Hello - we're exploring Kits/Packages and Item Groups and neither works the way we need them to - or would expect them to. We need the transaction detail of Item Groups with the pricing options of Kits. Our items are non-inventory for sale and are job postings and add-ons/enhancements to job postings. We sell "bundles" that include a job posting and one or more enhancement. The bundle price is the sum of discounted component prices. These transactions are imported from a feed and in the future possibly an integration. We do not want to users manually updating them afterwards. With kits, we can get the correct pricing, using price levels but don't get the line item detail in the transaction. The transaction just shows the kit and total price. The revenue arrangements show the line items, but without the pricing details. All of the $$ are at the kit level. We need it to be at the transaction line level for financial and sales reporting. We looked at using a custom record for sales reporting, but it's kludgy and not a viable option. With Item Groups we get the line level detail in the transaction but at the list price. We're considering scripting to pull in the correct pricing but see that once a transaction is saved, we no longer see any indicator that it was part of an item group. It seems that Item Groups are really just short cuts to getting line items on a transaction. Is the link to an Item Group retained somewhere or do we also need to include in a scripting solution? I've searched this and other channels in this group but don't see one that answers that questions. Thanks!

when you say you need your reporting at the “transaction” level - do you mean at the “header” level? Yes, ARM reporting provides you with the line level because it is revenue reporting and there is a revenue plan created for each line separately. To make reporting work you need to group your lines at the source transaction level. It is not done via using Groups, this is for something else (particularly when you do not need to allocate your revenue). It is done via transaction field mapping where you create a line level field showing the sales order and then add this custom field to the reports. I highly recommend hiring someone in the know/understanding how this works.

Hi @Karina - thanks for your response. Sorry, by transaction l meant transaction line level here:

The revenue arrangements show the line items, but without the pricing details. All of the $$ are at the kit level. We need it to be at the transaction level for reporting. We looked at using a custom record for reporting, but it's kludgy and not a viable option.

I'll edit my post. For revenue and sales reporting, we need line level detail. With kits we could probably live with not having the detail for revenue reporting, but we do need it for Sales Reporting. We sell the components individually and need to be be able to report on all sales of our products. We have been in touch with Netsuite about this and the custom record for kits was their idea, but it isn't feasible. So now we're back to at Item Groups again, but have noted limitations including that once a record is saved, it loses connection to an Item Group. We need to be able to report on the group (bundle) sales as well as individual components. We're continuing to discuss with Netsuite but wanted to see if users had insight as well. Thanks!

Do you expand kit for rev rec purposes?

yes - but it doesn't show the $ breakdown. of the items.

what am I missing? when you sell a kit (combination of multiple items each of which has it’s own rev rec setting and allocation formula) you still can run your Revenue by Item report, no? which report do you have in mind?

Are you saying do this with Kits? Our issue with Kits is that the line item detail is not on the transaction record - Sales Order, Invoice, Cash Sale. It would only be on the RA. That's why we're back to looking at groups - so we could see line item detail on those transaction records.

you describe the kit functionality exactly as it is intended to be used. if you WANT to see individual items on Sales Orders/invoices etc you do not need kits, but the ARM settings need to be redone. This is not an easy undertaking and does not have much to do with the reporting actually. This would be a new implementation really. You said above you API your data in, so that also needs to be remapped. Consider re-mapping as well then..

We want to be able to sell a bundle, import the bundle ID, and have Netsuite break that bundle apart into components but retain the bundle. Customer-facing invoices would show the bundle and not line items. But we want to able to report on the line items - and know how many of "Item 123" we sold as part of Bundle A, as part of Bundle B, and as part of no Bundle. Our ARM is set as the individual line item level. But our bundles are currently set as items - which means we only have line item detail for things that are not sold as part of bundles. We're into a lot of manual sales reporting. It doesn't seem like what we're asking is way out there (often our business requirements are!) and that Netsuite needs a hybrid of kits and item groups. So it looks like we need a custom solution. Thanks for your help. I appreciate it.

so this is NOT seeing items (parts of kits) on transaction, this is about reporting. For reporting you need to have data field mapping done, that is all you need. Once you have this mapping you will be able to create reports you want

It's both - our sales reports are from orders, invoices, and cash sales.

sure, do not mind

Thank you! This is from an invoice record - the item is the kit.

Betsy, you were previously speaking about reports, and these are not reports. To replace kit item with actual item sold accomplishes a) exposing each individual item on the invoice and b) requires re-configuration of all items (or at least a review of all item configurations). Using Group will expose your line items on the invoice as there would be no group (i.e. all line will show).

If I was doing a transaction report, based on Invoices, I would only see that we sold a RECR High Visibility 5 Pack, and I could report on how many. I would not report on the components. For example, that bundle includes five CHE Sponsored Jobs and in that bundle accounts for $404.80 of the bundle price. But CHE Sponsored Job is also part of other bundles or can be added to a "non-bundle" sale. In those cases, it has different pricing. We want to be able to see how we sold that item and at what pricing. This is an example of a report that uses the custom record to give line level detail. Invoice 8354 is the record in the earlier screenshots. #504 shows a line item on a transaction that isn't part of a kit.

what is the standard report name you are using that does not work for you please?

