ERP Archives

Dilemma Solved: Should You Replace QuickBooks with NetSuite?

Posted on June 18, 2024June 18, 2024 by Sarah Bensimon

Many companies often find themselves in a place where they outgrow software that has once served them well. However, with new business challenges—particularly in accounting—comes new software that can match their growth rate and scale alongside them.

Organizations using myriad disparate systems to operate their business mostly come to the decision that migrating to one, more powerful platform is the answer. This often happens with QuickBooks users who have come to realize that it simply doesn’t meet the complexity of their needs. Let’s look at why many QuickBooks users migrate to NetSuite and why QuickBooks may have been right for them at some point but they now need to migrate to something more robust that meets their challenges.

QuickBooks and NetSuite Commonalities

While both cloud-based softwares are made to essentially help businesses manage their accounting needs, there is a significant difference in the approach and complexity of offerings. Both offer invoicing, billing, AP, and AR, and both integrate with other software solutions that help organizations streamline workflows and connect different parts of their operations. They also both provide reporting capabilities—but on a totally different scale, which we will tackle below.

Differences Between the Two

QuickBooks tends to be great for small- to medium-sized businesses looking for an easy-to-use platform to manage finances. It offers some functionality for those looking to manage a few elements of their supply chain, eCommerce, and retail. It’s primarily focused on accounting for businesses that have straightforward needs for financial management, while NetSuite can handle much more complex and diverse functions, making it more applicable for those organizations with intricate processes and integrations. NetSuite also offers more extensive functionality beyond accounting, such as CRM and ERP, making it suitable for larger or more complex businesses.

What NetSuite has that QuickBooks Lacks

NetSuite’s financial management tools are made for entire accounting departments looking to run billing, planning, reporting, and more—all with real-time visibility into performance. It also has features that can keep organizations in compliance with regulatory requirements. NetSuite has an integrated CRM as part of its ERP suite, which offers integration between accounting and customer management processes. QuickBooks does have basic CRM features, but it’s not as robust or integrated with its accounting capabilities.

While QuickBooks offers some degree of customization, NetSuite provides extensive customization options, which allow organizations to tailor the system to its specific workflows and needs.

NetSuite’s reporting capabilities are advanced analytics tools that allow businesses to generate financial reports, analyze performance, and gain insights into their operations. QuickBooks does have reporting, but it’s not nearly as comprehensive or customizable.

The same goes for eCommerce integration—NetSuite includes features for eCommerce integration, enabling businesses to manage online sales channels, automate order processing, and synchronize data between their accounting system and eCommerce platforms. QuickBooks may have integration options with a few eCommerce platforms, but they may not be as seamless or comprehensive as NetSuite’s.

QuickBooks has limited support for global operations, especially for businesses with complex international requirements. NetSuite was designed to support multi-national businesses with features like multi-currency support, multi-language support, and compliance with international accounting standards.

When to Make the Switch

Organizations should consider their long-term strategy and whether QuickBooks or NetSuite best aligns with their business challenges, growth objectives, and operational needs. Firstly, the size of the business and its complexity should be considered. If your business has outgrown QuickBooks capabilities and requires more advanced features such as multi-entity management, international accounting, and more advanced reporting, it is time to consider the shift to NetSuite.

Organizations experiencing rapid growth that need a more scalable solution should also consider transitioning to NetSuite, which will accommodate the growth sans the need for frequent system migrations.

Consider your industry that may have more unique accounting and reporting requirements that QuickBooks may not address. NetSuite offers solutions and customizable features that are industry-specific to those like manufacturing, retail, or eCommerce.

Another thing to address is whether your business relies on multiple systems that will need to be integrated into your accounting software. NetSuite offers a comprehensive suite of integrated applications that streamline operations and improve efficiency.

Making the switch to NetSuite requires planning, implementation, and training, all of which are all made simpler with a partner. To help you decide whether your business should migrate to NetSuite, give us a shout below in the contact form.

How NetSuite AI Empowers Users to be Efficient, Effective, and Precise

Posted on June 5, 2024June 13, 2024 by Sarah Bensimon

The hottest investment in tech right now is AI, and NetSuite has taken full advantage of these advancements. AI-powered tools in NetSuite greatly improve the user experience with elements such as predictive analytics for inventory management, and intelligent automation for repetitive tasks like processing invoices. As NetSuite continues to be proactive and anticipates the needs of the end user, it helps to solve problems before we are aware that they even exist.

