Novutech provides a wide range of training sessions adapted to each position level. The provided learning paths cover several areas and includes Products training, Technical training, Industry training and Skills training. These enable each consultant to develop its skills and technical knowledge that will help him to grow professionally, add value to our company and support our customer’s success. 

Novutech mainly aligns on NetSuite learning program but also develops a lot of training for new joiners like business analysts, and advanced NetSuite users from Architects to Financial experts. In fact, this program is designed to prepare professionals to showcase, implement and deploy the NetSuite environment into the most complex customer’s environments. 

The aim of this article is to give to readers an overview of training and certifications provided by Novutech, the outcomes of these trainings in the short and in the long term for Novutech itself and its employees, and finally the benefits the customer will obtain from these trainings. 

NetSuite provides several educational resources on its own platform. This enables Novutech to get a basis to develop its own educational resources. Indeed, those resources include various functions like Administrators, Technical consultants, Functional consultants, and Finance/Accounting consultants and these cover several industries as financial services, food & beverage, retail, non-profit, healthcare, and many other industries. 

NetSuite defines a path for partners based on four phases: 

• The Foundation Phase consists of a new joiner completing a training related, on one hand, to implementation (optimizing NetSuite for user’s business needs) and, on the other hand, to administrator tasks and responsibilities (to tailor, maintain, and optimize NetSuite for the users’ business needs). After the first 8 weeks, the training session is complete, the new joiner learning path continues with additional product training topics.
  
• The Establish Phase is built on the previous training. Between the 9th and the 24th week, the new joiner starts a vertical and/or industry-specific training. Indeed, he takes additional responsibilities in terms of implementation and product training. During this phase, the new joiner should take the SuiteFoundation Certification. 

• The Proficient Phase continues the learning path. After one and a half years, the employee should have already taken the SuiteFoundation Certification and prepared for the ERP and/or Administrator Certification. He also starts advanced product training and continues the vertical and/or industry training. 

• The Growth Phase includes additional certifications and ongoing experienced consultant training. After 2 years working in the NetSuite environment, the ERP/Administrator Consultant follows additional training and webinars related to new releases to become experts in their respective areas. 

For this purpose, NetSuite sets up various tools to boost productivity, empower users and maximize the use of NetSuite: on demand courses, online webinars as mentioned previously, lab environments, educational success advising, etc. 

Internally, Novutech developed a specific learning path for new joiners and experienced consultants based on three pillars:  

• Knowledge & Expertise: 

The first pillar is based on Knowledge and Expertise. This includes NetSuite & Industry knowledge and expertise, Business Processes knowledge and Accounting & Finance knowledge. 

During the first three months, the new joiners follow training provided by NetSuite and accessible via the Learning Center, and they also follow training sessions conducted by internal collaborators. Meanwhile, they also develop themselves via fieldwork practices. 

Moreover, to share the knowledge between colleagues, Novutech sets up two elements: first, knowledge sessions. Every two weeks, employees who have learnt new features within NetSuite can share it during these knowledge sessions. Last but not least, Confluence is a platform where employees can document their searches and findings.

• Consulting Skills: 

Knowledge is not everything. Hence, to deliver a qualitative service to our customers, Novutech also emphasizes the consulting skills. 

For this purpose, Novutech helps its employees to develop their communication, presentation, and demonstration of best practices skills, to improve their productivity and time management. Finally, Novutech is investing in helping its employees and giving them access to all the tools they need to achieve their objectives effectively and efficiently. 

• Leadership Skills: 

Furthermore, Novutech enables its employees to develop their leadership skills in two ways. 

First, training provided internally enables Novutech employees to understand NetSuite Project Methodology and at the end of the day apprehend project management. 

Second, employees are quickly and significantly empowered via teams and customer management. Indeed, Novutech pushes them, in good time, to practice on the fieldwork. 

NetSuite Certification Program at Novutech 

At Novutech, we align on the NetSuite certifications. Therefore, we propose two kinds of certifications: administrator certification and user certification. 

Firstly, in terms of Administration Certification, Novutech proposes four different certifications: SuiteFoundation Certification, Administrator Certification, ERP Consultant Certification and SuiteCloud Developer Certification. 

• SuiteFoundation certification: new joiners should take the SuiteFoundation Certification exam after 6 months NetSuite experience. During these 6 months, they should have a basic understanding of the product features and concepts. Concretely, knowledge that should be acquired to complete this exam is related to a company's preferences, the uses and functioning of roles and permissions, the customization options, dashboards, searches, etc. 

• Administrator certification: After one year of experience configuring and managing NetSuite implementation, the analysts could consider taking the Administrator Certification Exam. In this case, they should, in addition to the knowledge acquired to complete the SuiteFoundation exam, acquire knowledge related to reports and searches (SuiteAnalytics), to customizations (SuiteBuilder), to workflows, bundles, and scripts (SuiteCloud Platform) and, finally, to general setup and administration. 

• ERP Consultant Certification: To take the ERP Consultant Certification, functional analysts should have at least 2 years’ worth of NetSuite implementation experience. They should, therefore, get a knowledge base related to accounting and business processes (Record to Report, Order to Cash, Design to Build and Procure to Pay) and extensive knowledge related to customization, reports and searches (SuiteAnalytics), workflows fundamentals (SuiteFlow), data strategy and data security. 

