Departments across a company use financial data platforms to make business decisions. Many organizations rely on NetSuite Experts for the financial reporting needed to share and understand this data. NetSuite provides financial departments and accounting with robust tools for analyzing and displaying data, including pre-built reports.
However, the out-of-the-box capabilities delivered by NetSuite may not meet the requirements of every department. Companies may not get the level of flexibility and efficiency they need for other departments to collaborate with finance and gain insights from shared data.
Here’s an overview of 5 ways your company can enhance reporting capabilities by building a financial data platform on top of NetSuite.
Table of Contents
1) Customize Reporting for More Flexible Reporting Capabilities
Companies may find themselves needing to deliver reports to upper management, investors, or other stakeholders in a format that is not supported by NetSuite out-of-the-box reporting. Delivering these reports requires additional flexibility and customization.
For example, one of our customers recently needed to consolidate several financial reports, including balance sheets, income statements, and cash flows, into one report. The capabilities required to consolidate groups of reports do not exist in NetSuite today.
2) Set Up Different Levels of Categorization and Summarization
Sometimes the original setup of the accounts and sub-ledger in NetSuite may not be what you currently need. Changing the sub-ledger may not be possible for historical purposes. However, for operational reasons, you may want to see your financial data summarized based on new categorizations.
Another reason why your company may need a different level of categorization and summarization is when, as frequently is the case, the NetSuite setup is in line with the legal structure of your company, but you need reporting to align with your operational structure.
3) Customize Metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Your company may have certain key performance indicators (KPIs) or metrics that you monitor on a daily or weekly basis. Because responding to these performance metrics is key to staying on the path to success, you may want to get notifications if there are changes to these metrics.
To receive notifications, you need a customizable dashboard. Building a financial data platform over NetSuite will also give you the ability to share relevant metrics across the organization.
4) Achieve Integration With External Data and Other Internal Systems
Several use cases require integration of financial data with external data and internal systems. Your company may want to compare financial data against that of other competitors and industries or to bring in other external data sources to enrich your reports.
You may also want to expose your department-level financial data, such as budget or actual spending, to other departments for their own internal reporting. The finance department needs to be able to share a subset of data while keeping the information secure.
Often, NetSuite alone is not the sole holder of key data within your organization. Your company may need to enrich your financial data with additional information from other systems, such as a customer relationship management (CRM) system or operational data sources.
5) Reduce Licensing Costs
While it may sound trivial, we often see that companies limit access to NetSuite because of concerns over licensing costs. External reporting provides a way to reduce the need for NetSuite licenses.
External reporting can be used to share financial data securely so authorized users within your organization can consume the information. Exposing the data within your financial reporting platform will eliminate the need for each user to have direct access to NetSuite.
Executives also don’t log in to NetSuite very often to get their reporting. Instead, executives tend to use corporate portals to get the information they need. External reporting is a perfect way to give executives access to financial data without the need for a NetSuite license.
CONCLUSION: Enhancing Financial Reporting for NetSuite
While NetSuite may not meet all your company’s financial reporting needs out-of-the-box, incorporating NetSuite data as a source within a customized reporting and analytics platform, when guided by experts who can help you extract and integrate the data, will help your organization get more value from the wealth of information maintained in the database.
The team at dbSeer is staffed with data engineers, architects, and NetSuite experts. Our team can work with your company to discuss your data and analytics challenges and develop a roadmap toward optimizing your use of NetSuite Accounting and Financial Management software.
Find out how to get more out of your financial reporting. Ask for a NetSuite Data and Analytics Consultation from dbSeer.