NetSuite’s intelligent capabilities include a myriad of tools that boost users’ efficiency and productivity. With automated data entry, manual tasks such as extracting relevant information from invoices, receipts, and bills are greatly reduced, which saves time and the chance for mistakes. Helping to improve accuracy and compliance, NetSuite’s AI capabilities analyze expense reports to detect patterns and anomalies, which can flag potential fraud or erroneous transactions.

With predictive analytics, its AI can look into historical financial data to identify trends and make predictions about future performance, which helps users make more data-backed decisions. With cash flow forecasting, AI algorithms can examine cash flow data to predict future patterns, helping organizations optimize their cash management strategies. To help identify fraud and financial irregularities, NetSuite’s AI can detect discrepancies in transactions and can generate reports by automatically aggregating and analyzing data from different sources, helping accountants be more accurate.

NetSuite’s AI can also streamline bank reconciliation processes with tools like automated matching, where its algorithms match transactions from bank statements with corresponding entries into accounting systems – this reduces the manual effort and chances for errors. Machine learning helps to regularly improve the reconciliation process, learning from historical data and user actions to enhance the accuracy of matching over time, while adapting to changing transaction patterns and business needs. NetSuite’s AI helps automatically categorize transactions based on predefined rules and historical data, too. This also saves time and ensures better accuracy.

There are other myriad components in NetSuite AI, including intelligent automation used to streamline business processes such as order management, procurement, and inventory management that all help reduce manual tasks, improve efficiency, and minimize human error.

Other NetSuite AI tools include NLP or natural language processing, which is used to interpret and respond to user questions or commands in natural language. This enhances the user experience when it comes to tasks such as querying data, generating reports or initiating workflows.

For business intelligence, NSAW, or NetSuite Analytics Warehouse, helps users reveal patterns, opportunities, and relationships from different data sources. Its automations “validate, centralize, and connect data sources from different systems, reducing costs, manual work, and human error,” according to NetSuite. Machine learning in NSAW analyzes large datasets to identify patterns, anomalies, and correlations that can inform business decisions, while its natural language processing (NLP) enables its users to better interact with data, allowing for simple exploration and analysis of complex datasets. NSAW can also automatically generate insights and reports, which provides users with actionable data without the need for manual analysis.

To learn more about how NetSuite can help accelerate your business processes with AI, contact us below in the form.

Caravel Recognized by NetSuite as Winter 2024 Alliance Partner Spotlight Award Winner

Posted on March 22, 2024March 22, 2024 by Sarah Bensimon

We are excited to share that Oracle NetSuite has named Caravel, A BPM Technology Solutions Company, a Winter 2024 Alliance Partner Spotlight Award Winner for Insurance.

The Alliance Partner Spotlight Awards recognize leading partners and their achievements for outstanding work with customers.

The NetSuite Alliance Partner program provides business consulting services, as well as integration and implementation services, that help customers get even more value from their NetSuite software. Alliance Partners are experts in their field and have a deep and unique understanding of NetSuite solutions.

Caravel will continue to show expertise in the Insurance industry with the goal of helping companies thrive.

“Being recognized as a NetSuite Spotlight Award winner in the Insurance industry is more than just a recognition; it’s a testament to our dedication to innovation and excellence. It underscores our mission to not only help our clients thrive but also to cultivate their growth and success, empowering them to reach new heights in an ever-evolving industry landscape.”

Tai Valenzuela, Managing Director, Delivery & Operations

Having worked with over 750 clients, Caravel has propelled this experience into a repeatable, yet customizable framework for helping companies in various industries to define lean and scalable business processes, efficiently selecting the optimal technology to support the business, deploying the software platform, providing project oversight to ensure project, and ultimately business success and providing ongoing support services as needed.

Mastering DCAA Compliance

Posted on March 22, 2024May 30, 2024 by Sarah Bensimon

The federal government signs over 11 million contracts annually, and approximately 95% are awarded to small- and medium-sized businesses. Steady cash flow and profitable, long-term contracts are just a few significant reasons these contracts are valuable to businesses.