• SuiteCloud Developer II Certification: Technical analysts need one to two years of experience working with a range of SuiteCloud Technologies to take the SuiteCloud Developer II Certification. To do so, they need to gain experience in various subjects such as scripts (SuiteScript), customization (SuiteBuilder), workflows (Suiteflow), web services (SuiteTalk), reports and searches (SuiteAnalytics), and general design fundamentals. 

To maintain our certifications at Novutech, each year, our consultants and business analysts retake the exams in the form of a quiz named “New Release Quiz ''. This quiz validates awareness of new NetSuite features released in the previous year. 

Furthermore, in terms of User Certification, Novutech proposes two kinds of certifications to its users: SuiteAnalytics User and Financial User. 

• SuiteAnalytics User: After 6-month experience in searches and reports, this certification would enable users to get a solid understanding of NetSuite data structure by using reports, financial reports, and searches.

• Financial User: After 3-months experience in an accounting or finance role, this certification would enable users to get an extensive understanding of NetSuite accounting and finance functionality. 

Why get NetSuite Certified? 

More and more companies are looking for professionals who have acquired NetSuite certification. Indeed, companies that have certified their employees see more effective deployment and greater return on their investment. But not only. In fact, this represents numerous benefits for NetSuite customers as well. 

First, we could distinguish many benefits at the individual level: 

• Being certified enables individuals to become part of an elite NetSuite professional network and access a closed LinkedIn community of other NetSuite Certified individuals for networking. 
• Certification enables you to distinguish yourself from non-certified peers to accelerate your career and increase your professional opportunities. 

Second, there are also many benefits for NetSuite Customers 

• Working with certified partners means working with the most qualified individuals, the highest skill level individuals with a complete understanding of NetSuite that will help you to obtain greater ROI from your NetSuite investment. 
• It also means an increase of productivity, a high quality of NetSuite implementation and ongoing support. 

In summary… 

Novutech offers a wide and extensive range of training for both junior and senior consultants, equally functional as technical analysts. 

Novutech provides customized and continuous development to its consultants, whether in terms of knowledge and expertise, consulting or leadership skills. 

To maintain its brand awareness and strengths, Novutech requires each of its employees to obtain Netsuite Certification. This has consequent benefits on its own customers like working with experienced partners with strong expertise and delivering highly qualitative implementation and services. 

Background

As reporting is an important subject in any ERP project, NetSuite offers what is called saved searches.

These saved searches allow, thanks to a rather intuitive graphical interface, to consult all the data of the ERP.

Although the tool is intuitive, as soon as you have to set up a complex layout or conditions, it can be more difficult.

That's why we present you with some tips and tricks that we have used to best meet the needs of our customers.

TIPS & TRICKS

Tip 1 : Use double pipes to concatenate “||”

This will allow you to combine data from multiple columns into a single one.

You can concatenate whatever you want, text or column from NetSuite, and you can include html code as well.

Tip 2 : Use “Main Line”, “Shipping Line”, and “Tax Line”

In a saved search, you can decide on which level you want to see the data.

For this you have three criteria in the criteria section of your saved search.

You have the criteria “Main Line” which is used to determine whether you want to see only the header level of your record/transaction or not.

Just set it to “no” to see only the line level.

The same logic applies to the tax lines and shipping lines with the “Tax Line” and “Shipping Line” criteria.

Tip 3 : Column not found

The formulas in the saved search are very useful and allow you to push back the limits of this reporting tool.

For example if you do not find the field you want to display in the available options of the results list, it is possible to pull the desired data via a text formula by using the ID of the field and display it in a specific formula column.

To find the ID of a field, enable “show internal IDs” in your personal preferences and click on the field’s label to open the help window, which will include said ID. You can also use the Netsuite record browser for standard fields.

Tip 4: SQL Formulas

Still with regards to formula columns, you can use helpful SQL functions like "CASE" or numerous others in your criteria or in your result columns.

So in this example I display a text in the column depending on the amount of my transaction. 

Tip 5: Highlighting

The line highlighting feature can be very useful in order to make the important data pop right out when you review the search results.

To do this, you simply need to go to the highlighting subtab and define the desired condition, then, according to your needs, you can choose an image, put the text in color, change the background, or put the text in bold.

In our example I will use the same function as the one I created earlier to condition the background color of the rows in my saved search.

Conclusion

With all these tips you will be able to generate more precise and dynamic saved searches to display what you really want (and need!). As we know, reporting is crucial to any efficient and flexible strategic decision-making; and any small tip that allows companies to make fast and well-informed choices is a most valued one, which we are glad to share with you!

Background

NetSuite as a professional software delivering high qualified certifications

As the leading integrated cloud business software suite, NetSuite requires the users to have quite solid basics to be proficient. The NetSuite training platform provides a variety of training modules covering all the different topics the software is handling. It provides fundamentals training to begin with NetSuite setups and it dives deep down into very specialised concepts such as advanced workflows and scripting to optimise and customise a company’s NetSuite framework.

Eventually, you can obtain different types of certifications based on your profile. For instance, the first certification is called “Suite Foundation Certification” which is a guarantee that someone masters the basics of NetSuite. Furthermore, there are three possibilities to complete the certification program: Administrator, ERP Consultant and SuiteCloud Developer. 

The NetSuite Certification exams cost around two hundred dollars and can be passed several times in case of failure. Every process and validation system is managed by the NetSuite organism. But like for any exams, there is always an underlying question of legislation, veracity and legitimity. This is where national instances come into play.

