Today, we’re changing that.

Today, we’re announcing the launch of Cadbury, a brand new AI that answers all your questions about NetSuite with accuracy, precision, and speed. Think of it as if ChatGPT and NetSuite had a baby.

We scraped the depths of the internet and collected proprietary sources no one has access to. We sat down with the leading NetSuite experts of the world, and hooked them up to our Matrix. And from that, we created a rich annotated dataset that covers all the crevices in NetSuite. This is all in service of our broader mission of automating this work away.

Whether you’re asking about accounting periods or NetSuite connector, Cadbury has you covered. It’s already saved us tens of hours for our services work.

And best of all? It’s free. Give it a spin: trycadbury.com

What we’ll do

• Create a custom field on the Subsidiary record to store the default Sales Rep. This will let us associate a default rep with each subsidiary.

• Build a workflow that sets the Sales Rep on new Customer records based on the Subsidiary’s assigned default Sales Rep.

How to create the custom field

• In your NetSuite, Go to Customization > List, Records, & Fields > Other Record Fields > New.

  

• In the next screen, Set Record Type = Subsidiary, Set Label, Set Type = List/Record, Set List/Record = Employee.

  

• Click Save.

Great work! You just created a custom field in NetSuite.

The next step is to create a workflow that automatically assigns the Sales Rep when a new Customer record is created. This workflow will reference the default Sales Rep stored on the Subsidiary record and use it to populate the Sales Rep field on the Customer.

How to create the workflow

• In your NetSuite account, Go to Customizations > Workflows > New.

  

• Enter Name, Record Type = Customer, Select Sub Types, Select Owner, Check Execute as Admin, Set Release Status = Testing (for now, we will make it released later) and Check Enable Logging.

  

• In the Initiation section, scroll down and check Event Based. This makes the workflow run whenever a record event occurs, such as create or edit.

• In the Event Definition, check On Create, set Trigger Type to Before Record Submit, and select Event Types as Create.

  

• Save

Great work! You’ve created the workflow. Now, the next step is to define the states and add the actions so the workflow can actually perform the intended tasks.

How to create an action in the Workflow

• Click on the State1 shown on the left-hand side of your workflow screen.

  

• Now, we need to add a state. Click the pencil icon under the State tab.

  

• In the next screen, enter the name of your State. Click Save.

  

Now it’s time to add an Action. This is where we’ll configure the workflow to set the Sales Rep on the Customer record.

• Under your State Tab, click on New Action.

  

• In the next screen, select Set Field Value.

  

• Now, Set Trigger On to Before Record Submit, Select Event Types as Create.

  

• Scroll down to the Parameters section, select Field as Sales Rep, check From Field, then set Record (Join Field) to Subsidiary and choose Sales Rep as the field. Click Save.

  

Explanation: We just mapped the custom field created earlier on the Subsidiary record to the Sales Rep field on the Customer record.

• We also need to add another action to define the role for the Sales Rep. To do this, click New Action again under the State tab of the workflow. In the next screen, select Set Field Value. Now, Set Trigger On to Before Record Submit, Select Event Types as Create.

• Scroll down to the Parameters section, select Field as Sales Role, check Static Value and then set Selection as Sales Rep. Click Save.

Congratulations! You’ve just created a workflow that automates setting the Sales Rep on the Customer record during the creation event. Along the way, you also learned how to add states and actions in a workflow, and most importantly how to apply a join on a related Subsidiary record, which is a very useful skill.

Important: If your workflow works as expected, go back to the workflow and change its status to Released. This will make it active and available for everyone else in the account.

I worked on the sell side at NetSuite my first 3.5 years out of college - Great money, fast lifestyle, but here’s the truth about ERP; businesses are overpaying on license agreements, led astray with exploitative commercial terms, and stuck with a platform that’s expensive and time consuming to replace - This is seen across the industry (including vendors like SAP, Sage, Microsoft, and Acumatica).

I then worked on Castl, a purpose driven venture designed to negotiate on behalf of businesses procuring ERP - We simply take a % of savings from initial proposal through close. Low friction offers to capture the market opportunity as we get off the ground.

ERP = Hotel California. Check in anytime you want but you can never leave. Sharing tips and tricks below to help you navigate new instance procurement and existing vendor relations.

License Agreements

Introducing competition. Get through the demo cycle and make sure you have formal proposals from at least two vendors. By that point, they’ve invested time, resources, and internal visibility. With real risk of losing the deal in plain sight, buyers can negotiate opt-out clauses, restart rights during implementation, and often enjoy vendors cannibalizing each other on price.

Gatekeep a silent partner. Someone on your side who appears late in the game. Vendors have seen the move a thousand times, but it still works - they know they won’t win unless the silent partner feels like they’ve secured a win. That dynamic often leads to meaningful concessions.

Silence is a lever. The moment predictable cadence breaks, paranoia sets in. Preemptive discounts, term flexibility, and renewed “partnership language” tend to surface quickly. This isn’t about ghosting - it’s about professionally disrupting the flow and keeping the deal on your timeline, not theirs.