Once awarded a government contract, companies must comply with regulations set forth by the DCAA, or the Defense Contract Audit Agency. These companies should, therefore, maintain business systems that facilitate that compliance.

Some of the elements of compliance include:

Maintenance of accurate payroll and time-keeping records
Implementation of DCAA-compliant accounting systems
Production of accurate documentation for audits
Cost-tracking
Following government-issued checklists

Being Prepared for DCAA Audits

The DCAA performs contract audits that affect negotiations with over 7,000 contractors annually to help enable and facilitate negotiations for which contracting officers are responsible. Although the DCAA has no actual role in determining which companies are awarded contracts, they provide recommendations to those who select the contractors.

The DCAA iterates on its website that its role “in the financial oversight of government contracts is critical to ensure DoD gets the best value for every dollar spent on defense contracting. DCAA operates under the authority, direction, and control of the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller)/Chief Financial Officer.” Overall, its main function is to conduct audits on contracts and financial advisory services to determine if those contract costs are “allowable, allocable, and reasonable (or not).”

Due to the firm requirements of the DCAA, businesses must be prepared for possible audits. Manual or disconnected software systems that are both time and labor-intensive won’t cut it. Instead, automated processes on a unified ERP platform that include pre-built DCAA compliance capabilities should be in place from the get-go. Without a system such as this, it would be difficult for various departments to collaborate on a single platform, which causes many challenges when trying to produce a report or a specific document for the DCAA.

“To be more prepared for audits, organizations need to define business process flows, that a) work with your current business processes, and b) are expandable for other business processes. Also, having someone on your team available who has experience in how these processes flow and can provide guidance is quite important. Before implementing any new systems, nailing these two things down is paramount,” explains David Tillotson, Director of Solution Engineering at Caravel.

Audits can result in negative findings such as overpayments, unallowable costs, fraud, and mismanagement. These results are reported to the Department of Defense and the contractors themselves, who are responsible for rectifying issues.

For non-compliance, consequences include civil and criminal penalties, voided contracts, and companies being completely barred from ever doing business with the government in the future.

Have a DCAA or other NetSuite related question?

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Meeting DCAA Requirements

Automation in lieu of manual processes is a no-brainer in facilitating compliance with DCAA requirements. Unmatched by spreadsheets, an automated and singular solution approach to time entry, labor costs, accounting, billing, and reporting will not only bring various departments on the same page but will also greatly facilitate compliance and communication. Disparate systems—such as utilizing QuickBooks and spreadsheets—only make compliance more difficult.

“Many organizations have relatively complex percentage-based calculations based off cost pools,” notes Tillotson, “and if mistakes are made, it throws off the reporting. Automating these processes eliminates the potential for these types of errors. Time spent on manual processes requires a significant amount of effort compared to automated processes.”

Let’s review some of the compliance requirements:

Timekeeping

Tracking time is essential for DCAA compliance, as this data is the foundation for reporting. Time reporting, daily time entry, time approval, time entry updates, cost pool association, and employee training are all required for best practices as laid out by the DCAA. The DCAA will occasionally conduct random checks at the vendor’s site, where they will speak with employees and inspect time sheets to ensure they’re completed daily.

Cost Segmentation

As part of qualification for compliance, companies are required to classify costs as direct or indirect; direct costs are grouped separately from those that are indirect. Direct costs are traced to specific projects, while indirect costs are shared resources across internal activities (e.g., R&D, Bid and Proposal, Operations). This allocates what the contract is responsible for in terms of operational overhead.

Financial Management

An accurate view of the financial performance of each project must be clearly laid out. Recording what was spent, as well as classifying expenses and revenue by category (e.g., rent, accounting, or services) is essential. Tracking and separating allowable costs (reimbursable by the government) from unallowable costs (cannot be charged to the government) must also be recorded and reported.

Labor Distribution

This report relays the hours worked and cost per employee and is divided by project and cost pool.

FAR and CAS Compliance

Government contractors must also be consistent with Federal Acquisition Regulation and Cost Accounting Standards to comply with the DCAA. Accounting practices must be disclosed along with evidence of compliance.

These requirements prevent fraudulent billing; by default, they become legal documents and must be accurate. Promoting transparency and accountability is essential to DCAA compliance. “When it comes to reporting to the DCAA, manually filling out forms and spreadsheets takes an exorbitant amount of time, whereas an automated system will generate it for you for every single invoice, as well as for any on-demand reporting needed,” says Tillotson.

