NetSuite started off 2020 with a brand-new update to its flagship cloud ERP platform. NetSuite 2020.1 includes new features and enhancements to its accounting, administration, banking, employee management, warehouse management (WMS), and manufacturing modules.
This post will focus on the changes to NetSuite Accounting and NetSuite Administration modules, and how these changes can impact current NetSuite users.
NetSuite Accounting
Among the changes to the Accounting module, balancing segments and advanced revenue management were the high priority enhancements identified, although SuiteApprovals enhancements and GL matching are also marked notable.
New Feature to Balance Transactions by Segments
The new Balancing Segments feature allows you to balance transactions by segments. In NetSuite, the general ledger always balances to the company or, in OneWorld accounts, to the subsidiary. With the new feature, you can now identify custom segments to balance for other dimensions. For example, you can create balancing segments for product lines or business units. When you run the new Balancing by Segments process, NetSuite automatically balances your transactions by their balancing segments.
Advanced Revenue Management Enhancements
The update also includes some significant enhancements to the Advanced Revenue Management feature. These cover:
- A new revenue summary popup window for revenue arrangements
- Enhanced revenue allocation support for SuiteBilling change orders
- “Return of Element” renamed to “Linked Element”
- Documentation enhancements
SuiteApprovals Enhancements
SuiteApprovals have also seen some enhancements in this release, classified as medium priority enhancements. These are:
- Extension to requisition records
- Support for cross-subsidiary approvals for users with appropriate subsidiary permissions.
The support for cross-subsidiary approvals lets you set up subsidiary restriction values on the employee record of approvers through the roles assigned to them. This enhancement enables you to specify or add approvers from a subsidiary that is different from the subsidiary of an approval rule.
NetSuite also released a host of other enhancements to the Accounting Module in NetSuite 2020.1. These include user interface enhancements for Entity Merge, enhancements to SuiteAnalytics such as links to the previous and next transactions in your workflow, budgets for secondary subsidiaries, GL Matching SuiteApp to match transactions for account reconciliation purposes, and localization for France, Germany (beta), and Japan.
Administration Enhancements
NetSuite 2020.1 brought several key improvements to its Administration module. These enhancements included a new deprecation plan for the full access role and the ability to modify the subsidiary hierarchy, a new feature.
Deprecation Plan for the Full Access Role
The Full Access role has been deprecated since NetSuite 2019.1 and is targeted to be disabled as of 2021.1. As an interim step in this process, as of January 2020, this role will be set to inactive. The Full Access role will no longer appear in the list of roles available for users who have this role assigned. It is the recommendation of Morgan Franklin that organizations do not configure the “Full Access” role for any future projects or implementations.
Subsidiary Hierarchy Modification
Subsidiary Hierarchy Modification is a new feature in the 2020.1 release. As mentioned above, NetSuite enables users with the appropriate permissions to modify their subsidiary hierarchy structure, if required. The company sees the need for certain businesses that may need to modify their subsidiary hierarchy when they change the headquarters to a different subsidiary or if they need to elevate a subsidiary in the hierarchy. Morgan Franklin expects, in the future, that the user would no longer need to submit a request to NetSuite support to allow for the modification of the structure.
Vendor Bill Approval in Employee Center
Previous releases did not allow users with the Employee Center role to view nor approve vendor bills. That has now changed with 2020.1. Two new permissions have been granted to the Employee Center role:
- Bill – grants users the permission to view vendor bills
- Vendor Bill Approval – grants users the permission to approve or reject vendor bills
As these permissions are brand new to the role, the Employee Center role must be updated to capture the new level of permissions. In addition, users with the Employee Center role can now benefit from and be integrated into standard or custom vendor bill approval workflows.
In addition to the above-mentioned enhancements, this release added many new features to the Administration module. These include: see differences in employee access permissions on the Role Permission Differences page, a new file cabinet default for the Hide Attachments Folder preferences to ensure that only users with the right permissions can access confidential files, and antivirus scanning on all file cabinet files in all accounts.
There are plenty of other enhancements released in NetSuite 2020.1, which will be discussed in future blog posts. To get more information or to speak with a MorganFranklin consultant, fill out the form below.
