Featured Case Study
Scripting Automation to Improve Business Process Workflow

Background: Merchant Bank of Texas is an asset based lender, working primarily with construction companies. Often times a construction company will have tens of thousands of dollars in outstanding receivables, hindering their ability to take on new projects until those receivables are collected. Merchant Bank will look at those receivables, as well as other non-traditional assets, and lend a portion of their value to the business over short-term periods. This cash float will allow the business to take on new projects without waiting for payment from previously completed construction.

Issue: Merchant Bank was using several systems to track transactions involved with their business. They wanted a single, integrated system that would track:

• Their clients and the debtors of their clients
• The outstanding receivables of those debtors
• The amounts advanced to their clients and payments received against invoices
• All accounting impacts associated with these transactions
• The ability to report on these lending activities and accurately charge for their services

In addition to the above requirements, Merchant Bank of Texas also wanted to operate a website through which businesses could learn about and apply for financing. With a degree of customization by Explore Consulting, NetSuite proved to be just such a system, capable of meeting all the above requirements.

Resolution: Because their business model works in reverse of NetSuite's standard processes, the implementation required a custom workflow be designed to accurately track the client's accounting needs. Integration between CRM activities and the accounting back-end would allow Merchant Bank to operate a NetSuite website, take in leads through a customized online form, and track necessary business metrics related to each customer. Invoices came to represent receivables owed to the client; credit memos tracked the amounts advanced to the client; secondary invoice types were created to recognize fees paid by clients to Merchant Bank; and custom scripting tied the workflow together seamlessly. To address the manual resources required and opportunity for error from re-keying data and manually calculating amounts, Explore Consulting developed an intricate series of SuiteScripts that automatically calculated balances and finance charges; opened and populated transaction forms, and allowed the users to focus on providing customer service and growing their business instead of manually calculating and verifying data. In addition, Customized Dashboard KPI's and searches likewise provided at a glance views into the company's performance.

Results: As a result of this project, Merchant Bank of Texas had a single integrated system through which they could seek out and educate leads about their services, track customers, and accurately perform their accounting operations. The custom workflow and scripting designed by Explore Consulting automated much of these processes, significantly reducing the possibility of errors, and saving users a significant amount of time. While the process flows within NetSuite had been reversed, the accounting impact of transactions portrayed an accurate picture of Merchant Bank of Texas' business activities.

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You can customize dashboards and apply them to your employees' accounts. Publishing dashboards allows you to make sure that everyone with the same NetSuite role views the same information. This also saves time by allowing one person to set up every team member's dashboard.

The role you use to customize your published dashboard determines which roles you can assign the dashboard to. For example, Sales administrators can publish dashboards to sales administrators, sales manager and sales reps.

To publish a dashboard:

First, customize the pages in your account to appear as your employees should view them. This includes adding, customizing and arranging portlets on each tab in your account. You can customize which information appears on a tab by clicking Customize this Page on each tab, in the top right corner.

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1. When your dashboard is set up, go to the Settings Portal in the lower left corner of the Home Page and click on Publish Dashboard.
2. On the Publish Dashboard page, enter a name for this dashboard.

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3. In the Notes field, enter a description for this dashboard.
4. On the Apply to Roles subtab, choose one or more roles you want to assign this dashboard to.
5. Check the Override Existing User's Settings box only if you want to replace your employees' current dashboards with this saved dashboard.
6. Click Add.
7. Click the Apply to Tabs subtab.
8. On the Apply to Tabs subtab, check the box in the Apply column next to each tab you want this dashboard applied to.

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9. For each tab you check, your employees' dashboards will be updated to include the same information you have set up.
10. In the Mode column, choose one of the following for each tab:
Unlocked: this lets employees change all aspects of their dashboards
Locked: this restricts employees from making any changes to their dashboards
Add/Move Content: this allows employees to add new content to their dashboards and also to move the portlets you have created. Employees cannot remove content.
Note: Once you have applied a dashboard to a role, you can no longer change the tabs that a dashboard is applied to.
11. Click Save.
Your saved dashboard is now assigned to the roles you chose.