what are some useful professional services netsuite can provide? long story short NS owes us a 5k credit for "professional services" and we're trying to think of creative ways to use it

Do you have to use it in a certain time period? If not, maybe better to hold on until you have a need, rather than create a need just to use the credit?

Higher ups are wary of unfair billing practices if we hold on to the credit... understandably, since there was this whole billing mishap that lead to this. I agree with you though and we'll probably go with that option anyway once everyone chills out a little

I would love to hear your story @zengs

It all happened before I joined the company, but apparently we asked for an urgent project with a hard deadline, NS said "sure, here's a scope documentation"..... but they sent it after the hard deadline was over! Their professional services team said "Okay, this project is cancelled" but their billing/collections department didn't get the memo. Then their new Oracle overlords said "NS, you get that money or else!!!"

@zengs, at least you won the battle eventually. Sadly, this is not a unique story with NetSuite PS (or with billing/collections). After the pain the company went thru, makes even more sense to hold onto that credit and use it to best advantage. Advice for future projects: if you/your company ever get involved with NS on another project with hard deadline/mission critical: 1) lie about it... set that deadline way earlier. 2) find a 3rd party to do the project instead of NSPS if at all possible.

Did this happen to you before @Dobo?

Not this same scenario, but over the years I've been involved in a number of projects that went well over planned release date, waited eons to get a workable SOW, have had credits from Billing for SLAs (once got upgraded from Silver to Gold support for a three year contract over an SLA issue).

If I (we) could do the NetSuite implementation process again – and keep the benefit of hindsight – I'd definitely opt for a third party to do the project. There is a lot of talent out there. Then again, you don't know what you don't know.