Overcome NetSuite Account Type Restrictions (Part I)

Introduction

NetSuite’s transaction types are designed to convey the nature of business events while impacting the Accounting Ledger correctly. Since NetSuite does not expect all users to have an accounting background, it therefore tries to make the transaction entry process less prone to error. It achieves this by restricting some transaction types to specific account types.

For example, the account used on the header (main line) of a Customer Deposit must be an account of the type “Bank”. One cannot select any other account type.

This can be frustrating when creative solutions are needed that demand unconventional use of transaction types. This article (part I) will outline a few workarounds when there is a need to impact an “unexpected” account type on a transaction. Part II will describe a few use cases and show how the solutions work.

Avoid Journal Entries

It’s worth mentioning here that we want to avoid Journal Entries whenever possible for the following reasons:

• JEs are nebulous at best and near meaningless at worst. The average user will have a very hard time interpreting a JE when looking at a list of transactions in a report.
• JEs do not have the “main line” vs. sublist capacity that other transactions do, which makes it hard to create saved searches that target aspects of JEs.
• Customer and Vendor balance aging and currency revaluation functions depend on the concept of “closing” an Invoice or Bill. When JEs impact A/R or A/P this concept is hard to achieve, and often NS will incorrectly perceive that a JE is “open” when in fact it should be closed out.

Common Restricted Transactions

Here are some of the more common transactions types that are restricted by Account Type:

1. Vendor Bill Payments: Only “Bank” or “Credit Card” account types may be used as the Credit side for this transaction type.
2. Customer Payments: Only “Bank” account type may be used as the Debit side for this transaction type.
3. Customer Deposits: Only “Bank” account type may be used as the Debit side for this transaction type. The Credit side can only impact the system account for Customer Deposit Liability.
4. Most Item Records: “Accounts Receivable”, “Accounts Payable”, and “Bank” accounts may not be used for either the Debit or Credit impacts.
5. Vendor Bills Expenses Sublist: “Bank” and “Accounts Payable” accounts may not be used.

Solutions

As with many challenges such as these, if we are a little creative we can find workarounds. Here are several potential solutions that can be considered:

1. Accounts of the Type “Credit Card” are unique in that they can be used as the Credit side of a Vendor Payment, and also on an Expense Line of a Vendor Bill, as well the Debit line of a Check. This is often the approach to take when a clearing account is needed to impact both a Vendor Bill and Bill Payment.
   
   
2. Items of the type “Payment” are more versatile than other Item types – there are no account restrictions on these. Using them on Invoices can allow the Credit side of an invoice affect an A/R account, which sounds counter-intuitive, but has some applications which will be described in Part II of this topic.
   
   
3. Bank Deposit transactions: These are versatile beyond the normal use of recording bank deposits. For example, an A/R or A/P transaction can be the debit or credit side of the transaction, with a Bank Account as the offset. Use the “Name” field on the “Other Deposit” subtab to hit the Vendor or Customer subledger.
   • Tip: when a Debit is needed to A/P or A/R, and a Vendor/Customer subledger needs to be impacted, use the “Other Deposit” tab, but enter a negative amount, and enter a name. Upon Save, the negative amount instead will appear in the “Cash Back” tab, but will remain linked to the Customer or Vendor.
     
4. Custom Transaction Types: This is a great tool to use for any unconventional accounting impacts, and can easily be designed to avoid most of the problems with using Journal Entries.
   
   
5. GL Reclasser Tool: When all else fails, we can use a GL Reclasser to change the native impact that transactions would otherwise have. Normally it takes a little development work to set a GL Reclasser up, but Prolecto has a really neat bundle with point-and-click functionality, free to our clients.

Stay tuned for Part II of this topic, in which I will show more fully how the above methods can be used.

Conclusion

Working together with a skilled team of consultants at Prolecto helps me learn to see things from new perspectives and be more creative. If you’d like to learn more about inventive techniques to get the most of NetSuite, we’d be happy to hear from you!