Hi, I work at a SaaS company and just started as their NetSuite Admin a few weeks ago. The previous Admin setup a Purchase Order Approval Workflow that enables users to request purchases involving, but not limited to, software licenses, contract work, computer equipment, office supplies, etc. They use non-inventory items pointing to expense accounts on the item record to record what they would like to buy. I am trying to figure out what is best practice for these sorts of expenses. In my past two NetSuite jobs we were a retail company that only used Purchase Orders for inventory we were selling.

SAAS world is about non-inventory/service/other charge items. Great that they are actually using items to record expenses, this is fine and IS best practices (control and all that)

So using Expense Reporting wouldn't be the way?

not exactly, with expenses these is no quantity, imo not best practices. If I could push using items vs expenses to my SAAS customers every day of the week it would be just fine

Alright, can I DM you some more questions regarding quantity?

item vs expenses = less opportunity for errors (preset data vs added by hand)

Agree with Karina with the exception being that if you ALWAYS pay the full amount on the PO all at once, Expenses is just as good, and you can use Expense Categories to introduce pre-set selections for users that don’t know the COA backwards. If you need to be able to receive/bill SOME but not ALL, then items is the way to go for sure.

@PaulJ So for example we have a PO with a management staff vendor. Lets say the person submitting the PO put that it was 1 quantity at $60,000 for 6 months of staffing. We then get the first invoice for 10,000 and the accountant then enters a bill for 0.16667 amount for (1/6 months). What is best practices in this case? Should a quantity of 6 be used in the first place, or just having the accountant "receive" 1/6 quantity?

yes I’d say if you’re purchasing 6 months, then using a non-inventory item with qty = 6 and rate = 10K would be the cleanest way. the trailing decimals issue makes things messy in my view, although the end result is the same

But normal practice either way?

yup. As long as the user is updating quantity on the Bill and NOT just changing the RATE (ie leave qty as 1 and change rate from 60K to 10K). That can cause problems as i believe Ns would consider that PO to be fully billed based on the qty. But what you’re desscribing is fine.

Thanks! First time seeing Purchase Orders being used in this manner as I came from retail and we only used it for physical items.