Cutting over is the phrase used when you are moving from your legacy system to your new ERP. This post focuses on moving from Quickbooks to NetSuite but could just as likely refer to moving from Xero or other simpler accounting ledgers. Here are five of the of the main challenges you can expect to encounter when you first start using NetSuite:

 

 

1. Final Quickbooks close – Cutover should happen as soon as you perform your last month close in the old system. This will be time pressurised, so it is best steer clear of a key reporting month. As part of your final close it will have been good to clear up old items on your debtors and creditors ledgers to avoid brining these across. Also, it can be useful to clear all your bank reconciling items to not bring these across to the new system.

 

2. Once your final close in the legacy system is complete, data migration to NetSuite of open items will start followed by a TB. It is essential that a reconciliation is performed between the TB and debtors, creditors, and any other open items you are bringing into NetSuite. You will also want to reconcile your NetSuite opening TB and your Quickbooks closing TB.

 

 

3. Start billing. The first thing you will need to get up and running after implementing NetSuite is going to be billing. It is recommended that your open debtors are fully loaded and reconciled before you start billing form NetSuite. If you wait till this is done – great. If not you can start billing in advance it might make it more difficult to identify issues with the load and reconciling numbers.

 

4. Integrations will stop working. Any 3^rd party apps for expenses, salesforce etc.. likely will not be live on day 1. Hopefully this has been picked up as part of your planning. You will need a plan to get these live again. It may be that the 3^rd party apps you were using don’t integrate with NetSuite in which case you will need to look at other apps to continue with those processes. In the meantime, you will need to do manual data loads between systems so you should have someone on hand who can do these loads.

 

 

5. You can expect general chaos for the first months of being live on NetSuite as your teams get up to speed with the new system and new processes which will likely need realigning. It is important that people follow the correct process and this needs to be checked as the longer it goes on the more remediation work will be required.

 

 

Once you get over the hump and your hard work is done you will hopefully start to see some light at the end of the tunnel.

 

The early benefits you’ll see using NetSuite include:

 

• One login. You will access all subsidiaries through one account. This will mean one consistent chart of accounts across all subsidiaries.

 

• Easier data extraction. You might need some help getting your saved searches and reports set up but you will find it a lot easier to extract data from NetSuite.

 

• Multi-dimensional reporting. NetSuite allows you to report across multiple dimensions which will be a game changer for your management reporting.

 

• Automated processes. NetSuite will allow you to run automated processes for depreciation, revenue recognition and consolidations. These may feel a bit counterintuitive initially but will be beneficial to your business once your data is aligned and your team fully understands them.

 

 

This is the last post in our implementing NetSuite series. We hope you have found it useful. If you are recently gone live on NetSuite and need some help, get in touch for a free conversation about how we can help.