Use future growth as a bargaining chip. ERP vendors live on land-and-expand economics - more users, more modules, higher service tiers. Acknowledge LTV directly, and negotiate license structure based on your cash flow and revenue milestones, not their boilerplate.

ERP is a cost center. Nobody grows their topline by purchasing an ERP, but they scale more efficiently once it’s in place. If this is truly a long-term partnership, ask to speak with levels of leadership whose focus extends beyond this month’s quota. Their timeline should match the length of your commitment.

Commercial Terms / SOW

Term length is widely misunderstood. Most buyers assume vendors prefer multiyear contracts for higher TCV. In reality, they prefer shorter cycles so they can push aggressive renewal increases. In practice, two years is often the sweet spot - leadership turns over, strategy evolves, and it creates cleaner governance when change happens.

Financing is another landmine. Deferred payments are typically handed off to third-party institutions. Vendors may be forgiving; banks won’t be. Always confirm who is issuing the credit before you sign.

Renewal caps matter. Without one, you’ll hear terms like “uplift,” “re-leveling,” or “pricing alignment.” They all mean the same thing - price increase. Target two to five percent; anything beyond that is vendor-leaning.

Be wary of upsells packaged as “required.” Support, training packages, AM retainers - most of it is offshore volume work presented as premium service.

At Castl, that’s where our core values show up: truth, transparency, humility - calling a spade a spade and negotiating accordingly.

As far as a quantitative playbook, every vendor, buyer, and engagement will be met with unique variables based on scale and scope. Reminder, this is a purpose driven venture aimed to shed light on small to medium sized businesses not fully realizing their buying power.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you, and welcome connecting with anyone in the industry from CSMs, End Users, Consultants, you name it.

Written for Buyers, by Sellers.

Matt Conforti, Founder @ Castl

In this guide, we will walk through how to set up scheduled inventory level alerts in NetSuite so that you avoid stockouts, and stay ahead on replenishment. We’ll do by creating a saved search on the item record, and attaching an email alert to it.

Create the Saved Search

1. In your NetSuite Account, Go to Lists > Saved Search > New.

   

2. Now, select item as the record type.

   

3. Enter a Name and ID, and set it to Public.

   

4. It’s time to add search criteria. Add the following criteria

   1. Type -> Inventory Item

      

   2. Available -> Less than -> 5 (adjust as needed)

      

5. Now let’s define what we want to display in the results. Add the following fields to the Results section:

   • Name

   • Display Name

   • Available

We’ve added our filters and defined the results. Next, let’s schedule this saved search so that we can receive the results by email.

Schedule the Email Notification

1. Navigate to the Email tab, Check Send Emails According to Schedule and Specify the recipients

   

2. Go to the Customize Message tab.

   

   1. Enter a clear Subject and write the Body of the email. Enable Send as CSV if you’d like the search results attached. Check Include View Record Link so recipients can quickly access the Item records in NetSuite.

      

3. Go to the Schedule tab and Click Weekly Event - (Adjust as needed), Select Start time, Check No End Date.

   

🎉

From now on, you’ll receive timely notifications whenever items fall below your defined threshold, helping you stay proactive with inventory management.

Before we started Cadbury, I knew I needed to better understand the labor, namely:

• Where it is sourced (eg talent marketplaces, Oracle’s SI partnership system, etc)

• How it is performed (defining the activity map of a consultant, run process engineering)

• Rating the value is exchanged (connect dollars to problems solved)

In this article, we’ll talk about the first point. Where labor originates reveals a lot about the labor itself, and how to capture + automate it.

Where NetSuite labor is sourced

1. For most companies, the story begins with an engagement with Oracle. Once you hear their pitch and sign the deal, you have two choices: work with Oracle’s in-house implementation team or work with one of their preferred Partners. At this point, an implementation begins which emits a ton of NetSuite consulting labor, usually months of it. The labor continues after go-live, and if the implementation partner is lucky, they’ll get to capture it too in the form of a retainer contract.
   
   Oracle holds a ton of power here, and winners in our space will need to either (1) reach companies before they arrive to Oracle or (2) convince companies that they are the best consulting partner to deal with.
   

2. NetSuite serves several verticals, which means its labor is highly specialized. You will see SIs setup shop at conferences that hit their strengths, whether its e-commerce conferences like Shoptalk or manufacturing ones like IMTS.
   
   These represent an opportunity for SIs to differentiate themselves, and build an IRL connection with a customer. And the ROI is pretty simple - in talking with attendees at SuiteWorld, it costs ~$50k to get a booth + fly the team out. One light implementation, and you’ve made that back.
   

3. Once a company breaks ~100 in headcount, I typically see them move NetSuite work to an internal role. Couple factors at play including high volume of labor, low latency requirements around maintenance + reporting, and trust/security. These companies will recruit on their own, or rely on specialized talent firms like SystemsAccountants & Anderson Frank to help.
   

4. Talent marketplaces, especially Upwork, dominate the economy of freelance NetSuite labor. Whether it’s non NetSuite services company looking to do staff aug, or companies exploring outside options for help, Upwork is the place for it.
   
