Procurement

Optimize your procurement process for cost certainty with workflow driven approval routings

Purchasing can be a time-consuming and inefficient ordeal, especially when requests for goods and services have to be processed manually using a combination of phone calls, emails, paper catalogs and faxes. NetSuite’s procurement solution helps companies buy goods and services at the best cost and in a timely manner by saving employees’ valuable time with easy-to-use capabilities, reducing costs by channeling purchases to approved suppliers and pre-negotiated contracts, and improving visibility by rendering real-time information into company spend and vendor performance. NetSuite also streamlines and improves the accuracy of the procure-to-pay process by automating and linking key procurement transactions and providing approval and matching workflows to support internal controls and compliance requirements.

Features

Source

Use NetSuite to manage your vendors, process RFQ’s, establish contracts and enforce procurement policies.

Purchase

Automate your requisitioning and purchasing processes from our user configurable Procurement dashboard.

Pay

Easily match purchase orders, item receipts and vendor bills with configurable workflows to optimize cash flow.

Benefits

Streamline Procure to Pay

Automate business processes to reduce your average procure to pay timeline and increase cash flow.

Achieve Cost Certainty

Use NetSuite’s many costing methods to improve your costing accuracy and stabilize gross profit.

Source, Approve and Buy — Anywhere, Anytime

Use our native requisition and RFQ tools to manage vendor selection and improve product quality.

Source, Approve and Buy — Anywhere, Anytime

Features

Source

Manage your vendors, process RFQs, establish contracts and enforce procurement policies.

NetSuite’s manufacturing functionality can be configured in three different ways, depending on how much control and influence is required in the production process. The work order is typically the main control document for manufacturers, but NetSuite also offers the ability to work in an environment without work orders, which is often advantageous for those following lean principals. NetSuite’s advanced manufacturing module offers the ability to manufacture in batches with automatic batch creation, full traceability, production control and scheduling.

Vendor Management

CRM was one of the pillars that NetSuite was built on and those key features also apply to the ability to manage vendor relations. Vendors can be easily onboarded and then audited on a regular basis using workflows. Every transaction is tracked, analyzed and then included in the vendor scorecard, letting users easily keep track of vendor performance. The vendor portal is an additional free feature that allows users to quickly and easily collaborate on current and future projects.

Key Capabilities:

Centralized vendor management
Free collaboration portals
Vendor scorecard

Request For Quote

Gathering quotes for new items or updating pricing on existing quotes can be time consuming and complicated. NetSuite’s RFQ feature allows users to easily manage everything from one screen. This includes: gathering requirements, selecting vendors, communicating specifications, receiving bids and updating pricing. Once the vendor is selected, all information is automatically updated in the vendor and item records. Users can also create purchasing contracts and workflows can be utilized where approvals are required.

Key Capabilities:

Track multiple vendors
Flexible pricing scenarios
Track terms and conditions

Purchase Contracts

Establishing commercial terms and ensuring compliance is a critical part of maintaining a business’s cost control. NetSuite allows users to do this using our purchasing contracts feature. Contracts can be established manually or automatically from the RFQ process and can also be created for future dates with automatic activation. Minimum and maximum spend can be defined, and NetSuite also keeps track of the total amounts purchased, billed and received.

Key Capabilities:

Ensure commercial compliance
Updated automatically from transactions
Automatically created from RFQ’s

Blanket PO’s

While purchasing contracts manage the commercial nature of vendor relationships, blanket POs allow users to establish and track specific delivery schedules. When used in conjunction with purchasing contracts, blanket POs allow complete control over when to receive products and how much the business as agreed to pay for them.

Key Capabilities:

Enter and track delivery schedules
Updated automatically from transactions
Reduced workload for your buyers

Purchase

Automate the requisitioning and purchasing processes from a user-configurable Procurement dashboard.

Executing on purchasing plans to meet service level expectations is a mission-critical business function. NetSuite is designed to help businesses manage and automate cross-functional tasks and to make the process of placing, managing and expediting purchase orders incredibly simple. Combined with NetSuite’s global capabilities, companies can easily manage all of their purchasing needs anywhere, anytime.

Purchase Requisition

The process of requesting that an item be purchased is no longer a domain restricted to large enterprises. Small to mid-size businesses are also looking to automate the process to ensuring compliance, quality and cost. NetSuite’s requisitioning process can be triggered by any employee through the employee center. The flow and approval of the requisition to purchasing is controlled by user-definable workflows.

Key Capabilities:

Requisition of new or existing items
Automatic routing
Complex workflow approvals

Purchase Order Management

Creating and managing purchase orders is one of the simplest aspects of the system. The order items screen is the main place a user goes to monitor the list of items to be replenished, whether they are generated from the supply planning process, blanket POs or re-order point parameters. NetSuite allows you to order a mix of inventory, expense and service items on the same order. If there is a purchasing contract in place, the appropriate pricing will be applied automatically. Reminders can be customized to let you know when orders are expected to be received. Simple lists in NetSuite help to automate and expedite the purchase order management process.

Key Capabilities:

Order inventory, expense and service items
Simple but powerful order processing
Reminders for due or late orders

Approvals

NetSuite offers two approval processes out-of-the-box. The first is a simple approval process based on a dollar amount assigned to the employee. For more advanced approval processes, businesses utilize the SuiteFlow approval routings that come with customizable sample workflows. Workflows can be modified to consider aspects such as department budgets, location, item type or project. The graphical nature of the workflow tool makes it easy to create, monitor and maintain.

Key Capabilities:

Graphical interface
Interacts with all areas of the system
Reminder or email-driven notifications

Pay

Easily match purchase orders, item receipts and vendor bills with configurable workflows to optimize cash flow.

Automating the receipt of ordered items, processing vendor bills and planning payments in a timely manner are key in vendor relationship management. NetSuite’s graphical workflow tool (SuiteFlow) can be configured to establish the criteria you want to use to manage this process. Encouraged collaboration between the requestor, purchaser, vendor, receiver and accounts payable promotes optimal vendor relations.

Vendor Bills

Clearly communicating ordered items, expected delivery dates, quality requirements and specifications is critical in maintaining operational efficiency. With NetSuite, sharing information with all parties is simple. Using the vendor portal, suppliers can log in at any time and get the latest relevant information. Confirmation- and update-related communications are automated and the actual receiving process can be performed with barcode scanners using NetSuite’s Warehouse Management Solution.

Key Capabilities:

Simple but effective receiving processes
Quickly verify item specifications
Automate receiving with barcode scanners

Purchase Order Management

Receiving and entering invoices from suppliers is the first step in the process of completing the procure to pay cycle. When a vendor is submitting an invoice against a purchase order, NetSuite lets users select the order it was based upon and pre-populates all of the relevant information for verification. Vendor bills can also be manually entered, imported from a CSV file or automatically imported through web services in cases where tighter integration is desired.

Key Capabilities:

Pre-populate based on purchase order
Automatic verification
Options for importing, updating automatically.

3-Way Match and Pay

Once the purchase order, receipt and bill have been entered into the system, the formal process of comparing and matching these documents begins. NetSuite has standard fields to determine the typical matching criteria that should be used along with several SuiteFlow-based workflows that allow you to handle exceptions while automatically approving those that comply based on pre-defined specifications. Once approved, the accounts payable department can determine which bills to pay and in which timeframe to optimize cashflow.