The role of the AFNOR as a certification institute in France

These interrogations are also raised in the case of NetSuite Certifications. Are these certifications accredited according to the French accountability requirements? Could it be considered as a certified accountant tool?  Which organism is providing a correct framework and credibility to NetSuite certification? When it comes to data protection and global security, does NetSuite provide a proper environment to avoid any leaks of information? What about the mandatory audits?

First and foremost, NetSuite is accredited by AFNOR Certification. Afnor Certification is a company that delivers on audit or on evaluation, signs of confidence in the voluntary field as well as in the regulatory field. At the European level, Afnor Certification is notified for several European directives to deliver the CE marking, which attests the conformity of products to European regulatory requirements. It is one of the main organisms in France which provide a certain level of confidence to certifications. The referential value for NetSuite certification is known as the NF203, and it is considered as an accounting software. So far, the accreditation has been renewed which is a proof of the importance of NetSuite in the accounting sector in France. AFNOR is not only providing certification, the group is also working with companies to normalise their processes to match the expectations at a French scale level but also at the European level. 

AFNOR is working closely with INFOCERT to create and develop the NF brand, which brings  to every software company (there exist multiple certifications for various domains as well) a genuine sustainable competitive advantage and a worldwide recognition. Indeed, that shows a desire from the software editor to be in conformity with the requirements and reglementation of a specific country. The NF mark is a guarantee of quality, safety and confidence which provides credibility to the editors but also security to the customers.

A simple system to audit thanks to numerous features set up by NetSuite

Moreover, NetSuite is providing governance, risk, and compliance features, to authorise the proper authorities to audit companies using the software. It also provides a proper framework to protect the customer data and privacy to avoid any leak of information. Furthermore, NetSuite provides system notes that track most of the data and configuration changes. In most cases, you can determine whether a record, or a group of configuration settings, supports system notes based on whether a System Notes subtab is available on its NetSuite page. You can use NetSuite’s search capabilities to access system notes for auditing purposes. When it comes to privacy, NetSuite has created the PI removal feature, which enables users with the proper permissions to remove private information from NetSuite Fields, records and audit logs. The main aim of this feature is to help customers to regulate their privacy and to secure their data. 

Furthermore, NetSuite provides four ways to prepare your company to be audited. The first one is all about the Saved searches. Auditors will often request to run reports that are not necessarily part of your organization’s normal routine. However, NetSuite’s Saved Searches can generate these reports with ease and prevent the company from making long excel reports. The second one is Audit Trails: every transaction within the NetSuite system can be traced. This basically means that every modification, customization or simple change can be tracked. The third one involves Drill Down capabilities. Quite often the auditors are looking for specific transactions which means that one company must dive into distinct entities. But thanks to this feature, NetSuite permits to attach original documents to a transaction. Last but not least, GL Audit Numbering. It provides seamless sequencing of all general ledger transactions. That ensures transactions are not deleted or lost and that the sample selection is complete.

Conclusion

In short, AFNOR is providing a secured framework and a proper certificate to guarantee the authenticity of the NetSuite Certifications. Thanks to the numerous companies and users using NetSuite, it gives the software a proper credibility. Likewise, it allows NetSuite’s certification to be renewed. Moreover, the software editor provides several bundles to protect the data and the privacy of the information while making the audit processes easier for external companies. Here I described four main processes that ease the audit process but also provide proper security.

In short

Privacy, Audit, Saved searches, Audit trails, AFNOR, Drill Down Capabilities, GL Audit numbering, data security.

Background

NetSuite provides a wide variety of standard reports, including various financial statements.

The main ones are Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet.

Aside from those two, you will also have pre-configured statements comparing Budget vs Actuals or statements displayed by accounting books.

The standard statements are highly customizable to meet your internal management requirements.

Multidimensional analysis allows you to evaluate financial performance at a more granular level  in comparison with what is possible with standard reporting techniques.

The Financial Reports are based on customizable Layouts allowing greater control over how the information is organized.

Functionalities 

A main concern of every company is to have a tailor-made Income Statement reflecting the business organization.

The standard Income Statement provides a basic layout.

You can use the Financial Report Builder to customize NetSuite financial statements, including their columns, filters, sorting, and audience. 

The Financial Report Builder's most significant feature is the Edit Layout page. 

The Edit Layout page provides you with fine-grained control of your customized financial statements. 

In addition to report-level and column-level customizations, you can make edits per section or row. 

Sections are subsets of financial data, where you define the title and the contents of this section): 

In this example,we created a section named Marketing and Promotion, where we want to display the cost of 2 departments.

We obtain the following result :

You can define Formula Row and Text Row

You will be able to collapse and expand sections, to display figures in thousands, to format figures, etc.

A key benefit of the financial statement is the ability to define dimension columns for data,  including subsidiaries, class, department, custom segments, time period. 

Another benefit is the Period Selector, which offers a wide range of chronological ranges. 

As these financial report always contain sensitive information, you can define the permission to access the financial statements to defined roles.

Or you can define the audience on the financial statement itself.

Some important considerations and tips:

• Building a custom financial statement can take some preparation time that should not be underestimated;
• It’s recommended to design the expected layout result;
• It is also important to reflect correctly in advance of the financial segmentations
• Include check formula in order to avoid missing figures and inconsistencies

Conclusion

Customizing Financial Statements offers you : tailor-made reporting, save time, real time reporting, reporting in multiple formats for management and legal purposes.