   It’s the go-to place to find offshore talent, and because of that, there’s wage pressure. On the buyer side, you get cheap prices with the tradeoff that it’s all DIY; it’s on you to define the task, interview talent, and manage them.

So what does NetSuite labor on Upwork look like?

Between March and August 2025, we scraped 363 NetSuite posts off Upwork (using a freelancer of Upwork, of course). We pumped this data into a SQLite db, built a Jupyter notebook, here’s what we saw1:

In the future, we could probably filter out even more words (especially ones that come up autogenerated) to get more signal. Still a little too noisy for my taste.

And in case you’re interested in performing your own analysis, here’s the full scraped data. Share your findings in the comments!

Auto-reversal journals are most valuable when:

• Handling timing differences when you expect transactions (e.g., bank debits or credits) to settle the next day.

• Keeping your general ledger balances accurate without extra manual work.

• You post accruals that should clear the following day.

In this guide, we’ll create:

• A Saved Search on the Transaction record for the accounts you want to post accruals to.

• A Scheduled Script to generate the journal entry automatically.

How to create a Saved Search to fetch account balances

• In your NetSuite Account, Go to Lists > Saved Search > New.

  

• Now, Select Transaction as the record type.

  

• Enter a Name and ID, and set it to Public.

• Important Note📝: Write down the ID of the saved search once it is saved. We will use it later in the scripting stage.

  

• Next, add the search criteria. Go to the Criteria tab in your saved search and enter the following filters:

  • Date -> on or before today

    

• Main Line -> Yes

  

• Posting -> Yes.

  

• Account -> Add all the accounts where you want to post accruals at the end of the day.

  

• Next, we will configure the search results. Go to the Results tab, click Remove All to clear unnecessary columns, and then add the following fields.

  • Amount(Foreign Currency), Summary Type: Sum

  • Amount, Summary Type: Sum

  • Account, Summary Type: Group

  • Currency, Summary Type: Group

    

• Save.

🎉 Great work! You’ve just created a Saved Search that pulls the balances of accounts for all transactions dated today or earlier.

How to create a scheduled script to create reversal journal

• Download create_reversal_journal.js from this repo.

• Open the file in any text editor and update the saved search ID on line number 8 (this is the one you noted earlier when creating the saved search). Save the file.
  
  const SAVED_SEARCH_ID = ‘customsearch4521’;
  

• Open NetSuite. Click on Customization > Scripting > Scripts > New.

• Click the plus (+) icon next to the Script File field.

• Enter a name and upload the script file you downloaded and edited.

• Click Create Script Record, it should take you to the next screen where we will enter all the script details.

• Enter a name.

• On the Parameters tab, set Label = Recon Account, Type = List/Record, and List/Record = Account. We’re creating this parameter to define the offset account, which will hold the offset balance to keep other accounts in balance.

• Click Save

Kudos!!🎉 You’ve just created a schedule script with a parameter. This script will post accruals at the end of the day to keep the books clean.

Note: Before we schedule the script, we need to set the ID of the parameter in the code.

• On the parameters tab, copy the ID of the parameter we created.

• On the scripts tab, click edit and update this ID on line number 13.

How to schedule the script to run daily

• On the script record page, click Deploy Script.

• Enter a title. Set Status to Scheduled and Log Level to Debug/Audit.

• On the Schedule tab, check Daily Event, set Repeat = Every 1 Day, and define the Start Time based on when no more bank transactions are expected.

• In the Parameters tab, select the recon account which should hold the offset balance.

• Click Save.

🎉 Congratulations! You’ve just automated reversal journal creation at the end of the day, making sure your accounts stay balanced and your financial reports remain clean and accurate.

In this guide, we’ll walk through how to automate an email notification whenever a new user logs into NetSuite. This can help administrators take necessary action promptly or investigate unexpected logins.

What we’ll do

1. Create a saved search on the Employee record.

2. Create a scheduled script.

Create saved search

1. Open your NetSuite, Go to Lists > Saved Search > New

   

2. In the next screen, Select Employee as the record type.

   

3. Now, Enter a Name and ID, and also set it to Public as shown below.

   • Important Note📝: Write down the ID of the saved search once it is saved. We will use it later in the scripting stage.

     

4. It’s time to add the criteria now. Add the following Criteria in your Saved Search:

   • Date Created -> Within This Year to Date (adjust as needed).

     • Pro Tip: Remove access of employees from your NetSuite account who have been given access but never logged in. NetSuite isn’t cheap, and full-license users are limited. We will cover this automation in another topic.

• Login Audit Trail: Date -> is not empty (join on Login Audit Trail fields)

• Login Audit Trail: Status -> is Success

  

5. Now, let’s add what we want to show in the search results. Add the following Results:

   • Login Audit Trail: Date, Summary Type: Minimum, Summary Label(optional): First Login

   • Name, Summary Type: Group

     

6. Save & Run

Explanation: We created a saved search which gets all successful login attempts by employees created within a certain period. We get the minimum date of login because that tells us the first time they logged in.