A Complete Compliance Solution

A unified, cloud-based ERP, together with a fully integrated DCAA solution, will enable government contractors to carry out all the above requirements smoothly.

For NetSuite users, meeting regulatory requirements set forth by the DCAA can be achieved through Caravel’s DCAA Compliance SuiteBundle, which controls common variables across various businesses. Although NetSuite is a GAAP-compliant accounting system, there are key regulations to which it does not comply. The SuiteBundle is built directly into NetSuite to supplement the functionality necessary for DCAA compliance.

Join the DCAA subject matter experts at Caravel on March 29, 2024, in a live webinar where we will show you how to master compliance in NetSuite. Register here.

The Power Behind NetSuite Analytics Warehouse

Posted on March 6, 2024May 3, 2024 by Sarah Bensimon

Data is quite possibly the most valuable business asset. Information from various business departments accumulates over the years and tells the story of an organization. It can provide invaluable insights into the future of that business and requires the utmost care in storage and management. In many cases, the various data from each entity is stored separately and in different formats, making it cumbersome, unmanageable, and overwhelming.

Challenges in the Dataverse

The rate of data among enterprises is growing at a rate of 40-60% each year. This rapid expansion makes the storage, management, and utilization of that data more and more challenging and can greatly affect growth. Hindrances to the effective use of data include siloed data sources, a shortage of experts who can analyze big data, extracting meaningful insights that lead to actionable intelligence, as well as the security of data.

“Data-driven companies are those with a certain data maturity and literacy across the organization, where employees value the power of data,” explains Ashish Tamboli, EPM Senior Consultant at Caravel. Tracking, reviewing, and analyzing data and trends over time can greatly help organizations to better understand which processes need to be fixed and which are performing well. Data helps leadership create strategy based on evidence and to better understand customers—where they come from, what propels them to buy, and perhaps why certain items have high return rates. Simply put, having organized data helps businesses make more informed decisions, improves customer relationships, and increases revenue.

What is NSAW?

NSAW, or NetSuite Data Warehouse, is a cloud-based data storage and analytics solution for NetSuite ERP users that marries data and analytics along with AI and Machine Learning (ML). This allows users to speed up their decision-making processes and convert them into actionable results. NSAW employs the power of the Oracle Analytics Cloud, which is backed by the Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse. This allows users to build and run analyses and visualizations quicker and without the need for their IT department.

Effectively solving data management challenges, NSAW brings together ALL data sources, including NetSuite Finance and Operations data, and other sources a business may use such as Shopify data, Salesforce data, Google Analytics, and many more that allow a business to turn off legacy systems that no longer serve it. NSAW also reduces the heavy task of migrating data and offers self-service analytics and automated reporting from multiple sources.

NSAW allows its users not to look at data in isolation, but rather from an entire workflow perspective to more easily identify patterns, understand what the data is revealing, and make true, data-driven decisions.

NSAW propels businesses to make faster, more cost-effective decisions by:

- Streamlining data management and ease of access.

- Fast-tracking business insights and solving business challenges.

- Reducing IT costs and complexity.

- Eliminating reliance on spreadsheets.

- Giving direct access to historical data.

- Simplifying reporting by eliminating the need for presentations.

AI Capabilities

The power of artificial intelligence drives NSAW to validate, centralize, and connect sources of data from unrelated operational systems, thereby granting access to the most up-to-date data that is consistent and whole. This reduces human error, as well. Always on the job and running in the background, it allows for speedier insights and produces a clear look into financials and operations by utilizing pattern recognition, outlier detection, automatic forecasting, and predictive modeling. AI makes analyzing trends and creating reports based on the most current and historical data. By processing large data sets from multiple sources, NSAW reveals the value that would otherwise be buried by legacy systems.

How Historical Data Adds Tremendous Value

Historical data is classified as past (pre-NetSuite migration) ERP transactional information on sales, products or services, customers, and suppliers. Businesses are required to retain this information for financial and legal purposes, and it’s typically stored in siloed, legacy in-house systems with restricted access to preserve its integrity. This data is rich with information and lessons from historical operational performance as well as the customer and explains a lot about current facts and figures. It also plays a large role in forecasting, which allows businesses to plan for change.

