Additional Resources

Well, that brings us to the end of this course. We’ve looked at what NetSuite is, and we’ve gone from how to login to the system, all the way to some basic light administration. Along the way we’ve covered basic navigation, setting up your dashboard, searching for records, and how to use help and SuiteAnswers. We’ve talked about activities, and how you can use them to manage your day. We’ve entered transactions common to most businesses, and we’ve entered non-transactional data in a similar way. And we’ve seen how NetSuite has a common look and feel to make navigation easier. After looking at how to get data into the system, we looked at how to get data out of it, using saved searches and reports. Both of which access data, but do it in slightly different ways. We also talked about the benefits and drawbacks of using each method. Finally we talked about some more advanced topics. Including using the file cabinet to store files. Importing data with the CSV import tool. Using the customization and setup managers to edit some common settings found in the system. And even how to setup new users. We’ve covered a lot in about six hours. I don’t expect you to remember it all. This course has been arranged to allow you to go back and access the videos you need when you need them. I encourage you to do this, since you will likely pickup on information you may have initially missed. Before we go, I want to leave you with some additional resources so you can continue learning. There are a few channels on Reddit for NetSuite. This one is the unofficial channel, and it’s arguably the best. I actually go on here quite a bit to follow what is going on in the community, provide answers, and sometimes pull questions for the Ask the Professor videos from here. This is a very strong online community with over a thousand subscribers as of this recording. Up toward the top, there is a permanent link to a NetSuite Professionals Slack channel. This channel has even more active users, and is a good place to see what problems, and more importantly what solutions, other users are coming up with. There is also an official online NetSuite User Group, managed by NetSuite, and you can find a lot of current and historical knowledge stored here. In all three of these, you can post questions and get answers, as well as help answer questions other folks have. In addition to the online user communities, there are also in person communities. Usually these are referred to as NetSuite User Groups. Here we see the home page for the Rocky Mountain User Group. To find one in your area, it’s easiest to just do a Google search for your city or area name, followed by “NetSuite User Group”. Here we can see the results for the Boston group, but we could have just as easily searched for any other location. Not all locations have a user group though. If you can’t find one through google, you can try reaching out to NetSuite directly through your sales rep, since they will usually know where the nearest one is. These groups meet anywhere from a few times a year to as much as once a month. They are a great resource to meet other folks in the NetSuite community. They are almost all non-profit organizations and while some have a small membership fee, usually around $50 to $100 per year, that fee usually covers things like space rental, equipment, and food and drinks for the meetings. There are not a lot of books published for, or about, NetSuite, but this may change. I can personally recommend NetSuite for Dummies, which still contains a lot of knowledge though it is now about eight years old. The knowledge is still valuable. While I have not yet read NetSuite ERP for Administrators, I suspect that it also contains a wealth of knowledge. Lastly there is NetSuite OneWorld Implementation, while a little on the older side, it contains an amazing amount of knowledge. Speaking of reading, there is also a NetSuite magazine, though it is not updated all that frequently anymore. It’s at least worth downloading to a tablet and reading the articles when you have a few minutes to spare. The support articles found in SuiteAnswers, and the Help articles found in NetSuite’s help, are another great resource. If you are looking for in person training, you may want to check out the offerings NetSuite has in their online course catalog. If you do go to these, I recommend making sure that you will not be bothered during the in person training, since this allows you to focus on learning. I recommend spending the time provided for exercises, actually doing those exercises, and then taking lots of notes if you have time left over. In fact the only real drawback to the in person training, aside from the cost and sometimes the need to travel, is that it can be difficult to internalize all the concepts covered in a very short amount of time. But the training is high quality. In addition to these resources, I would encourage you to purchase and use a sandbox account for the system. A sandbox account lets you make customizations, and do testing, on an account that looks almost identical to your live account, but not have to worry about wrecking things. Sandbox accounts are deeply discounted. Generally the cost of these accounts only cover the extra overhead NetSuite needs to maintain them. You can find out more about sandbox accounts here. Once you have a sandbox account, I would encourage you to experiment with the system. Performing careful experiments can help you gain a lot of information about how the system works, and how your specific implementation is setup to work. I realize that some of this training may have been quick paced. However one of the great things about this being video training is that you can always go back and watch it as many times as you want, to gain more knowledge. Finally, I want to thank you for watching this course. It’s been a lot of work, but also a lot of fun to create. I hope you got everything out of it you were hoping you would. And, I hope that it was an enjoyable experience to watch and learn.