Lets create this Scheduled Script now

You might be wondering why we need this script. The purpose of this script is to run on a scheduled basis, pull data from the saved search we created earlier, and notify the account administrator whenever someone logs into NetSuite.

Let’s create it together step by step.

1. First, you’ll need the code. Download the first_login_notification.js file from this repo.

2. Open the file in any text editor(notepad is also fine) and update the saved search ID on line number 18 (this is the one you noted earlier when creating the saved search).
   
   const mySearch = search.load({ id: ‘customsearch4513’ });

3. Now go back to NetSuite, click on Customization > Scripting > Scripts > New.

4. Click the plus (+) icon next to the Script File field.

   

5. Enter a name and upload the script file you downloaded and edited.

   

6. Click Create Script Record, it should take you to the next screen where we will enter all the script details.

7. Enter Name, ID and Click Save.

   

Great work, you’ve just created a scheduled script in NetSuite!

The next step is to deploy it. But before deployment, we need to add a script level parameter that allows you to specify the administrator who will receive the email notification whenever someone logs in.

How to create a script level parameter

1. Go to the Parameters tab of the script.

   

2. Click New Parameter.

3. Enter a Label, enter the ID exactly as shown below. Set Type to List/Record. In List/Record, select Employee. Click Save.

   

Now we’ve reached the final step: deploying and scheduling the script. If you’ve made it this far, you’re doing an excellent job!

How to deploy a script in Netsuite

1. On the script record page, click Deploy Script.

2. Enter a TITLE and ID. Set Status to Scheduled and Log Level to Debug/Audit.

4. In the Schedule tab: Check Daily Event and Set Repeat to Every 15 Minutes (as shown below in the screenshot).

5. In the Parameters tab, select the user who should receive the new login notification email.

6. Click Save.

   

Woohoo! 🎉 Your admin will now receive the email below every time a new user logs in.

Objectives

This is a multi-part series where we:

1. Connect NetSuite to the MCP server

2. Connect Claude to the MCP server

3. Run some examples (you are here)

Examples

Next, we will ask Claude to generate a Trial Balance report and provide some analysis and recommendations based on the data. This will help us gain insights into our business performance and identify areas for improvement.

• Let’s type a simple query as shown below.

  

• Claude will request your permission to perform certain actions in your NetSuite account. Read the request carefully and click Allow.

  

• You might need to try a few times as Claude can occasionally fail to retrieve data with one action and then request permission for another action.

  

• Let’s have some fun and ask Claude to create a few data visualizations based on this NetSuite data.📊

  

• Voila. It’s impressive how quickly Claude generates these visualizations.

  

• FYI, to allow Claude to access the Trial Balance report successfully, make sure you have granted the following permissions to the role we created earlier.

  

Closing Note

This technology is still in its early stages and there’s plenty of room for growth and standardization.

The MCP SuiteApp from NetSuite comes with only a limited set of built-in tools. Developers can still expand its capabilities by creating Custom Tools using the new Custom Tool script type. This lets you add more features and custom integrations within the MCP framework, which we’ll cover in future articles.

Be sure to read the risks involved when using this technology from Oracle.

Objectives

This is a multi-part series where we:

1. Connect NetSuite to the MCP server

2. Connect Claude to the MCP server (you are here)

3. Run some examples

Set up NetSuite connector in Claude AI

• Go to Claude.ai in your web browser, then click on the tools icon you see below.

  

• Click Manage connectors.

  

• In the next screen, Click Add custom connector.

  

• Provide a proper Name and the MCP Server URL. For your account, the URL should be in the format: https://<accountid>.suitetalk.api.netsuite.com/services/mcp/v1/all
  
  You can find your account ID from your NetSuite URL in the browser. This is not the ID shown in Company Information (the one with underscores).

  

• Click Add, and then click on Connect.

  

• After clicking Connect, your browser should open a pop-up window. In that window, select the role you assigned to yourself earlier as this role is configured with OAuth 2.0 login.

  

• Now NetSuite will show a big scary message saying that you are giving a third party access to your account which can include viewing personal information and performing actions using the MCP role. This is normal and safe as long as the role you created has only the necessary and limited permissions. Click Allow.

  

• You should now be redirected back to Claude and you should see Configure next to your NetSuite Connector instead of Connect. This means the connection was successful.
  
  FYI, sometimes you might be redirected to a page that looks like an error. If that happens, just go back to Claude and check the Connectors section to confirm the connection. It may be an open bug with Claude.

  

• Go back to the home screen and click the Tools icon again. You should now see your NetSuite connector enabled.

  

Congratulations! 🎉

You’ve successfully connected Claude to your NetSuite instance. Now you can explore, analyze, and access your NetSuite data using plain language, no coding required. Gain powerful insights into your business and have some fun experimenting with what Claude can do.

Let’s move on to some real examples in part 3.

Objectives

Fresh off the heels from an announcement at SuiteWorld, I present a multi-part series where we:

1. Connect NetSuite to the MCP server (you are here)

2. Connect Claude to the MCP server

3. Run some examples

Why did I write this?

