The Secret to Creating the NetSuite Financial Reports You Have to Have
Producing financial reports is one of the core skills that all organizations need to excel at. Reports reveal the true health of companies, highlighting the positives and negatives that will affect enterprise performance for years to come. There are countless reports to choose from, all with valuable insights to offer, but some should be considered mandatory:
- Income Statements
- Balance Sheets
- Cash Flow
NetSuite can produce all of these reports with the high-level of polish required for complying with legal requirements or representing the company publicly. But, as anyone who has to build NetSuite financial reports knows, producing a stellar finished product requires a lot of input upfront. So much, in fact, that some companies limit their reporting to strictly what’s legally required instead of producing reports to inform all of their decision-making.
The Frustration of Manual Lookups and Data Imports
Here’s an example: A report comparing 12 months of period balances is full of performance insights and instructive metrics. However, building that report involves looking up each month of data, manually importing it into Excel, then repeating the process again.
Things don’t get any easier inside Excel, either. Integrating 12 months of data can lead to a chaotic spreadsheet that’s hard to work with and provides little clarity. By the time the report is complete, the process has consumed hours of time and work, only to produce a document that could be compromised by errors and omissions.
Optimize from Inside Excel with Purpose-Built Solutions
The problem isn’t NetSuite or Excel. After all, neither of these products are intended to be a comprehensive financial reporting solution. They can facilitate the process, but they can’t optimize it the way a purpose-built solution is designed to do.
Take Spreadsheet Server, for example. This dedicated financial reporting solution integrates with NetSuite and runs in the familiar environment of Excel. In that way, it’s not a huge departure from how a lot of users report already. In practice, though, Spreadsheet Server makes it easy to produce the three critical reports listed above as well as ad hoc reports all without needing assistance from IT.
Make Both Excel and NetSuite Better, More Intuitive
Dedicated reporting tools like Spreadsheet Server are designed to flesh out the features of NetSuite and Excel while streamlining the reporting process in all its forms. Users define what they want reports to do, and then automation collects the relevant data from NetSuite and integrates it in Excel.
Intuitive tools give users control over how reports organize and display that data, which adds new depth to a classic income statement or cash sheet. The reports can also incorporate data from more than 140 other ERPs and disparate data sources with what gets pulled from NetSuite to be as exhaustive and authoritative as necessary.
Faster Reporting That’s Rich in Detail and Insights
By not having to rely on NetSuite financial reports, companies improve in multiple ways. They waste less time at the end of each month, quarter, or year. They end up with better reports that are rich in detail and actionable insights. And perhaps most importantly, companies expedite access to specific metrics and custom reports so that every decision that matters relies on the best information available.
Before you run your next income statement, take some time to learn more about alternatives to NetSuite financial reporting. The team at insightsoftware has put together plentiful resources on the subject.
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