Does anyone have experience working on another platform that works similar to Netsuite but it’s like the layer on top of the NetSuite where users can operate on it, so the users fee do not add up? We currently have over 100 users, and would like to know if there are ways to reduce the users for increasing fee.

Not sure what their stance is on indirect users, would be interested to hear, but I think I already know the answer

You can create custom suitelet forms that run under a certain account and make that available without login but then you’d need to manage access to the suitelet to prevent unauthorized users from accessing your data. This approach will require scripting so you’d have to look at the financial impact of that and compare it with licensing x number of users for your environment.

That is such a janky way to get around users; I would be really curious to see a case where that actually pays off to take the development time to accomplish. Pretty cool idea though.

yeah i've seen people use an approach like eric mentioned but more just for when you dont want to pay the increase to a full license and instead just pay for employee center licenses. that at least gives you some better control over security concerns. but yeah, none of this is supported/officially recommended and if NS found you were doing major customization to get around paying them they might stop you, so proceed at your own risk. and as sandii says, likely the effort involved to fully build it out isn't worth the tradeoff, unless maybe like 50 of your users only interact with one record type or something. but most users need access to various parts of the system to create/edit records, run searches and reports, etc so you end up rebuilding a ton of functionality within a suitelet or something.

Having specific functions available would be possible but it's the cost that would determine it.

@PNJ @Eric B @Sandii @amy @Netsuite Tragic Thanks for all the replies folks! It’s just that when we are going over the new renewal contract and find the user licenses taking quite some amount, so there are management team would like to consider if this route is feasible. It is actually interesting to know that NetSuite might be stopping users from cutting down licenses to use another platform that is based off it.

Well you’re actually paying for the UI access which integrates with all the functionality and the database behind the platform. That’s why I mentioned the caveat of comparing the cost of developing a UI that interacts with the database because you can clearly create your own UI and use RESTlets to connect to Netsuite or even SuiteTalk if you want to deal with the complexities of the SOAP API. The architecture allows it so technically those aren’t “janky”. But the bigger question is if it’s economically feasible considering all aspects?

First job is to find out what functionality your users are using on a regular basis. For example, if you have 20 users who just use a handful of reports then it could be viable to move them to an integrated reporting platform. If you have another 20 who just enter SO's, that could be viable via another interface. If all your users are using lots of different functionality then its probably not worth the effort that would be involved.

As per @dynamicl comment, it depends on what users you want to filter out. ie there are plenty of people who connect SFDC, so they dont pay an NS user license for sales reps. We have done something similar for Employee Centre Users using https://www.infinetcloud.com/mypay/

Thanks @Eric B @dy @Tristan Day, since employees at our departments usually work on a certain parts of functionalities, like how @dynamicl mentioned, our sales only entering SO and warehouse only fulfilling/invoicing SO, so we maybe will explore the possibilities on developing a integrated a platform where users can operator on to reduce licenses.