There’s an ongoing bet that the future of interacting with tools like NetSuite, Salesforce, and other system-of-records is going to change. It’s a future where we add a purchase order with a line of text to a chat bot. Or where an agent proactively looks out for missing W9s before tax season and alerts you.

That has second order impacts for Oracle itself, and for consultants like me. It takes us out of the work of configuring NetSuite (best automated and left to Cadbury 😉 ) and more into the work of processing engineering and optimization.

Whether you’re an end user, a consultant, or frankly staff at Oracle - you should follow this guide.

What is MCP?

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is the new kid on the integration block introduced by Anthropic (makers of Claude) in 2024. You have probably heard developers mention SOAP and REST when talking about system integrations. While SOAP and REST help web services talk to each other, MCP helps AI models access databases, APIs, and other resources through a standardized interface. It reduces the custom integration work developers previously had to do for each data source.

What we’ll need

• MCP standard tools SuiteApp in NetSuite.

• A custom role.

• Claude AI pro subscription.

Installing MCP standards tools SuiteApp

• In your NetSuite, Go to SuiteApps.

  

• Search for MCP. Click on the shown SuiteApp (below).

  

• Click Install and wait a few minutes.

  

• Refresh the page and you should see it marked as installed.

  

Now we have successfully installed the MCP Standards Tools SuiteApp. This SuiteApp sets up an MCP server within NetSuite allowing your AI model to securely connect and interact with your NetSuite account.

Creating a custom role in NetSuite

Now we need to create a custom role in NetSuite that Claude will use to interact with the MCP server we just set up through the SuiteApp. This approach adds an extra layer of security allowing you to control exactly which records and permissions the AI model can access within your NetSuite account.

• Go to Setup > Users/Roles > Manage Roles > New.

  

• Give the role a clear name (for example, “MCP role”). Make sure to grant access to all subsidiaries if you don’t want the AI users to be limited to a single subsidiary.

  

• Scroll down to the Permissions section and, under the Setup subtab, ensure the following permissions are added. You should also assign additional permissions such as Customers, Transactions, and others depending on the type of data you want your AI model to access within NetSuite.

  

  Pro tip🧠: For record permissions, grant View access if you don’t intend for the AI to create or modify records in NetSuite.

• Click Save and then assign the newly created role to your employee record.

  

Wohoo!! 🎉

We are finally done with all the boring configuration work inside NetSuite and now we can move on to the fun part by setting things up in Claude! This is where all the magic happens and where you will finally see your AI-powered NetSuite connection in action, the part you’ve probably been itching to get to all along.

Go to part 2 where we setup the NetSuite connector in Claude.

Many businesses have transactions that repeat on a regular basis such as monthly rent, insurance premiums, utility bills, or recurring journal entries. Manually entering these transactions each period can be time-consuming and prone to error.

That’s where Memorized Transactions come in. NetSuite provides this feature out of the box to automatically generate recurring transactions you know will be in your accounts, saving you time and improving accuracy.

What is a Memorized Transaction?

A Memorized Transaction is a saved transaction template that NetSuite can recreate on a schedule you define. Instead of re-entering the same data each time, you “memorize” the transaction once, and NetSuite will automatically create it going forward.

For example:

• Monthly rent expense

• Quarterly insurance payment

• Regular journal entries (e.g., accruals, amortizations)

• Service subscription invoices

How to Create a Memorized Transaction

• Navigate to the type of transaction you want to memorize (e.g., Transactions > Financial > Make Journal Entries).

  

• Enter the transaction details as you normally would.

• Before saving, click the Memorize button at the top of the transaction form.

  

• In the next screen, configure below details

  • Enter Name.

  • Select Action: Choose one of the following options:

    • Choose Template Only if you want to create a memorized transaction that will be used as a template, but will not create any actual transactions.

    • Choose Reminder if you want to be reminded when this transaction is due so that you can view and edit it before you save it.

    • Choose Automatic if you want this transaction to automatically post.

      

      Pro Tip🧠: If you’re unsure, start with Reminder until you’re confident the amounts/details will stay consistent. Then switch to Automatic for true “set it and forget it” automation.

• To set the schedule of the automation, click on Recurring Tab and set below details

  • Enter Next Date - this is the date the transaction will be actually created.

  • Enter Repeat Every (e.g., 1, 2).

  • Select Time Period (e.g., monthly, day, week).

  • Select Indefinite if you want this memorized transaction to continue running without an end date.

    

• Click Save.

🎉 Great job! You’ve just created a memorized transaction in NetSuite. From now on, NetSuite will automatically handle this recurring entry based on the schedule and type you selected, saving you time and ensuring consistency in your accounting.

Managing Memorized Transactions

You can view and manage all memorized transactions by going to: Transactions > Other > Enter Memorized Transactions > List.

From here, you can:

• Edit the schedule.

• Pause or delete a memorized transaction.

• Run one immediately if needed.

To create the transaction right away, click Enter next to the transaction.

To create several memorized transactions right away at once, click Enter Multiple.

You can track the status of multiple memorized transactions by going to Transactions > Management > Enter Memorized Transactions > Status.

