NetSuite is set to start rolling out its 2021 Release 1 update. Sneak Peeks recently went live on the official NetSuite website for the industries that NetSuite primarily supports — manufacturers, retailers, wholesale distributors, nonprofits, software companies, and services firms.

NetSuite customers don’t need to do anything as NetSuite is cloud-based and new updates are automatically rolled out to all customers as part of the paid subscription.

The first phase of the update would likely be rolled out to users in the middle of February 2021 and the final phase in the middle of April 2021 as customers will be updated in phases.

New Capabilities and Features in NetSuite 2021.1

Here are some highlights of what is included in NetSuite 2021 Release 1:

New and Enhanced Functionality to Streamline Financials and Automate Operational Processes

Some of the new financial functionality include centralised subsidiary purchasing, billing consolidating purchases across multi-subsidiary organisations, and the ability to generate vendor payments from a single place.

NetSuite 2021.1 also comes with expense commitments and budget validation plus more flexible and quicker transaction approvals. Also available is the ability to automatically create and post transactions directly from imported bank data. This can significantly increase efficiency while simplifying tedious reconciliation tasks.

The Debut of the all-new SuiteProjects

NetSuite 2021 Release 1 comes with the introduction of SuiteProjects, a Professional Services Automation (PSA) solution natively built on NetSuite. It is designed to improve resource utilisation, elevate on-time project delivery, expedite billing cycles, enhance invoicing accuracy, streamline revenue recognition, reduce overhead, and increase visibility into your services business.

SuiteProjects provides project managers with increased visibility and enhanced automation functionality with the ability to initiate purchases directly from projects. Expense report policies can as well be expanded to set limits for each expense line in a project.

You can combine SuiteProjects with NetSuite CRM, financials, and SuitePeople to create the finishing touch on a comprehensive single platform for running a services business.

There’s also a button that allows employees to easily correct weekly timesheets before they’re approved, saving time for employees, approvers, and administrators alike.

Automated Inventory Management

NetSuite 2021.1 brings the NetSuite Pack Station, a new touchscreen packing solution that can be used to consolidate shipments, pack multiple cartons at the same time, manage multi-level packing, and scan weights from scales. With this, an extra layer of verification is ensured before orders are shipped.

The update also comes with channel allocation and reservation functionality which enables order allocation by channel and allows users to enter inventory reservations in advance of the sales order.

Additionally, there are new enhancements to the Warehouse Management System (WMS). Also, with the new supply allocation against blanket PO feature, location assignments are now based on the earliest availability and required-by date.

Improved Analytics and Updated Platform

New application performance management (APM) dashboards are introduced to help monitor and analyse the health of REST web services-based integrations. With the introduction of new internationalisation and localisation tools and processes, NetSuite 2021.1 makes it possible for the user and administrator experience to feel local for global businesses no matter the country where they operate. In fact, there’s now native language support for SuiteAnalytics workbooks.

SuiteScript APIs have been significantly enhanced. It now supports developers working with larger data sets by virtue of asynchronous coding techniques.

To learn more about the new release, you can see more details here. Otherwise, contact us as a certified NetSuite Solution Provider if you need help with NetSuite.