Money is spent to safeguard, monitor, update, and patch this data – and this requires expertise to guard it against security threats. Over a seven-year period, these costs add up. This is where a centralized, cloud-based system can eliminate all the issues that segregated and costly historical data causes.

Benefits include:

- A single source of truth for all business transactions.

- Secure, reliable, and accessible data.

- Direct access to historical data.

- Ease of use out-of-the-box for immediate results.

- Multiyear trend reporting alongside current data, allowing for cause-and-effect analysis.

- Solid customer data, allowing businesses to identify pertinent information on loyal customers.

- Viewable multiyear purchase trends that blend historical data with current eCommerce data.

- Website and CRM data blended with historical data to reveal more about customer acquisition, which is important for retention.

Unsiloed Data is Powerful Data

One of the biggest challenges that businesses face is having their data in silos as well as in many different formats. Getting access to their data is yet another issue they face, while the struggle with manual fatigue is next on the list. The cost implications of managing legacy data are an additional problem, but all these issues can be easily solved.

Many NetSuite users have other systems and data sources within their organization that could offer tremendous benefits by adding additional context and a more thorough understanding of the past, present, and future. This diverse data can help detect early signs of change, allowing businesses to be more agile and adaptable.

Sources of internal data include:

- Customer service data

- eCommerce data

- Marketing and social media campaign data

- Legacy data

- Spreadsheets

- Website data and leads

Sources of external data include:

- Employment data

- Google search and Google ads data

- Reseller data

- Social media sentiment on competition

- Supplier data

- Subsidiary data

- Trade events

All this highly valuable data isn’t being shared across the business, and as it accumulates, it gets stale if unused.

There are many ways that data silos waste resources and reduce employee efficiency. According to Stitch Data, it can reduce the speed at which a company uses data to make decisions, permit poor collaboration among departments, incur unnecessary IT costs, and reduce the quality of data, thereby leading to poor analytics.

Centralizing data will unlock tremendous value and allow the business to safely retain the data and allow for access across departments, retire legacy systems that no longer serve a purpose, be rid of costly data migration projects, and allow for analysis of operations, trends, and performance over time.

Data storage scales according to a business’s needs and NSAW offers over 40 pre-built connections to sources such as Google Analytics, Shopify, payroll data, inventory data, HR data, Salesforce, and more. The challenges of integrating and managing data are minimized so users can focus on unveiling valuable insights that lead to more informed business decisions.

The visualizations and dashboards are comprehensive and easy to understand, while using the built-in ML models allows for predictive analysis.

Painless Reporting

Manual reporting is an effort of the past. With NSAW, self-serve reporting is easy, with drag-and-drop features and a collection of visually appealing dashboards that offer key metrics from all over. Sales, inventory, financials, procurement, and more—these dashboards are easily customizable and offered in everyday language, making it simple. Meanwhile, AI runs in the background and offers features such as auto recommendations on the optimal visualization styles, helping to interpret results more quickly. Reports refresh themselves automatically, so the user is not constantly rebuilding them. No-code forecasting allows users to better plan and predict for the future. All this is presented on one screen, avoiding users jumping around to uncover inefficiencies and discover revenue opportunities.

NSAW offers KPIs and metrics for many different job roles, putting them in the proper context for each employee. This role-based analytical capability makes it simpler for users to view what is relevant to them. It also allows users to drill down from KPIs and charts and investigate elements at the transaction level. Its reporting capabilities reduce time spent on creating presentations by offering visuals that can directly export to various formats such as PDF, PNG, and XLS.

Spotting Key Revenue Drivers

One of the driving values of NSAW is cost savings. As a data migration solution, being able to store and access historical data without having to pay for other licenses is tremendous on the bottom line. NSAW, compared to other solutions on the market, allows current NetSuite users to save tens of thousands of dollars a year by consolidating their data in the warehouse.

“NSAW is a strategic investment for data-driven companies to gain valuable, immediate, and accurate insights, Ashish states. “Since many employees lack IT knowledge, NSAW acts as a self-serve tool that can be used with little to no IT support by leveraging pre-built datasets and reports.” This is where significant cost savings come in and eliminate the need for complete IT support, making users more autonomous and able to gain insights and delve into trends without relying on IT.

