Hi all! We are doing NetSuite roll-out and we have bunch of vendor bills where amortization is running in the old system. We would of course like to import open amortization balance to NetSuite and continue there. I couldn't find any help topic or suite answer related to this. Can anyone link me any blog or give short instructions what is the best practice how to do this? Thanks!

Do you have a standard amortization schedules?

Yes, we use Straight-line, using exact days

Take a look here Set up Amortization https://docs.oracle.com/cloud/latest/netsuitecs_gs/NSAMO/NSAMO.pdf Page 13 ■ Straight-line, using exact days – amortizes amounts individually for each period based on the number of days in each period. Because each day in the term recognizes an equal amount, each period may recognize a different amount. Import the Bills Pages 252 -253 https://docs.oracle.com/cloud/latest/netsuitecs_gs/NSCVI/NSCVI.pdf

So you recommend to import those as Vendor Bills and then start the amortization normally? Problem is that this way bills will be twice in AP account (opening balance + this amortization import), but we would need to use actual expense accounts... So how to neutralize the AP balance?

Do you have a sandbox?

Last time, what we did was to import the Vendor Bills. Create a reversing JE for the GL impact of the Vendor Bills. Update the Amortization Schedules by manually checking the Is Amortized columns for the past periods where amortization was already recorded. Not sure if it's the best practice. (Probably not lol)

you can alternatively just load these transactions as journals and tag the vendor on each line. Journal would credit prepayments and debit appropriate expense code (with a prepayment so it defers in the period of entry, which would be the "take-on" month) I would load them as journals personally because I prefer a clean subledger - but both approaches are valid

Thank you for all of your replies! We tested this with journals and looks good 🙂

Another version of this approach that I’ve used is to just load an ‘in/out’ JE with equal debit AND credits lines for each bill to be amortized against the deferred expense account you’re using (because you’re importing your deferred expense balance elsewhere) but then ONLY specify the vendor and amortization template on the DEBIT side. This will will generate amortization schedules accordingly, giving you only one JE to track for the migration, but won’t actually have a GL impact itself. It’s basically treating the amortization list as a sub-ledger, just like you would for open A/R or open A/P.