Novutech can help you to design and build customized Financial Statements.

We have consultants with extensive NetSuite and business backgrounds.

Novutech can also provide you with dedicated training sessions.

Hello! I am Pauline, Internal Operations Manager at Novutech since July 21. Before running into my daily routine, I will share with you my background.

Background

Before starting my professional career, I finished a Master of Communication at the Ihecs (Institut des Hautes Etudes des Communications). During these 5 years of study, I had to build up strategic, executional and communication skills. A Master of Communication prepares students for many different types of careers. Still, I did not really know what I wanted to do after graduating.

When I found out what my dream job would look like, I saw a vacant sales position in a large IT organisation. That was actually quite far from what I learned during my studies but close to my interests. Indeed, I have always been curious about sales and all the more in IT. That is why I decided to apply for the job and I finally got it. More than a professional experience, this first job has been a human adventure during which I developed myself surrounded by talented, generous, kind and open-minded people. After 5 years in this company, I decided to start on a new challenge – a role that was more focused on human, marketing and communication. I wanted to explore and learn.

I realised that I had new ambitions and I was strongly looking for a career project in which I would be able to elevate myself and take actions. 

I was focused on developing my full potential and identifying aspirations to better meet my goals. That is exactly what the role at Novutech gave me.

@Novutech       

Other than the job itself, what really attracted me to Novutech was the chance to work for a growing start-up with incredibly talented people and in an environment where I could grow professionally.

As from July 2021, my role in the business is unique and covers four key areas: (i) the marketing plan, (ii) employee relations, (iii) assistance in sales and (iv) office manager, a role to make our office the most pleasant workplace possible.

This also means that I am kept very busy and that my ‘day-to-day’ routine is difficult to describe but I really appreciate working across such a diverse range of tasks. 

From a marketing perspective, I am responsible for a vast spectrum of duties within the business –going from the promotion of our services to the setting of our growth strategy.

My role at Novutech includes activities such as website management, social media management, content management, data analytics, PR and corporate communications.

What I really appreciate is that each employee, even if their business as usual is not immediately linked to marketing, can participate in the development of our marketing strategies by sharing their ideas, suggest ways to improve processes.

I strongly believe that including employees in the mission of the company and providing them autonomy helps them to feel empowered and motivated, increases their connection to Novutech and thus enables common achievements for the corporate goals.

As Novutech has been growing fast, people management has become crucial and strategic. Upon my arrival, I directly had to play an important role in the success of our company in several ways, ranging from participating in the global recruitment strategy and ensuring the compliance of its policies and programmes with labour laws to giving a help  to build a company culture that is in line with the organisation’s values and objectives.

Dealing with human resources was totally new to me but I had already acquired a lot of new skills by just closely working with the team. I also discovered how it is important to have a strong company culture for employee engagement, happiness and business performance. It is not just the values plastered on the walls, nor is it the office fruit bowls, sofa or darts game. It is how a company cultivates business growth by offering each employee a chance to express themselves, while encouraging healthy day-to-day attitudes, behaviours and work ethics.  

My role at the office also plays a big part in building up this company culture. I tried to make Novutech the best place to work by understanding the needs of my team and bringing it into the office environment. I am responsible for overseeing administrative tasks in the workplace. These tasks might include the organisation and coordination of office administration and procedures, in order to ensure organisational effectiveness, efficiency and safety. 

My favourite task is to organise team building events. These events are really important to ensure that everybody gets to know each other and, more than ever, they can be a powerful way to develop engagement and excitement for employees who are then happy to come to work.

I am also responsible for managing the purchasing and making sure that each employee has all what he/she needs for the good execution of his/her job.  

There is no doubt that organisation is crucial for the good accomplishment of my work. To make sure everything is under control, I need systems to track all information flowing through the office.

As I mentioned, Novutech truly is a place where culture is prioritised. The fact that people who work here genuinely care about each other brings extra value to the company. We appreciate spending our free time, during lunch or in the evenings after work - together. We are all encouraged to organise (social event) activities such as virtual quiz, monthly drinks, running time, diner time, trips, …

What keeps me motivated to go into work every day?

At Novutech, I aspire to follow the same direction that I have taken into my personal life: that is, having projects, continuing to develop myself and bringing positivity and energy to my team. I will ensure that they can count on me for each professional step.

Today, I have the opportunity to evolve in an environment with real collaborators and team players who work closely to support each other, with strong core values that include “client first approach”, “entrepreneurship spirit”, “openness”, “sharing” and “recognition in what we do''.

I totally agree with the central mindset of Novutech: delivering professionalism in an organisation where everyone is respected and can express their unique talents. 

At the end of the day, I would like to thank the Novutechos for welcoming me and for giving me a place in this awesome team. I admire the work and the positive energy that each collaborator puts into Novutech every single day.

We are already at the end of October, and shortly all NetSuite customers will be upgraded to the 2021.2 version and will be enjoying some fresh enhancements and new functionalities within their NetSuite environment. 

Background

As part of their goal to consistently optimize their customers’ business operations and further automate their financial processes, NetSuite left nothing to chance and carried out a wide variety of improvements ranging from core accounting activities to banking, inventory management or within SuiteAnalytics. 

Whether you have already familiarized yourselves with the enhanced functionalities in a Release Preview account or not, the following features selection will give you some insight into NetSuite’s upgraded possibilities and how they will help your company grow.