Once data has been effortlessly merged into NSAW and is centrally packaged with easy access, users can easily solve business problems and make more informed decisions. Running autonomously in the cloud, a prebuilt data pipeline automates the flow of NetSuite ERP data into the Warehouse (daily or at other frequencies); automations organize the data so it’s usable and accessible—thereby eliminating the need for an IT team to run it. As Ashish points out, “NetSuite ERP is not enough of a system to give you insights into your data. Users need to have the capability to slice and dice data to get more meaningful outputs and compare trends. This is where NSAW comes in and allows users to compare trends over time.”

NSAW consolidates information and centralizes assets, giving relevant data to end users—anytime, anywhere.

Caravel can help accelerate the implementation of NetSuite’s Analytics Warehouse so that your teams can all be on the same page when it comes to data and insights.

Watch the on-demand webinar, Harnessing the Power of Your Analytics With NSAW, and learn more about this extraordinary program that will propel your organization to the next level.

Caravel Recognized by NetSuite as North America Alliance Partner of the Year—Services

Posted on October 23, 2023April 17, 2024 by Tom Pearce

We are excited to share that Oracle NetSuite has named Caravel, A BPM Technology Solutions Company, the North America Alliance Partner of the Year in Services for the 3rd year running.

NetSuite celebrated its 25th year in 2023, and neither its past nor continued success would be possible without the expertise and enthusiasm of the partner community. During the SuiteWorld Partner Summit in Las Vegas, NetSuite announced winners in all categories, including Caravel’s Services Partner of the Year award.

This year’s winners reflect how hard the partner community has worked to help our joint customers thrive using NetSuite to run their businesses.

Caravel Partners continues to show expertise in the Services industry with the goal of helping companies grow.

“Helping our Customers solve tough problems leveraging NetSuite is at the core of what we do. Super grateful to receive Partner of the Year for Services for the 3^rd year in a row! Many thanks to our dedicated Customers and the team at NetSuite for providing us with this opportunity — without them, this wouldn’t be possible!”.

Scott Curry, Managing Partner

Having worked with over 500 clients, Caravel has consolidated this experience into a repeatable framework for helping companies define lean yet scalable business processes, efficiently determining the right technology to support the business, deploying the software platform, providing project oversight to ensure project, and ultimately business success and providing ongoing support services as needed.

Caravel Recognized by NetSuite as Summer 2023 Alliance Partner Spotlight Award Winner

Posted on September 19, 2023March 6, 2024 by Tom Pearce

We are excited to share that Oracle NetSuite has named Caravel, A BPM Technology Solutions Company, a Summer 2023 Alliance Partner Spotlight Award Winner for Healthcare and Medical & Dental Offices.

NetSuite’s Alliance Partner Spotlight Awards recognize leading partners and their achievements for outstanding work with customers, including:

Demonstrated commitment and success in implementing NetSuite
Development of outstanding expertise, customizations, and/or intellectual property in specific micro verticals
Demonstrated commitment to and success in implementing NetSuite Analytics Warehouse, OpenAir, SuiteCommerce, and NetSuite Planning and Budgeting

Caravel Partners continues to show expertise in the Healthcare industry with the goal of helping companies grow.

“We are honored to be recognized for the dedication and increased focus our teams have put in to our growing number of Healthcare customers. We are excited to continue on this path to ensure success for all our clients and their business operations”.

Tai Valenzuela, Director of Strategic Operations

The NetSuite 2023.2 Quick Guide

Posted on August 25, 2023August 25, 2023 by Tom Pearce

Author: Tom Pearce Sales Marketing Coordinator

NetSuite is releasing their newest update called NetSuite 2023.2 for the beginning of Autumn, much like the 2023.1 update they released at the beginning of the year, NetSuite 2023.2 is full of new ways to improve your business processes and improve user experience and adoption. At Caravel, we wanted to provide a targeted summary on what new features NetSuite is bringing to its users, if you want to learn more, we highly encourage you to look at the full release notes available to you in your NetSuite portal home screen. If this makes you eager to start with NetSuite 2023.2, please reach out to your Project Manager.

