Summary: The new NetSuite2022.1 version brought a whole array of enhancements and new features for multiple industries. Here we see how nonprofit organisations benefit from them.
Nonprofit organisations are always regarded as a force to reckon with for dealing with social causes outside of government programs. They have widely championed their committed work for the common good in the world. Such nonprofits are of different types having different objectives. Their roles in addressing socio-economic issues to create a considerable impact on the ground are already well known.
These nonprofit organisations during the global Covid pandemic had to face never-before challenges for their survival. A whopping 51% of nonprofit organisations in a credible survey have said that the pandemic caused a severe impact on their regular operations including volunteering and fundraising. Well, now that the worst of the pandemic cross seems to be well over, nonprofit organisations also need to embrace the most sophisticated business automation software like NetSuite to stay ahead of the competition.
Just to address the particular operational requirements of nonprofit organisations, now the new NetSuite 2022.1 version has unleashed several new features and capabilities. How can these new features and value additions make a positive impact on the operation and finance of nonprofit organisations? Well, the new features of NetSuite for nonprofits explain this.
Receiving Donations Became Easier Than Ever Before
Every nonprofit organisation rely heavily on donations for running their philanthropic or social welfare projects. Now as far as receiving donations is considered, there are several challenges. Particularly because of the popularity and ease of online transactions, many people also wish to make donations over the internet. This is where the 2022 Release 1 version of oracle NetSuite for nonprofits delivers more ease with a dedicated feature to facilitate online receiving of donations.
Apart from receiving instant payment the new release will also facilitate frequent transactions or repeated transactions from the same donor by embedding the payment link in the website of the organisation or the email template. Some regular donors can also be designated as recurring ones so that their transactions are well taken care of. This ease of processing payments ensures more cash flow for the nonprofit organisation.
The new feature is also likely to benefit the donors. The frequent donors can make all their philanthropic transactions and donations from the NetSuite SuiteCommerce MyAccount page. Since tax exemption happens to be a common motivation behind such donations, the new NetSuite will also allow printing receipts with the exact date, donation amount, date, etc.
“…the new feature will create more transparency for the nonprofit organisations and their donation management processes.”
On the one hand, the new feature will create more transparency for nonprofit organisations and their donation management processes. They need to spend fewer employee hours handling donations. On the other side, donors through the single page visibility of all their donations can enjoy better control and transparency.
Combining Intercompany Bills and Invoices
NetSuiteeven from the release a couple of years ago allowed pairing bills within the company to ensure more comprehensive visibility of the cash flow. This time the same capability of NetSuite for nonprofit organizations has been further enhanced to process bills and invoices with more accuracy and precision.
The new NetSuite 2022 Release 1 now allows the professionals in nonprofit organisations to combine singular credit memos and bill credits within the company. Thanks to this there is no longer any need to make full purchase orders within the company. Because of such automatic pairing, mismatch of bills and invoices can be reduced to a minimum level and manual work can be avoided. The feature will make things easier for nonprofits with one or several subsidiaries.
Cash Position Insights and Precise Predictions
All the nonprofit organisations struggle often to stay updated on the exact cash position. They also look up donations for running their projects. So, it is a kind of necessity to have a solid grasp of the real-time cash position as well as the future projections of the cash flow. Since donations always fluctuate to a great extent, having cash flow projections is extremely important.
This is where the new NetSuite 2022.1 version offers several key new features. The biggest of them is a crisp new dashboard offering comprehensive cash position data and cash flow projections. The Cash 360 dashboard apart from providing the present state of things will also continuously give projections of cash flow for the next six months or so. The projections take into account all the transactions, about to come collections and disbursements. Furthermore, the dashboard can be customised to accommodate other transactions and donations of non-cash nature.
New Labour Expense Allocation Feature
With the new NetSuite 2022.1 version, we now have a labour expense allocation feature for streamlining the allocation of payroll costs for each employee in a program. This will ensure optimum visibility into the labour costs for each project.
The same expense allocation feature will also help the organisation to delegate the cost to a particular grantor. The feature earlier was only accessible by the users of NetSuiteSuiteSuccess Social Impact Edition. But now it is made available for all NetSuite ERP customers.
Accommodating Both Single As Well As Repeated Donations
Apart from allowing single donation the new NetSuite also allow making bulk transactions. The feature also helps the accounting team to receive a multitude of payments just from one page. Based on the dates users specify, the new and improved NetSuite will also allow customers to make transactions through credit cards. The entire process is more streamlined resulting in faster and least erroneous transactions.
Great Array Of Performance Management Tools
“…enhancements in SuitePeople ensure more employee productivity and more control for the managers.”
There have also been significant new enhancements corresponding to performance management. These enhancements in SuitePeople ensure more employee productivity and more control for the managers. The staff of the nonprofit organisation can get rid of all the unsolicited goals and stay focused only on what is expected from them.
To make things even better, the new enhancement will ensure easy syncing between the managers and all their reports as well as communication. This will keep all employees and managers completely synced regarding the project goals and the changes that are incorporated sporadically here and there.
This NetSuite version also offers us a superior manager digest feature that continues to keep the managers informed about the latest team output, achievements, status of project progress and all the weak areas needing attention.
Another improved tool is advanced scheduling which is capable to make performance reviewing easier by using SuiteAnalytics. With the specific analytics inputs now a particular section of the employees can be summoned separately for performance review. This new enhancement will help HR managers to ask for performance reviews of a particular group of employees.
Dataset Linking Ensures Better Visibility
Nonprofit organisations also rely heavily on data-driven insights to have a clear picture of their growth possibility and emerging scenarios. The new NetSuite version in this respect will broaden the scope of analytics by allowing linking various data sets through one SuiteAnalytics Workbook.
Earlier same linking used to be achieved by NetSuite custom development through the use of the SuiteScript API. Now with the latest release, there is a new interface allowing out of the box linking of multiple data sets. Now organisational performance can easily be evaluated by comparing different datasets such as planned to actual, budget to actual, forecast to actual, etc.
Conclusion
NetSuite 2022.1 brought several new features and capabilities useful across diverse industries. Nonprofit organisations often reeling under uncertainty will find these features more useful to exercise more control on the fundamentals of their operation.
VNMT is one of the leading NetSuite solution providers with a long track record in catering to businesses of all niches with custom NetSuite development and implementation services. If you want to have a comprehensive idea about how the new release can add value to your nonprofit business operation just drop us an email.