Functionalities

We tested NetSuite’s 2021.2 new or enhanced features and picked a couple of them that we found interesting for you to discover:

1. Preference to Allow Non-posting Changes in Closed Periods by Default

One really basic new functionality that most of our customers will enjoy is the ability to mark every new accounting period ticked by default for “allow non-posting changes”. 

This feature becomes really useful when it comes to make changes to any transaction in a closed period for “payment hold” on a vendor bill, an approval flow or with some functionalities like the Direct Debit reversal transaction created in the Fast Four Bank Reconciliation tool. 

2. Enhancement to the “Expense Commitments and Budget Validation” Free SuiteApp

The Expense Commitments and Budget Validation SuiteApp allows organizations to add the capability to budget and report expenses by accounts and segments. After the budget approval, all expenses need validation with the budget to prevent any overspending. 

When creating budgets for specific GL accounts, segments and period combinations, you have the possibility to validate the purchases requests, purchase orders and vendor bills against budgets. 

Within the new feature, in addition to the custom budget, you can now work with standard NetSuite budgets to do budget validation against purchasing transactions. 

Budget validation support for projects is also now added, in order to add the project field as a field for budget validation. 

A certain limitation that few customers will point out is the fact that we can still not use this SuiteApp without a budget on a GL account, as they wish to base their purchasing and cost budget only on segmentation, and not GL account. 

3. Automated Cash Application

NetSuite has just released an enhancement to their standard banking engine in this new release, in order to import bank lines that do not have matching customer payments in NetSuite. The “Automated Cash Application” feature as it is called is another page accessible on top of the “Reconcile Account Statement” that enables you to automatically generate a batch of customer payments in NetSuite and apply them to open invoices. The generated customer payments are then automatically matched and cleared in the system. 

This feature will be most interesting to customers using the standard bank engine of NetSuite, and where every single customer payment had to be created in the background, before being able to reconcile it. 

Even if NetSuite is going a step further into the automation of the bank reconciliation, a certain number of limits are still to be considered: 

• Cross-currency and cross-subsidiary invoice application to payments
• Consideration of discounts and credit memos during invoice application to payments
• Ability to create matching rules for AutoCash
• Support of advanced use cases such as handling consolidated payments for parent-child entities
• Ability to customize layout

More generally, the biggest limitation that we see in this whole new process is the duplication of screens to manage the reconciliation process. Integrating seamlessly the “automated cash application” into the “reconcile account statements” page would allow the user to manage the full process into one single place. Hopefully future releases will bring this possibility into reality. 

4. Lot Auto Numbering

In the area of inventory management, NetSuite has revealed the new automatic lot number generation. 

This allows the user to do the following: 

• Configure a lot numbering format for an item and automatically generate lot numbers for the item based on the data specified in the format.
• Integrated with item receipt and production processes.
• Improve lot traceability by including additional lot information.

In terms of configuration, the screen will have the following mapping elements available: 

Most of the Manufacturing NetSuite customers will like this feature in order to auto-generate your lot numbers when building a work order or receiving goods. 

It also gives you the ability to record additional data like Supplier Lot number, QA specs, etc. in the Inventory Detail screen.

5. Purchase to Project Now available

Purchase to Project SuiteApp is now available for installation from the SuiteApp Marketplace as a public and managed SuiteApp. 

This SuiteApp lets project managers create and manage purchase transactions related to projects and project tasks. It provides a unified project purchasing experience with insight into project purchases and single-click creation of purchase orders from the project or project task.

Project managers can perform the following tasks using this SuiteApp:

• View purchase orders and vendor bills entered for a project or project task.
• Initiate purchase orders from a project or project task.
• Allow or prevent creation of purchase orders and vendor bills for a project or project task.
• Designate approved project vendors for project-related purchase orders.
• View the total invoiced amount from billable items and expenses for a project.

6. Few SuiteAnalytics enhancements: 

Last but not least, NetSuite has developed a bunch of enhancements in the area of SuiteAnalytics, and we will be pointing out the most interesting ones: 

a. Dataset Linking in SuiteAnalytics Workbook

Using the SuiteScript, you can link two datasets if they each have at least one field that shares common data, such as date. 

Currently, you cannot edit how datasets are linked from the Workbook user interface. If you want to create or edit a link definition, you must use SuiteScript. 

For example, assume you want to compare budget vs actuals. In this case, you would create two datasets: one based on the transaction record type and the other based on the budget record type.

b. CSV Export Option Available in Pivot Tables

NetSuite has released as well a really powerful feature being the possibility to extract a pivot table from SuiteAnalytics into Excel. 

Novutech is there to assist you during every new release cycle

If these features tickled our interest, have a look into Oracle NetSuite’s blog here [https://www.netsuite.com/blog/netsuite-release-2021-release-2-brings-online-invoice-payment-options-flexible-inventory-allocation-and-automation-to-manage-retirement-plans-sneak-peek] to learn more about the exciting new updates offered in the new release.

As your preferred NetSuite partner, we would like you to stay updated with the latest available features coming in every new release. 

You would like to know the full impact that this New Release will have on your NetSuite Account? We have put together a "New Release Pack" that will prepare you fully for this New Release and help you get the most out of the new features NetSuite has to offer. 