You’ll see something like this:

🎉 Congratulations! You’ve just learned how to create and manage Memorized Transactions in NetSuite, a handy out-of-the-box feature that saves time, reduces manual work, and keeps your financial records accurate.

The mood is positive, if a little overwhelmed. There’s a lot to digest between the keynotes, the sessions, and chats with Oracle staff. In my canvassing of attendees, I detected heightened interest in using AI at their orgs, but unknowns around what that looks like. A lot of these businesses (mid market, 10-50M AR, 1-2 IT staff) don’t know where to start.

In the coming days, I’ll write an analysis on how I think these new developments (NetSuite Next + agents) impact vendors, partners, and Cadbury alike. If you missed my prior recaps, check out day 0, day 1, and day 2.

There was no keynote today, so I leave you all with photos.

That’s what I felt like this morning, but…what can I say? I love the game. The thrill of meeting new people, the validation of feeling wanted by others who want to talk to me. The prospect of closing deals.

I love the game.

I woke up at 730AM, checked in on Cadbury’s Linear + Slack (shout out to our engineering team for holding down the fort). I do my best to unblock our engineers but sometimes, they just need to make assumptions and push forward.

Grabbed breakfast, and then headed over for the keynote.

My notes:

• As I mentioned in the day 1 recap, they are all in on AI with their NetSuite Next initiative (think ChatGPT hooked up to your NS instance). The rhetoric is centered around making NS the place where you can act on data, rather than just consume it. That is the narrative Oracle is trying to build.

• The Claude MCP integration is live and here’s an example of how a non-profit called EALGreen is using it today:

  • When they take in a donation, a photo is taken of the item. This is fed into Claude to figure out what it is (eg a snowblower).

  • They use Claude to check their inventory in NS, to see if they already have a snowblower. They also use Claude to scrape the internet to find the FMV of the snowblower, and tie it to the donation amount they make.

  • This was built in a few weeks.

• The team dove deeper into agents, and gave an example of a Overdue PO Agent:

  • See a list of overdue POs

  • Ask the agent to follow up with each one via email

  • All the vendors end up replying, except 1, which states they need more time (aka a new due date)

  • You either approve or deny that modification.

• Of note re agents: it respects your role, so your agent can’t do anything your role can’t.

• I’m beginning to see a greater investment in developer tooling. NS realizes every business works differently, so they’re going to provide some general purpose agents (eg an agent that automates a financial close), and also give you the lego blocks to build your own. I suspect many consultants (aka partners) are excited at the prospect of a new business line opening.

After the keynote, I headed over to lunch.

I spent more time on the floor today, and it was great to see what problems vendors were attacking (more on this later). Shout out to Ahad of Everest, Steve of Legion, Tate & Kevin of SystemsAccountants, Erin of Mesh, and Teddie at TFR - it was great to connect/reconnect with all of you.

Afterwards, I headed over to the happy hour NetSuite & SystemsAccountants were hosting. Shout out to Aubrey of NetSuite (the AE for a client we built an integration for) for the invite.

The night wasn’t over though, oh no. You see, when your body is telling you should rest, you do the exact opposite.

You go see Pitbull live.

I then headed over to the venue and grabbed a quick breakfast (the cinnamon rolls were particularly good). Everyone then headed over for the keynote, which was at a separate tent.

It was really cool inside, and Oracle did a great job hyping people up, complete with an artist that performed with drones.

And then the SuiteFather himself came out and gave the keynote. My notes:

• NetSuite Next is what Evan spent the most time and energy on. It’s like if ChatGPT was hooked to your NetSuite instance. It’s an embedded chat dialog box where you can ask questions about your data and your business. It hits GA next year.

• You can ask questions like “Give me open sales orders for specific items” or “Give me sales trend for item xyz”. It is context aware, and will give you different results based on your role (eg if you’re asking about open POs, the CEO would receive financials and the ops person would get inventory insights).

• It can dynamically generate forms. Let’s say you want to add an invoice to a customer. You write that into the chat dialog, and it will return a simplified invoice form.

• One of the coolest demos was around intelligent pricing, where for a given item, you could have NetSuite Next look at a competitor’s pricing for a similar item, and suggest price rule updates.

• There’s also a knowledge base that acts as a document store that you can interrogate with their LLM. It gets interesting when you upload, say, a reimbursement policy. Then when you’re inspecting the reimbursements account, you can interrogate that document with the numbers in front of you.

• Agents are on the scene. Evan demo’d a return management agent that monitors returns by looking for spikes, and then pouring through customer feedback and suggesting a possible reason. Their mantra is reason=>analyze=>propose action.

• They are even bringing agents to developers, with SuiteAgents. You define them in SDF with a descriptor like “This function helps with credit approvals” and then you invoke it in the chat dialog window with “@creditapproval show me xyz”. In other words, you can define custom MCP functions.

• Saving the best for last: NetSuite will officially have dark mode!

After the keynote, I had lunch where I met some awesome people and even got to hand out my brand new book.

After the second keynote (which was mostly forgettable, except when the CFO of the Savannah Bananas was interviewed - super energetic dude), I caught up with some friends in the break area.

