NetSuite modules and features: a tour of the whole suite

Anyone searching for NetSuite modules quickly notices that Oracle does not present the product as a shelf of separate boxes. NetSuite is a single cloud suite whose functional areas share one database, and the documentation groups them by business process rather than by price list. That is good news for a finance director, because an order, an invoice and a ledger entry are the same record seen from different angles. It also means that a question such as "do we need the manufacturing module?" has no tidy answer until the scope of your licence is written down.

This page walks through the NetSuite features and applications area by area, says what is part of the core suite and what is documented as a separate capability, and points out where a UK business should ask more questions. If you are still deciding whether NetSuite belongs on your shortlist, start with the Oracle NetSuite overview and come back here to test the fit.

How NetSuite organises its functions

Oracle's user-guide catalogue is the best map of the product. It distinguishes accounting (ERP) and banking, order management, inventory and shipping, manufacturing, procurement under the name SuiteProcurement, Field Service Management, sales, marketing and general CRM, SuiteAnalytics, employee and payroll management, WMS, NetSuite CPQ, SuiteCommerce, SuiteCommerce InStore, NetSuite Point of Sale and NetSuite for mobile.

Two points follow from that list:

• Some entries are core business processes that almost every customer uses (accounting, orders, purchasing, inventory).
• Others are specialist applications with their own guides (WMS, CPQ, Field Service Management, point of sale). They belong to the NetSuite family, but whether they are included in your subscription is a commercial question.

The NetSuite pricing page explains how scope drives cost; the table below only maps functions to modules.

Overview: domain to module

Finance and accounting

The accounting module is where most UK projects start. It covers accounting periods, bookkeeping, banking, currencies, journal entries, the chart of accounts, financial statements and reports, revenue recognition, taxes, fixed assets, statistical accounting and multi-book accounting.

For a UK finance team, three things deserve a closer look:

• VAT handling. NetSuite has a tax area, but how VAT codes, returns and the digital link requirements of Making Tax Digital are handled depends on how your account is configured and on any bundles your integrator uses. Our guide to Making Tax Digital and your ERP lists the questions to ask.
• Multi-book accounting. Useful for groups that report under more than one framework, for instance UK GAAP locally and another standard for a parent company.
• Revenue recognition. Relevant to subscription and project businesses, and a topic to settle with your accountant before configuration, not after.

The detailed view is on the NetSuite accounting and finance page.

OneWorld for groups

NetSuite OneWorld lets you run several subsidiaries in different tax jurisdictions and currencies inside a single account, organised in a hierarchy. Each subsidiary is its own legal entity for tax and regulation, with its own nexus and at least one location. Each also has a base currency, transactions can be entered in local or foreign currency, including between subsidiaries, and consolidated reports convert the figures.

You also get consolidated financial statements, side-by-side comparison of subsidiaries on dashboards, advanced intercompany entries and elimination of intercompany profit. A group made up of a Scottish trading company, an English holding company and a European sales entity is the typical case.

Order management, sales and CRM

Customer Order Management covers order entry, fulfilment (picking and shipping) and invoicing. Because it shares data with stock and the ledger, a shipment can trigger an invoice without re-keying.

The guide for sales, marketing and general CRM covers sales automation, marketing automation, support management and partners. NetSuite CPQ, short for Configure Price Quote, adds a configurator, a proposal generator and guided selling, which matters if your products have options and your quotes are built by hand in spreadsheets today.

If CRM is the driver of your project, read the NetSuite sales and CRM page. One caution: a native CRM is convenient, but a sales team already settled in another tool may prefer an integration, and the NetSuite integrations page explains that route.

Purchasing, receiving and procurement

The Purchasing and Receiving area covers purchase orders, vendor records, vendor bills and payments, purchase requisitions, approval routing and expense reports. Approval routing is the feature most finance directors care about: it gives you a documented trail from request to payment, which auditors appreciate.

SuiteProcurement is the name of the guide for vendors, purchasing and receiving, so you will see both terms in Oracle's material. They describe the same procurement domain, not two competing products.

Inventory, warehouse and demand planning

Under "Items and Inventory", the documentation groups inventory set-up, item records, shipping methods, barcodes and manufacturing. For many distributors this is the heart of the system.

Two extensions are worth knowing about:

• WMS is documented as a separate warehouse management guide, for businesses whose warehouse processes go beyond basic stock movements.
• Demand Planning requires Advanced Inventory Management to be activated. It calculates demand plans using linear regression, moving average, seasonal average, sales forecast or live demand from opportunities, quotes and orders, then builds supply plans that take lead times and safety stock into account. The documentation states that these functions handle at most 10,000 items at a time, which is worth remembering for a wide catalogue. For assemblies, the supply plan covers all components and raw materials across several manufacturing levels.