Interested in other accelerators and optimization packages like Belgium or France Localization, Banking integration with Isabel, Electronic Payments with Structural Reference or simply another way of managing dunning in NetSuite? Discover our packages today, and get a quote on it rapidly and in full transparency, in order to upscale your NetSuite experience tomorrow! 

The challenge of sustaining growth

As a fast-developing and ambitious company, we are always looking for new ways of improving and growing as a business, as a team, and as individuals. We have been facing an exponential growth in the last couple of years, rapidly reaching 18 employees, supporting more than 30 customers across Europe, opening an office in France… This has been a wonderful journey so far, but a challenging one, too.

The question quickly arose : how do we stick to a strategy and preserve our company culture in such a dynamic environment?

In order to keep moving forward, maintain our competitive edge and fuel our ambitions, we decided to implement the OKR Methodology at Novutech.

The OKR methodology

Objectives and Key Results. The method goes straight to the point and generates interest for any company concerned with developing steadily in the long term.

The OKR methodology consists in setting several objectives and using measurable key results to assess the achievements of the company. From the beginning this methodology requires that we introspect and define our core values and our ultimate strategic objectives. Then we are faced with the following crucial questions: what do we want to achieve? Why do we want to achieve it? And how will we know that we have met our objectives?

Once we have defined these objectives, we need to establish an action plan that will allow us to reach the expected results and ultimately fulfil our goals.

Why use OKR ?

What are the reasons that so many successful companies are adopting OKR? This methodology brings about numerous benefits that support growth in the long run by preventing businesses from falling victim to inertia.

By implementing the OKR method, organisations are forced to reflect on their core objectives and draw an action plan that is consistent with their global strategy. This ensures that all actions taken have a concrete and measurable impact on the actual results of the company. This in turn helps teams to regularly monitor their progress and adjust their action plan, which fosters agility within the organisation.

Moreover, OKR constitute a great way to stimulate company culture. People feel included in the organisation’s strategy and they can see the concrete impact of their actions on the key results. They also need both to work in teams and coordinate with other employees, and to demonstrate autonomy as they are responsible for setting a plan that allows them to reach the targeted goals.

That characteristic of the methodology is key to a successful implementation as OKR do not serve the same purpose as KPIs and involve team members in the strategy of the organisation outside of their business as usual.

OKR at Novutech

As we are committing to becoming the #1 NetSuite implementation partner in Europe in the coming years, we needed to redefine our objectives, values and ambitions and put a framework in place in order to boost our development.

With the help of [DOKR], we started our journey towards a more agile and focused future Novutech a couple of months ago. 

We followed a few steps during this process of implementation: Firstly, our OKR consultant studied our strategy, our organizational structure, our staff as well as our operating systems to offer us a tailor-made OKR implementation plan.

After the examination phase, we received the OKR consultation assignment that is most suited to our organization.

The OKR trainer provided us effective training accompanied by pragmatic workshops to help us effectively implement the OKR methodology with our teams.

After a few training sessions, a number of workshops and a lot of brainstorming, we are now building action plans and launching our first quarterly OKR as of Q4 2021.

Centred around our core values, namely Excellence, Team First, Talent Development, and Transparency, our OKR will ultimately serve our mission as a NetSuite partner and help us realize our long-term vision of becoming the best at what we do.

We can count on our OKR coach to support us at all levels of the structure and throughout the OKR cycles of our organization for a sustainable integration of OKRs.

And now what?

This is only the beginning for us ; adopting that kind of methodology requires a lot of discipline and commitment from our whole team, but we believe that this is the best tool to help us grow together in the right direction.

As a modern and innovative company, we aim at always going further and questioning our role in the world and our impact on our stakeholders ; this is why we are constantly looking for means of improving ourselves and driving our business in line with our values.

The road ahead is still long and full of exciting challenges, and we are really looking forward to it!

Do you want to know more about Novutech and our company culture? You are interested in joining our ambitious team?

The track I took throughout university has always been more process optimization- and internationalization-oriented. With a master’s degree focused on international business, I had the chance to get an internship in Indonesia, where I was introduced to the wonders of ERPs and was acting as a project manager for an ODOO implementation, sorting problems and communicating with the local consultants that were helping us. It was a nice introduction and it comforted me in the idea that I wanted to work in an IT-related field without losing sight of the business side of enterprises.

Even before I flew back to Europe and finished my master’s thesis, I had a couple of interviews lined up. After a few successful rounds, I was lucky enough to have multiple job offers to choose from. The one that I ended up choosing was an offer from Avanade, a joined venture from Accenture and Microsoft, where I would be an ERP Business Analyst.

This was a major step into the corporate world for me. It came with both the challenges of being a cog in a well-oiled machine and the learning opportunities of having talented colleagues. My time at Avanade taught me how to be more organized, to be patient, the agile way of working and that great managers do make a difference.

After having been able to help, I hope, on a couple of projects, I soon realized I was missing something. Making gap analysis, creating documentation, and making presentations is all interesting and well but I wanted to open the hood of the machine and see how it was all functioning, in other words: going technical.

Having spent my share of time at university and not wanting to just quit my job, becoming a full-time student was not an option. Lucky for me, a branch of school 42 had opened in Brussels and this new style of education was entirely free and totally project-based. Exactly what I needed. There was only the matter of getting in. The entrance exam, or as it is known among students “The piscine”, is a month-long coding bootcamp where 150 candidates start and usually 50 make it in. Throughout the month you are learning, not taught, the basis of the C language through exercises, group projects and exams. I had used all my time off for the year to be able to attend the piscine, but damn was it a blast. It truly revealed my passion for coding and finding solutions to complicated problems.

