The challenges of getting custom financial reports from a NetSuite ERP

NetSuite, a powerful ERP, promises streamlined operations and robust financial management. Yet, for many businesses, the idea of quick, detailed financial reports often collides with the reality of technical configurations and reporting limitations. The very customization that makes NetSuite so adaptable can become a double-edged sword, leading to a frustrating maze of saved searches and data silos.

The challenge begins with the inherent complexity of NetSuite financial reporting. While the platform offers standard reports, these frequently fall short of the nuanced, dynamic insights businesses need. Crafting custom financial reports often necessitates delving into the depths of SQL queries, mastering saved searches and wrestling with the limitations of one-dimensional reporting. This technical hurdle creates a significant bottleneck, restricting report creation to a select few power users in finance with specialized expertise.

The consequences are far-reaching. Vice presidents, sales people and purchasing managers across departments grapple with the lack of real-time visibility into critical financial data and performance. Manually exporting data to Excel for further manipulation becomes a time-consuming and error-prone necessity, hindering timely decision-making. The inability to seamlessly consolidate financial reporting across subsidiaries and divisions further compounds the issue. While NetSuite offers some consolidation capabilities, maintaining the flexibility to filter and analyze specific data within group reporting proves to be a significant challenge.

Lack of flexibility of financial reports puts pressure on finance team

The scenario of a finance team struggling to generate accurate balance sheets, income statements and cash flow statements due to the limitations of NetSuite’s financial report builder is common and an even worse headache if the finance team oversee numerous divisions and need extra custom reports. Many teams spend countless hours manually manipulating data, reconciling discrepancies and waiting for the few individuals capable of creating custom financial reports to address their requests. This leads to frustration, lost time and a significant drain on resources each month.

The lack of automation in generating and distributing financial statements only exacerbates the problem. Manually updating and sharing reports leaves room for errors and delays, impacting the organization's ability to respond to market fluctuations and meet customer requests. Let’s not even start on the inability to edit columns or include additional columns, change account type breakdowns or define custom metrics without extensive technical expertise. All of these problems limit the ability to analyze and streamline financial performance in a business.

Ongoing costs of poor reporting

The inefficiencies and additional manual work associated with managing NetSuite financial reporting leads to increased operational costs. These costs are not only financial but also impact the overall productivity and efficiency of the finance team. The time and resources spent on manual tasks could be better directed to value-added activities, thereby enhancing your business’ financial health.

Managing permissions and data access for various users within NetSuite can be a complex and cumbersome process. It often requires significant administrative effort to ensure that the correct access levels are granted to the right individuals, which can lead to delays and potential security issues. Streamlining this process is crucial for maintaining data integrity and enabling seamless collaboration across departments.

Creating and maintaining user-friendly dashboards in NetSuite is another challenge that finance teams face. Effective monitoring of key financial performance indicators is essential for informed decision-making. However, the difficulty in designing intuitive and interactive dashboards can result in less effective tracking and analysis of financial data. This limitation hinders the ability to gain valuable insights and hampers your overall financial strategy.

Augmenting NetSuite with specialized financial statement software

To overcome these challenges, businesses are increasingly turning to specialized financial reporting software that seamlessly integrates with NetSuite. Solutions like Phocas Financial Statements offer a powerful and user-friendly alternative to the limitations of native NetSuite financial reporting templates.

Phocas Financial Statements, as evidenced by customer success stories like Zeder Corporation, provides a streamlined approach to building and managing financial reports. By using the one platform for BI and FP&A, the finance team can seamlessly consolidate NetSuite data and other sources, automate detailed financial reporting and carry out in-depth financial modelling. This covers everything from financial performance to operational product insights.

Dean Nicolaides, Senior Management Accountant at Zeder, works hands-on with NetSuite and Phocas. He values the ability to extract data directly from NetSuite and the data structure that Phocas has helped them set-up, calling it the backbone of the company’s financial performance system.

Dean also says Phocas has given the finance team confidence in the data. When pulling figures out of gl accounts from cloud ERP systems, the parameters and settings you're using are crucial.

“If the data is not right, then it changes the results of what you’re reporting. So for example, if you want to review the profitability of a customer and include freight, rebates and discounts it's actually quite involved. Whereas in Phocas, we've set the parameters and every database has built-in checks and balances. Phocas is very clean and we know exactly what data we're getting."
Dean Nicolaides, Senior Management Accountant at Zeder

Phocas and NetSuite

By integrating Phocas Financial Statements with NetSuite, businesses can autoamte the data from the ERP into financial and management reports. They can move beyond the limitations of standard reports and gain access to real-time financial data they need for report customization and track specific kpis across all aspects of their operations.

Instead of wrestling with the intricacies of NetSuite financial reporting, finance teams can focus on identifying trends and proactively dealing with them.