. Service items are typically services you offer, such as training or consulting. QuickBooks refers to non-inventory items as “non-inventory part” and services as “service.”
NOTE: we will cover Items in more depth in Session 3. It may be helpful to jump to Session 3 to read through items or to wait to export items if you aren't sure how they are used.
Important: this guide does not include inventory items or management. If your organization buys and sells inventory, please contact your NetSuite account manager for assistance. |
To prepare the item files for import:
Follow the steps in section 3.5.2 to add an External ID to the import files.
The following section explains how to import the Chart of Accounts into NetSuite. This assumes that you are importing the file you exported and prepared following the steps in the two previous subsections.
The following record types will be imported:
Important: Although NetSuite provides a platform for integrating data from numerous sources, the data in NetSuite will only be as good as the source data that is imported. |
The process of importing records is often one of trial and error. When importing from QuickBooks, NetSuite expects data to be formatted in a very specific way. For example, while some systems will accept any text in an email field, NetSuite will not; email addresses must fit the exact and proper format for an email address. If a file is imported with improperly formatted email addresses (with spaces or unusual characters), the record will not be imported and an error will occur instead.
There are three places where an error may occur:
NetSuite only accepts text files such as a CSV. If you attempt to upload a file such as a native Excel file, the following error will occur:
If you successfully upload a file and complete the field mapping and NetSuite detects a value in a field that is not compatible with the system, an error like this one will appear:
If you see this error, you may save the Field Mapping you created by clicking the Save Import button and then return later to attempt the import again. The Saved Import will be available at:
Setup > Import/Export > Saved CSV Imports
You may also download a zip file with some error detail using the “Download the upload…” csv.zip link.
Once your import is completed, you can check the import status at:
Setup > Import/Export > View CSV Import Status
The screen will show your recent import, the percent complete status, a message and link to a CSV Response that will include any detail error messages.
To download the error detail, click the CSV Response link and Save the file when prompted. Open the exported file. The error detail will be in column A. Fix the errors, then save the CSV and try to import it again.
To import the Chart of Accounts, go to:
Setup > Import/Export > Import CSV Records
The import and record type dropdowns will already be set to Accounting and Chart of Accounts.
The screen that appears next is the Confirmation screen, which includes a Refresh button you can use to check the status of the import.
The Chart of Accounts import generally takes less than a minute. If you leave this screen, you may return to check status again later by going to:
Setup > Import/Export > View CSV Import Status.
Repeat the process for the sub-account file. Note that the sub-account import will have an additional field called “Subaccount of.”
Homework: Prior to the next session:
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