I spent the next 6 months being a functional consultant by day and coding student by night. And in January of 2020 I received a job opportunity to become a Technical consultant for Novutech, a young consultancy start-up implementing and optimizing NetSuite for customers across the world.  The interview went well, and the founders made me feel at home right away, and it was with eagerness that I accepted the job offer when it came my way. It was with a heavy heart that I left my first official job but I knew that the challenges ahead would scratch my technical itch.

I started my new job the first day of the first lockdown in Belgium, so it was definitely a different start. But as expected with the help of my technical colleagues and the trust that was put in me, I dived into every technical project that came my way. One of the bigger projects I was entrusted with was the creation of a bank connectivity bundle that would connect customers’ NetSuite environment to their banks through Isabel. Lucky for me with the pandemic at its peak I had plenty of time to dive in the nitty-gritty of the technical aspects of NetSuite and deliver a bundle that we now offer to our clients as a separate application.

Working in a smaller company also means that you are trusted faster with customer-facing matters and that you have to “grow up” faster as an individual.

Overall, I believe my journey into the marvelous world of ERPs is still at its beginning phase and will keep me on my toes for the decade to come.

Who is Templafy?

We are pleased today to present Templafy, a Danish head-quartered fast-growing B2B Software-as-a-Service company, helping over 2 million users improve productivity, branding, and compliance across business documents, presentations, and emails.

Templafy has just been announced to be ranked as one of the fastest-growing companies in Europe according to the March 2021 issue of the Financial Times. 

Templafy is officially the company with the fastest growth in Denmark, the 42nd fastest in the tech industry and is listed 122nd in the general rankings in Europe.

Novutech implemented NetSuite Financials First back in April 2020, after a 5-month successful implementation project.

Templafy’s content enablement platform aligns workforces and enables employees to effortlessly create on-brand, high-performing business content faster. 

Founded in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2014, Templafy’s team leveraged more than 15 years of experience in template management and document automation to develop a cloud service solution now used by enterprise customers from all industries. 

Templafy’s offices are currently located in New York, Copenhagen, Berlin, Eindhoven and Sydney, representing 40+ nationalities, and the Templafy team serves customers all over the world.

The Reason for Change

In connection with the start of the scaling phase at Templafy, it was essential to get all subsidiaries onto a scalable ERP platform. After thorough research, there was a clear picture that NetSuite had all the functionalities to build necessary internal controls, streamline workflows including easy integration of other software to NetSuite, as well as a very appealing visual and intuitive design. Furthermore, NetSuite as a cloud based solution makes it easy to access the environment from anywhere.

Why choose NetSuite?

Templafy selected NetSuite as their ERP solution for the following reasons:

• A cloud-based ERP system implemented and deployed globally across all entities.
• A unified and integrated platform to run all business processes to replace the legacy systems.
• Scales with the projected exponential growth of business and its needs.
• Reduces the use of Excel and manually intensive processes within the business.
• One source of truth.
• NetSuite offers a full suite of financial modules including multi-taxation, multi-country or powerful financial reporting.
• Third-party systems integration capabilities.

About the NetSuite Implementation

After a smooth implementation of about 5 months despite challenging times with COVID, Templafy has been now live since April 2020 on NetSuite, with all the Financial Suite, from Finance & Accounting, Consolidation, Revenue Management, Purchasing & Sales as well as Banking automation.

Templafy is able to interface NetSuite and Salesforce CPQ to gain in efficiency and make sure every Salesforce order gets created in NetSuite for billing and revenue recognition purposes allowing a powerful reporting on ARR basis.

With some custom designed approval workflows, custom segmentation, bank reconciliation automation, or cost recognition during the lifecycle of sales contracts, Templafy has greatly sped up day-to-day data entry processes and reporting accuracy.

“NetSuite is a really intuitive, flexible and scalable solution, which allows Templafy to grow and scale globally.
We are very pleased with the services provided by Novutech, which really helped us make a quick and thorough implementation of NetSuite. In my opinion, they are not only implementation consultants, but also an important sparring partner, providing advice both during and after the implementation phase, when necessary.“
Niels Østergaard SIMONSEN, Head of Finance

Do you want to know more about our expertise and how we run successful global NetSuite implementations?

Background

As a NetSuite user, you have probably noticed that when a Journal Entry is created from an amortization schedule, it is hard to make the link between the transaction on which the amortization is applied and the Journal Entry itself. 

The link is present directly on the amortization schedule but it cannot be found on either transaction.

This makes it difficult for most of our customers to track their amortization process efficiently, and this is why we developed this small but handy solution that will prevent a lot of headaches amongst A/P Clerks and other Finance Managers.

Functionalities

Let’s have a look at a concrete example. 

A bill has been created and has an amortization schedule running over three months.

When the amortization Journal Entry is created, it includes a direct link to the amortization schedule but not to the transaction itself. 

The memo of the Journal indicates that it is created from an amortization but gives no indication on the nature of it. For each schedule included in the amortization run, one line reads “Amortization Source” and another reads “Amortization Destination”, which is not really giving any relevant or usable information. Furthermore, this means that the initial memo from the bill is overlooked and some important information may be lost when the balance is posted on the final destination account.

In order to reach the original transaction from the amortization entry, you need first to access the amortization schedule, where there are links redirecting to both the bill and the journal.