For the practical side, see the NetSuite inventory and purchasing page.

Manufacturing

The core manufacturing function comprises assembly items, assembly work orders, advanced bills of materials, work-in-progress tracking from material pick to finished goods, and routing to plan and record operations across shifts or work centres.

The Advanced Manufacturing SuiteApp extends routing with work instructions, material consumption tracking, resource planning and planned start and end dates. Documented alongside it are Manufacturing Mobile (data entry through mobile scanners), subcontracting, engineering change orders and a SuiteAnalytics Manufacturing workbook.

In short, a simple assembly business may be well served by the base functions, while a job-shop with shop-floor capture will probably need the extensions. Our NetSuite manufacturing page goes further.

Projects and services

Project Management in NetSuite lets you manage project tasks and resources. Combined with time tracking and expense reports from the employee area, and with billing from the order and accounting functions, it supports agencies, consultancies and engineering firms that bill by project.

If you sell time rather than goods, check how project billing, revenue recognition and timesheets will be configured together, because that chain is where most services projects gain or lose their value. Field Service Management exists as a separate guide for businesses that dispatch engineers to customer sites.

HR, people and payroll

The "Employee and Payroll Management" domain includes employee management, payroll processing, SuitePeople (the integrated human capital management solution), time tracking, expense reports and purchase requests.

SuitePeople is made up of SuitePeople HR, which provides self-service for employees and managers, SuitePeople Workforce Management, which covers schedules, time and attendance and pay calculation, and SuitePeople U.S. Payroll, an integrated payroll for American operations. SuitePeople HR includes goals and performance reviews, leave management, date-effective employee records, change requests with approval, compensation tracking, a directory and organisation chart, HR analytics on headcount and turnover, and onboarding and offboarding plans.

What this means for UK payroll

This is the point on which UK buyers most often misjudge the suite. The payroll component named in the documentation is for the United States. For other countries, NetSuite provides Paycheck Journal, which tracks payroll by integrating an external solution through SOAP web services or by building a bespoke solution with SuiteScript. Oracle states that it is intended for partners, not for direct use by customers without a partner payroll solution. In a OneWorld account, the two can coexist: US payroll for American subsidiaries and Paycheck Journal for the others.

In practice, a UK company usually runs payroll in a specialist product that handles Real Time Information submissions to HMRC and posts summary journals into NetSuite. Our guide on payroll software and RTI sets out the requirements, and the NetSuite payroll and HR page covers the options.

Commerce, point of sale and mobile

For selling online, the Commerce documentation distinguishes SuiteCommerce MyAccount (customer account management), SuiteCommerce (a complete e-commerce solution), SuiteCommerce Advanced (full access to the source code) and Site Builder (an older, ready-to-use solution). All are compatible with B2B and B2C. They support several brands, languages and currencies, as well as Site Management Tools. SuiteCommerce and SuiteCommerce Advanced add faceted search, themes, mobile adaptation and a CDN, and SuiteCommerce Advanced receives new releases automatically.

In store, the documentation covers NetSuite Point of Sale (NSPOS) and SuiteCommerce InStore. Note that InStore is described as a web point-of-sale application for the American market with a tablet touch interface, so a UK retailer should not assume it is available to them without checking.

NetSuite for mobile has its own guide and is the route for approvals, expenses and sales look-ups away from the desk.

Reporting and analysis

SuiteAnalytics is the reporting and analytics layer in the catalogue. Combined with consolidated statements from OneWorld and the reporting inside the accounting module, it is how most finance teams build month-end packs. Ask your integrator to demonstrate the exact reports you use today, rather than accepting a generic dashboard demonstration.

Native, extension or partner: how to read a proposal

A proposal from an integrator should state, line by line, which of the following each requirement relies on:

1. a core function of the suite;
2. a separately documented capability, such as WMS, CPQ, Demand Planning or Advanced Manufacturing;
3. a custom build with SuiteScript, described on the NetSuite customisation page;
4. a third-party or partner product, as is usual for UK payroll.

Anything labelled "standard" without a module name attached deserves a question. We are not affiliated with Oracle and do not implement the system ourselves; we connect you with an integrator whose experience matches your sector. The NetSuite in the UK page adds the local context.

Questions to ask before you commit

• Which modules and extensions are in the contract, and which are only demonstrated?
• How will VAT returns and Making Tax Digital submissions be produced from the system?
• Which payroll product will handle RTI, and who maintains the interface to the ledger?
• Do you need OneWorld now, or only if you add a subsidiary later?
• Which of your current spreadsheets will remain after go-live?

Answering these in writing before the project starts is usually worth more than any feature comparison. When you are ready, describe your project and we will put you in touch with an integrator that fits it.

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