Later, I joined Kyle and Kevin of Centric Consulting. They hosted an informal r/netsuite meetup at a bar nearby. Shout out to Centric - if you’re looking for NetSuite help, reach out to them. I also got to meet the wonderful Kelly Davis of CereTax.

At this point, it was 6PM so I grabbed dinner and went to the rest in my hotel. To sleep?

Nay, for sleep is for the weak.

Afterparties beckoned, and my friend Anshul of Brex was hosting tonight so I had to come through.

Ended up hanging for a bit and then walked outside with Garrett Wire of RNWBL and Andrew Li of CloseCore.

And then, at 12:21AM, I finished writing this post and passed out.

From there, I checked in to my hotel and caught up on some Cadbury product planning work. Our team of engineers are building hard, and I didn’t want my absence at SuiteWorld to slow them down.

From there, I went back to the airport to check in on my limo. Yeah that’s right, limo. I rented one to shuttle random attendees from the airport to SuiteWorld. I was nervous at first, but the other sign holders accepted me into their tribe and we shot the breeze about life as a sign holder.

We did two roundtrips total, and I met the fantastic teams at Arizona Autism United & Trivium Life Services (shout out to Aimee and Paula!). We talked about their experience dealing with NetSuite consultants, and ways we could improve that.

I then went into Caesars Forum, got my badge, and headed back to my hotel to catch up on Cadbury stuff. I went back to the Forum for the welcome reception, which was OK, if a little crowded.

Last year, I was a nobody with no connections. This year, the group chat I created has over 25 people in it. I have over ~15 meetings lined up for this week, all inbound, with plenty more outbound I’m working to schedule.

Progress.

Earlier this year, Bailey Cranes tapped me to perform a full NetSuite implementation for them. While we ultimately went live, it took over 3 months.

3 months lost to importing data, writing integrations, and configuring settings. Companies like Bailey deserve to be growing their business, not managing another team of consultants.

Cadbury helps them do that.

It’s an AI powered NetSuite consultant that performs tasks in minutes, rather than days. Simply add it as a user to your sandbox, and 60 seconds later, it’s ready to start working on your tickets.

Whether it’s writing integrations, creating saved searches, or generating SuiteFlow + SuiteScripts, Cadbury does it all—instantly.

I spent over 4 weeks onsite at Bailey’s headquarters in Muskego, WI getting to know their team. I’ve seen first hand how hard they work, creating explosion proof aerial lifts for everyone from our military to commercial aerospace.

They deserve to be doing more of that, rather than managing another team of NetSuite consultants.

Our site: trycadbury.com

Our manifesto: trycadbury.com/manifesto

Last week, NetSuite hosted a fantastic workshop on their Analytics Warehouse module (aka NSAW). It took place in Irvine, close to where I went to college, so it was a ton of fun to be back in my old stomping grounds.

In case you’re unaware of these events, NetSuite routinely hosts them across the country, in a couple formats:

• Inside the Suite: geared towards an audience that is either considering NS or is a brand new user to it. Content is broad, and purposely high level. You’ll see atleast 2-3 reps in the room, and there’s a lot of time for Q&A.

• Learning Lab: hands on tutorials, classroom style. Intended audience is current NS users. You’ll get access to a test instance and they’ll be an educator guiding everyone through an exercise.

• Customer meetups: geared towards current users. Meant for networking and to go deep on a particular feature or module. The NSAW event I went to was of this kind.

Back to the NSAW event - it was held in the private dinner room of a restaurant. About ~30 people came, including 2-3 Oracle staff. The vast majority of attendees were users, running the entire gamut of industry including a doors company, a luxury bath brand, and a pharmaceutical startup1. Most work in finance, though I did meet some in ops and IT administration.

Jeremy Reisman led the session where he presented a deck and some video demos. Couple notes I wote down:

• NSAW is a BI tool, meant to compete with PowerBI and Tableau. It ingests data from various sources (Salesforce, Shopify, ADP, etc), intelligently joins it to your NS data, and produces reports on top of everything.

• There’s a couple angles they’re taking with their pitch:

  • It’s a pain to ask IT + analytics to join a bunch of external data together. Let NSAW do that for you

  • The competitors are a pain to implement, and they’re not targeted towards the finance oriented users NSAW targets

  • Your data is hosted on Oracle’s infra, so you get all the security that comes with that2

• Potential use cases with NSAW:

  • Forecast cash position 3 months to 5 years into the future by combining AR, AP, and payroll data

  • Generate payment risk scores showing which customers are high/medium/low risk

  • Calculate customer churn

• Three ways to integrate with NSAW:

  • Pre-built connectors (easiest - just login credentials needed)3

  • iPaaS solutions like Workato and Boomi

  • Export/import for historical data or systems without APIs

• What about AI?

  • Oracle signed a deal with OpenAI to create a secure, customer-specific AI platform. I suspect they’ll tease this out more at SuiteWorld, and formally ship it next year.