Several of our customers have commented that this is not practical and called for an optimized way of dealing with amortization transactions.

Therefore we have developed a scripted solution that updates the memo of the journal entry lines with the memo found on the line of the Bill. A new custom line field is also added to the journal entry lines to hold a direct link to the related bill. 

It is also worth noting that the solution updates the lines of the journals in bulk no matter the number of lines or the number of journals.  

Conclusion

As an implementation & optimization NetSuite partner, we always try to find creative and impactful ways to improve our customers’ experience ; with this simple but effective enhancement, this is mission accomplished for most of the companies that we support! 

A better overview of the amortization process, fewer steps to monitor related transactions, and more informative reporting, this development definitely is an interesting patch to improve any NetSuite user’s daily operations.

In short

• Quick and impactful
• No risk of negative outcome
• Improved amortization overview
• Easier information access for reporting

A question? You would like to implement this solution?

Founded in 1984 and based in Luxemburg, Solar Screen International S.A. is a film and cover solutions distributor active across all of Europe. Thanks to their film solutions, Solar Screen attempts to increase panes and automotive glass protection, especially by enhancing the glass resistance but also by offering protection from heat, UV and glare.

During the past 5 years, Solar Screen has enjoyed a steady and impressive growth of 20 to 30% every year, and is currently the European leader in the distribution of adhesive films for windows and furniture. 

In order to support this growth, Solar Screen needed a flexible, robust, and above all scalable system capable of supporting business operations from sales and localized accounting to purchasing and warehousing, not only today but for the years to come as well.

Furthermore, as an experienced, innovative, and highly active company quickly expanding both internally and internationally, Solar Screen faced considerable challenges on a daily basis and set out strict and greatly specific requirements that demanded creative tailor-made solutions in order to enhance the standard capabilities of NetSuite and fulfill its expectations.

Advanced dashboarding, exacting reporting, 50+ users, Covid-19, integrations, highly customized processes… The challenges kept piling up but thanks to our flexibility and expertise, we managed to address all these complex topics, and all of that in just 4 months : a record-breaking performance!

Today, we are still working hand-in-hand with Solar Screen’s team in order to improve their NetSuite workflows and help them make the most of their NetSuite environment, and we intend to maintain this fruitful and exciting collaboration in the long run!

A summary of NetSuite’s impact on the business

• Centralized system with multiple integrations (webshop, Upflow, TranSmart, LMS…)
• Bank connection
• Fully customized sales and purchasing flows
• Advanced Reporting
• Highly customized dashboards
• Automated Warehouse Management
• Fixed Assets Management
• OCR Billing Management
• Automated Bank Reconciliation

“The first thing, of course, was that we wanted to minimize the impact on our customers, because it’s a huge change for the company, but we wanted our customers to have a negative impact that is as little as possible, to be able to continue to deliver them every day, not to have to shut down the company for the transition.
The second point that was fundamental was internal adoption. So, very clearly, we had to create a commitment from the teams, and Novutech was fantastic in this role.”
Nicolas DE RIDDER, CEO

“Changing ERP for a business is always a big bang. It’s a project that is exciting and at the same time frightening given the impact on all users, on all processes, and it was super important to find for us a company that shares our values, our DNA, and we have found in Novutech a company which, like us, puts the success of its projects and customer satisfaction first, and, in Novutech, we found interlocutors who wanted to understand our processes, who wanted to help us, who supported us from the start, and who continue to accompany us today with a real common interest in making the system appealing to all users.”
Nicolas HOET, COODiscover the full testimonial

Do you want to know more about our expertise and how we run successful global NetSuite implementations?

A Brief Description of Our Experience at Novutech

What do we think about our 2-month internship in a Startup?

We are two students in a Business school, aiming to get our Bachelor in Business and Administration, and as a part of our bachelor program, an internship at a startup was compulsory. Our aim was to discover more about the professional practices and day-to-day activities of such a type of company. 

This experience was most certainly different and challenging. Working remotely was a first for us, and this included having to administrate time, being organized in our tasks and meeting the team members on Google Meet. 

Experiences like this one showed us that you can feel welcome even when you are in different countries. We were able to learn more about flexibility and project-oriented work. Although not working in Novutech’s office, we observed the busy lives of all the employees and most importantly of the co-founders. 

Being our mentors and guiding us during these last couple of months were tasks in which they nailed it. Even though the company had no previous experience with interns, we were a perfect match since we had never worked in a startup before. The effort put by both sides was enough to overcome the challenges and execute this project successfully.

We joined the (almost) non-existent marketing team, and we had a long list of tasks to accomplish by the end of these 2 months. Having two team members as our guides during the entire process made us more confident about communicating and bringing up our ideas and visions for the company. 

As a growing startup, Novutech team members were carrying out different projects and tasks; although having a hectic business schedule, we received instructions and help every time needed to be able to conduct different activities in the marketing department. 

Going out of our comfort zone brought us to a very welcoming environment, where everyone made sure that we were included in the processes and the weekly team meeting. Because of that, we learned not only about Novutech, but also the conditions of a startup. 

To finally answer the given question at the beginning of this article: this internship has brought us out of our comfort zone in a different environment and because of that we are thankful for the opportunity and for the warm welcome that we received since the very first interview. 

Interested in a once-in-a-lifetime adventure into the world of ERPs with a dynamic and ambitious team?