Company Cars follow-up in NetSuite using Custom Segment & Custom Record

Background

NetSuite lets you create Custom Segments which are custom classification fields similar to Class, Department or Location, the out-of-the-box dimensions included in every NetSuite instance.

These standard and custom dimensions are used as financial segmentation, to generate Financial or Management Reporting (vs Statutory).

To complete this comprehensive set of benefits and offer even more flexibility, it’s worth noting that when we create a custom segment, NetSuite also automatically creates a synchronized Custom Record.

We can use these benefits for the following concrete business case : to track expenses related to a fleet of company cars and the various bits of information related to these.

A complete follow-up of costs and data is mainly requested in some countries for direct taxation or because of social law’s requirements, like in Belgium.

Thereby, it is required to track costs by individual Company Car, so by License Plate or Car Plate.

Prerequisite:

Note: we will only use the click-not-code configuration features of NetSuite, so no scripting involved here.

The only prerequisite is to enable the following features: Custom Records and Custom Segments (Setup > Company > Enable Features > [subtab] SuiteCloud)

How to manage that?

Create a custom segment : Car Plate

This segment will impact General Ledger. So, mark the checkbox “GL Impact”

Choose in which transaction we would like to track the Car Plate. Here, we will identify a Plate at transaction line level. So go to subtab Application & Sourcing > Transaction Columns.

It’s already possible to enter values for this segment in the subtab Values.

Otherwise a user will be able to do that afterwards via menu : Setup > Company > [Custom Segment] > New

Custom Record connected to the Custom Segment :

In this custom record, we will add Fields in order to capture various information of the Company Cars.

Those fields could be either a Free-Form Text, a Date, an existing List, a Percentage, a Currency,…

Then we will be able to find values for the Car Plate Custom Segment, including values of the fields of the custom segments.

Menu : Setup > Company > [Custom Segment] > New

We can view the Car Plate List to obtain a complete overview of all Car Plates:

Use the custom value in transactions :

For example in a Vendor Bill, select the right Car Plate for each Item:

Retrieve costs and information in reports :

We can create customized Reports or Saved Searches.

This allows us to collect and present data from transactions (with GL Impact), using information from the custom record.

The key element is the Car Plate Segment.

Conclusion

NetSuite’s SuiteCloud Platform provides flexible customization tools for administrators and business users. One particular use case is the set up of Custom Segments to track costs and other data related to Company Cars, down to the License Plate level.

Novutech can assist you in the design and configuration of Custom Segments and Custom Records for various Analytical Reporting purposes, as well as helping you to build the required customized reports.