Striving for Warehouse and Manufacturing Efficiency:

NetSuite understands that the strain on supply, and the effect it has on fulfilling customer demand has not wavered at all. With NetSuite 2023.2 release, NetSuite is making their user’s warehouse and manufacturing management even more accessible. NetSuite has updated its mobile application offerings, improving warehouse speed and accuracy with Smart Count barcode scanning, both of which can save you on shipping and more!

The NetSuite 2023.2 release has provided users of the Supply Chain Management (SCM) app with huge updates to its user experience. They have made the navigation smoother and focused on making it user-friendly by simplifying roll changes and allowing user preferences. The update also streamlines the NetSuite Warehouse Management App. Allowing supervisors the expedience in reassigning employees, custom picking orders, and more to help reduce friction in your warehouse on both the supervisor and picker levels.

To help users save money with shipping NetSuite is making it possible to use NetSuite Ship Central to shop for the best rates, create return labels, calculate cost based on weight, and more. Just like the SCM app, user experience is improving for shipping as well allowing for user preferences, workflows, and more automation for customers using Shopify and Amazon. The NetSuite Connector is bringing users the capability to eliminate manual reconciliation for Shopify and Amazon. Users can also sync shipping services that are purchased from Amazon to NetSuite thus simplifying order fulfillment and reducing costs.

Learn more about how the 2023.2 update can improve your warehouse and manufacturing here.

Improving Your Employee Experience and Confidence:

With a tool like NetSuite, it is easy to get lost in all its capabilities and functions. Having to search for solutions, look at notes, or any other way users might help themselves navigate NetSuite slows down the processes and causes interruptions throughout the day. NetSuite 2023.2 aims to eliminate the pause in work to look up a “how to” guide and have implemented NetSuite Guided Learning. The NetSuite Guided Learning experience was built with a focus on streamlining user experience and eLearning. NetSuite Guided Learning now offers users visual walk-throughs, step-by-step guidance, progress tracking and self-managed learning tailored to the users’ roles.

Learn more from NetSuite here.

There’s no denying the importance of data in today’s business environment. Shifting costs, volatile economic conditions, and intense competition necessitate data-driven insights. Yet, many companies encounter roadblocks when it comes to making data usable.

Operational and Financial Focus:

Improving efficiency to reduce business spending while seeing an increase in productivity and growth is one common goal for businesses. NetSuite understands this and NetSuite 2023.2 is providing you with the tools to achieve this. Some of what NetSuite 2023.2 is doing to reach that goal is increasing its use of automation, reducing tedious tasks, and making bill paying simpler.

NetSuite states that the automation in their NetSuite Account Reconciliation tool “automates the entire reconciliation process for the general ledger including intercompany transactions, accounts receivable (AR) and payable (AP), bank and credit card transactions, accruals and fixed assets accounts, and other balance sheet accounts”. This will completely remove the need to pull and makes sense of data from multiple sources manually. With machine learning and NetSuite’s auto-match engine users will be able to have millions of transactions matched in minutes and accounting teams will only need to focus on the exceptions, high-risk, and strategic tasks.

NetSuite is also making updates to the NetSuite Bill Capture, Vendor Invoice Distribution SuiteApp, and NetSuite AP Automation to reduce the workload for accounts payable teams. Users will be able to lean on the machine learning in the NetSuite Bill Capture feature to organize expenses based on past bills and will provide recommended subsidiaries. Teams will be able to expedite the bill-paying process by allowing for batched approvals with the Payment Approval Routing now offered in the NetSuite AP Automation. Also, if you have teams that need to share costs now the Vendor Invoice Distribution SuiteApp allows them to simply distribute costs by percentages or amounts and once the distribution is completed, the SuiteApp automatically creates the needed entries.

There is much more to see about this update here.

This is just the surface of what NetSuite is offering in the NetSuite 2023.2 update. To learn more, you can look here or on your NetSuite environment home page. We at Caravel are excited for these updates to be implemented. We are also always ready to talk you through what and how integrating these can improve your business.

Let’s Work Together

Caravel Recognized by NetSuite as Winter 2023 Alliance Partner Spotlight Award Winner

Posted on March 24, 2023April 17, 2024 by cvp_adm

We are excited to share that Oracle NetSuite has named Caravel Partners, A BPM Technology Solutions Company, a Winter 2023 Alliance Partner Spotlight Award Winner for Healthcare.