It's a custom saved search - and because of the custom record, it's an item based search not a transaction based search.

you can modify the search to show line items…. if that is a transaction search you can show anything you want

but there aren't any line items on the invoice record - just the kit.

so here is the issue - in the KIT you cannot have individual prices. you have a kit price, that’s all. so you can include items but there are no prices; so if you have the same item as part of a kit and stand alone item you should see only price for stand alone item; the part of a kit will not have its own price

Correct - and this is our conundrum. What we want is not available. If we sold 1 item A in a kit and want to attribute $100 to it and also sold Item A by itself for $150, we want to be able to say that we sold 2 items A - 1 @ $100 and 1 @ $150. We also want to know that we sold 1 item A in Kit 21. Here's one of the kits with the custom record to get to the breakdown we want. It's how where the kit component amount comes from in the above.

If you want to have the same at revenue level (not sales level) - you can. Revenue reports can give you that pricing. But at the sales level - no.

But the revenue arrangement only shows the kit price as well. It shows the line items - but at $0. Are you saying we should be able to see revenue reports with line level $ attached?

you should have revenue allocation further on each line

The only way we see to allocate value to each individual kit component is through the custom record. And it is disconnected from Rev Rec.

do you have anything on the Allocation tab

of the kit?

of the revenue arrangment

all 0's

it does not look like you have any fair values configured. Can you please go to the settings Setup > Accounting > Fair Value Price List and see if anything is available there?

nothing is there.

your system is not configured properly for using kits with ARM 😞. not configured at all, actually

We're not using Kits currently. All of these screenshots are from our sandbox.

ARM configurations are complex, super complex I might add. you have no configurations set, so take care of the configs first and then see how this appear in your system

We might just have a fire going. 🙂

you set up your fair value formulas, then you set up your items (depending - likely, item categories) price list; that’s how NS know to allocate kit price among kit members - based on each individual item’s fair value

I really appreciate your time and insight! Curious - are you a Netsuite customer, a consultant, or are you with Netsuite?

no problem!I used to be with NS - software vertical, this was my bread and butter 🙂. now I am a consultant with a different business that prevents me from moonlighting 🙂

Thanks. Sometimes I'm not sure which channel to put things in! When I say we're working with Netsuite, I mean Netsuite ACS - not just regular Support. I would expect our ACS team to be able to guide us to a good solution. I am going to look into your suggestions and question ACS further. Maybe we could live with kits if we have Fair Level Pricing configured - knowing our reporting would be a the rev level only - which would be a different mind set - we're used to transaction reporting for sales. I'm guessing that you recommend we do not pursue a custom scripting solution to get Item Groups to work. If we had a way to retain the Item Group on the transaction lines in addition to pulling the correct pricing, Item Groups would seem to work - and have the line level insight into the transactions and the RAs.

On the latter - Groups will do nothing for you, nothing different then kits would - but then again, you do not have kits properly configured.

Interesting.... I'm glad I didn't mention ACS and scare you off earlier! The whole purpose of using kits isn't to hide what the customers see. We do use the Advanced PDF in production (we've been live since 2019) and know we can customize it to show/hide as needed. The purpose of using a Kit or Item Group is to have insight on what our customers are buying and how - at the line item level but also know the context of the sale - how many at each bundle, and the associated $ for each line. A given item is part of multiple bundles and at different prices.

right, so a complete overhaul of your rev rec needs to happen before you can achieve your rev rec goal. ACS has no idea what they are doing proving our (slack LOL) point once again…

oh, my head is spinning.

just tell them that creating a kit item itself dd nothing without fair value settings completed. Ask from someone from the software vertical, just demand. they should be able to accomodate

thank you!

@Karina it seems like you've got more in depth knowledge than I here, but can @Betsy Barefoot not accomplish getting the component level info via Groups, and then use Price Levels to have different pricing within the bundles vs. when sold individually?

you are welcome and good luck!

Just a thought; if it would avoid a lot of reconfiguration

Rob, Betsy’s goal is to have a bundle (without details) on the sales transaction, groups won’t work for that

@Karina - actually we would like the detail on the sales transaction.

yes in UI, but not on customer invoice, right?

Yes - correct.

If you turn on Group Start and end lines those will appear on your Sales orders

Believing that if we get what we want in the UI, we can customize the advanced PDF to different if necessary.

The Group ID / SKU will appear above the components, then an end line before any other lines on the order.

Rob, Betsy uses ARM, kits have ARM functionality that is quite different from inventory

OK. I may be missing something here; just wanted to mention our experience since it seemed possibly similar.

the more the merrier!

Good luck finding your resolution @Betsy Barefoot!

It does seem that Inventory items work differently than non-inventory. But it seems like Rob has what we want. 🙁 On the item group config, we had uncheck the

reference start/end lines on picking tickets

in the Item Group. It gave us an error when saving the transaction. After we unchecked it (per Netsuite support), we could save the transaction but it completely lost the "Group" link.

Our groups can contain Assemblies, inventory items, and non-inventory items. Our price levels are mapped situationally via the integration, so I suppose it is technically via API.

They're currently coming in from another interface - but via csv import. We haven't built an integration yet - the vendor's APIs are limited. The vendor cannot give us the line item detail we want in Netsuite. So our vision was using a kit or item group ID and have Netsuite explode the detail. Currently the things we sell as bundles are just coming in as a non-inventory item - and we don't have the detail we want.