Does anyone here use SuiteBilling without ARM ? In other words, just the legacy Revenue Recognition? We are evaluating SuiteBilling and ARM was recommended to su and enabled, but the combination of the two is causing certain new problems for us that we never had before, and we really don't need any of the features provided by Advanced Revenue Management.

The legacy rev rec is not being offered at all though. NetSuite’s rev rec solution is “ARM”. In terms of licensing, if FV, multiple element arrangements, etc. will not be used, then it falls to “Basic Rev Rec”, but it is still ARM feature wise, you just don’t enable the other bells and whistles. Revenue Commitment record is a thing of the past.

I should probably explain that we went live prior to 2013, so we already do have the legacy revenue commitment. ARM is only enable in a sandbox, and being evaluated alongside SuiteBilling. The main issue we are having is that we use Subscription-based billing, but about 99% of our usage-based billing items post directly to revenue (there is no revenue recognition schedule). However, with ARM enabled, SuiteBilling is forcing all of those items to create revenue arrangements, revenue elements, and revenue plans, and post all of that revenue to a clearing account via journal entry, before it ultimately goes straight into revenue. This means we now have an almost 100-fold increase in the number of journal entries being created under ARM that previously was not an issue, and they aren't really needed. They are just passing through the clearing account which provides no benefit to us. It also means that we now have to wait for revenue plans to be started, which are only done every 3 hours under ARM, to create the journal entries, which again really provide us with no benefit. So, in the end, ARM is forcing an up to 3 hour delay upon us, a huge increase in almost meaningless journal entries, and lot of activity in a clearing account, all of which is simply noise to us. Is this normal with ARM? Is there any way to avoid this other than staying with the legacy revenue commitments?

I thought with arm you can define an item as direct posting, it just can't be on transactions that aren't?

Agreed with Kevin, it will have to be direct revenue posting through the item record. The caveat is that you cannot mix the items that are being deferred with the items you want to recognize asap.