NetSuite’s Alliance Partner Spotlight Awards recognize leading partners and their achievements for outstanding work with customers, including:

Demonstrated commitment and success in implementing NetSuite
Development of outstanding expertise, customizations, and/or intellectual property in specific micro verticals
Demonstrated commitment to and success in implementing NetSuite Analytics Warehouse, OpenAir, SuiteCommerce, and NetSuite Planning and Budgeting

Caravel Partners continues to show expertise in the Healthcare industry with the goal of helping companies grow.

“We are honored to be recognized for the dedication and increased focus our teams have put in to our growing number of Healthcare customers. We are excited to continue on this path to ensure success for all our clients and their business operations”.
Tai Valenzuela, Director of Strategic Operations

The NetSuite 2023.1 Quick Guide

Posted on February 7, 2023April 17, 2024 by cvp_adm

Author: Tom Pearce Sales Marketing Coordinator

We are past the start of the new year, which means we are finding our footing and life is moving back to normal. This also means there are some very exciting new opportunities on the horizon for us to present to you, and NetSuite has already delivered on one of them.

NetSuite is kicking off the new year by showing us several updates to improve business processes already. They have brought out the sneak peak of NetSuite 2023.1, and we at Caravel are excited to break down the highlights and explain what you can expect us to be implementing this year. If you want to learn more about any of the following, feel free to check the home screen of your NetSuite portal. Learn how to start with the 2023.1 update by reaching out to your Project Manager.

With improved CRM, CPQ, inventory management, data-based recommendations, and more, this first update of 2023 is packed with new tools for your business.

Improving Personnel Management:

NetSuite’s 2023.1 brings with it several tools that will improve tracking productivity while alleviating some of the stress of adjusting wages. Your team can now automate wage calculations with a NetSuite Payroll integration, allowing you to easily capture schedules and adjust wages based on a more accurate review of hours worked.

Utilizing this feature will also open more opportunities to improve customer satisfaction. You will be able to track workforce insights—such as sales data—to learn and follow trends to guarantee you have the scheduled staff to ensure customer satisfaction.

Another interesting element is a more complex employee time tracker. NetSuite explains that this will be beneficial for industries that need to track employee time more specifically. For example, it can track how much time an employee in an office setting puts toward projects and clients, or how much time an employee in a driving industry is traveling before their mandatory rest period. Employees will be able to easily adjust their status and have it accurately tracked to make billing easier, as well as maintaining safety regulations for truck drivers. NetSuite has an article that breaks down more of the impressive opportunities with this tool here.

Simplified Financials:

In the NetSuite 2023.1 update, vendor billing will be simplified by applying automation. NetSuite AP Automation is a new feature that allows you to upload your vendor bills with an email to NetSuite to be processed automatically. Then, a digital version is created and all the important details (vendor name, PO number, items ordered, quantity, pricing, etc.) are populated and matched to the correct purchase order.

If you offer subscription-based services to your customers, this release permits you to easily adjust and plan for percentage changes to apply to any of your subscribers. Learn more about these and some other interesting new features for rebates, nonprofits, and more here.

Warehouse and Shipping Efficiency:

The new NetSuite Ship Central is going to save your warehouse employees time and money. This update allows your warehouses to track if there are multiple orders going to one customer, consolidate, and efficiently ship the orders, thus reducing the number of shipments to a single location. It can even help you improve your order picking process.

With the NetSuite Warehouse Management System update, you can even section your warehouse into zones and allow multiple employees to pick order items based on zones, then pool items together for packing. Teams will be able to easily mark orders as partial or complete while also tracking empty bins or damaged goods in their sections to expedite restocking. There are some other very helpful updates for warehouse teams like improved smart counts and reports that you can read about here.

Improving Your Customers Experiences on Multiple Levels:

Utilizing the NetSuite 2023.1 update aims to not only improve your internal business processes but also to assure you are providing your customers and end users with the best service possible. With improved CRM, CPQ, inventory management, data-based recommendations, and more, this first update of 2023 is packed with new tools for your business. We can’t wait to help you learn and implement these features to help expand and optimize your business. To start, reach out to your project manager. If you haven’t started with Caravel yet and want to learn more about how we can help integrate these new features to serve your business, we are always ready to talk.