  • There’s an AI assistant that can summarize and visualize existing data. For example, you could open a balance sheet and then ask the chatbot to visualize it & do the reverse (visualization → text summary)4

    

Of all the NetSuite hosted events I went to, this had the most audience energy and participation. There were a lot of questions asked by attendees.

Overall, it was a blast and I want to thank Jeremy and the rest of the Oracle staff for hosting us. I’d highly encourage readers to check out these events. It’s a great way to meet other users, and keep your NS education up to date.

See you at the next event!

Resources:

• Granola notes

• NSAW deck

• NSAW data sheet

If you’re a NetSuite user and interested in joining our invite-only slack community, DM me on LinkedIn. We have folks from Coinbase, Miro, and Olipop already there; we’d love have you too. More info here.

I’ve logged over 12 flights in the past two months, meeting NetSuite users all across the country. Whether it was at ChargeX in LA, SuiteConnect in Chicago, or our first ERPGuy NetSuite dinner here in SF - I’d hear the same thing over and over again:

I want to meet other NetSuite users, but I don’t know where

In response, I’d chime in about local NUGs, r/netsuite, or the NetSuite LinkedIn community. Over time, however, it became difficult to keep giving this advice.

These communities are great, and I’m an active participant in many of them. But they are huge and noisy. Too often, a question from a user ends up cluttered by a dozen responses from vendors and consultants.

Users want to hear from other users, on questions like:

• What is the reputation of this consultant/firm? What are they like to work with?1

• This is a quote I got from Oracle - is this reasonable? Can/should I negotiate?

• Has anybody used module X or Y? How did it help your business?

Such a place doesn’t exist. So we made one.

We’ve launched an invite-only Slack community exclusively for NetSuite users. This community is dedicated space for users to connect, network, and share learnings with other NetSuite practitioners.

We already have some superstars in there, including:

• Mo Bayaa from Olipop

• Jack Primeau from Coinbase

• Madison Farnsworth from Miro

If you’re a NetSuite user and interested in joining, DM me on LinkedIn. We’d love to have you.

TL;DR

• SuiteConnect are a series of day long conferences NetSuite hosts across different cities in the world. Think of it as a micro-dose of SuiteWorld.

• We’re moving from the “lets bolt on AI to everything” era to more elegant use cases of it, and that’s starting to show in the product.

• Continually impressed by the multi-industry and multi-persona appeal of NetSuite. From a drone company to an apparel company, from finance to sales - NetSuite continues to be, well, the Suite for everyone.

What is SuiteConnect?

SuiteConnect are free, day long conferences that NetSuite hosts across the world (but mostly in the US). I went to the one in Chicago and San Francisco. The general format is:

1. Check-in

2. Breakfast + networking

3. Keynote from NetSuite staff + guest speakers (typically NetSuite users, sometimes vendors).

4. Break + networking

5. Talk or learning lab

6. Lunch + networking

7. Talk or learning lab

8. Evening reception

It’s a great place to see a preview of NetSuite’s product roadmap, self educate yourself about the product, and network with others. Speaking of attendance, the audience was a great cross-section of customers (~70%), vendors (~20%), and NetSuite staff (~10%).

What I saw

The day kicked off with a keynote from Evan Goldberg. Couple takeaways:

• NS views finance as the cornerstone of every business, and tailors their product around that worldview. NS is pitched as the operating system for one’s entire business, covering operations + HR + sales + finance.1

• A lot of messaging around educating customers about the entirety of NS. I got the sense that the average user doesn’t know how powerful the product is. This corroborates the massive amount of education programming NS invests in, which probably doubles as a potent sales channel for upsells.

• The AI fever is receding. I saw less “lets bolt on a LLM to generate product description”-esque features, and more thoughtful uses of these models. For example, they’re rolling out a fraud detection feature (eg a large furniture expense hitting the MISC account instead of the office expense account, thus triggering an alert).

• They talked about agents, and shared some of their philosophy around them (uncover patterns, recommend actions, automate workflows) but didn’t share any examples of truly autonomously acting agents. I suspect they’re still building here.

After Evan spoke, we heard from some users of NetSuite. No important takeaways from here other than the impressive diversity they’re able to summon. You had everyone from an apparel company (Adam from Marine Layer) to an AI company (Erica from Cohere) to a drone company (Barak from Saildrone). Hearing how these companies customize NS to their needs was fascinating to hear.

What I learned

NSAW

I went to the NSAW (NS Analytics Warehouse) learning lab, which was a lot of fun and run by an individual whose name I’m forgetting but I remember he had a lot of fun giving this presentation in his southern accent.

NSAW solves the following problem: there’s a ton of joins that NS data is spread across. This can result in a difficult UX and slow performance. NSAW vacuums in this data, auto-joins it for you, and gives a series of prepared read-only views.

I suspect the motivation is the current friction it can take for a question about the business to be answered. This typically has to flow through people (an administrator, a controller) or in extreme cases, a developer.

Preparing for releases

Clients often ask me how to prepare the business for new NS releases. ACS gave a great talk about that:

• Do three things:

  • Learn: read through the release notes

  • Plan: understand what part of the notes overlap with your system

  • Test: focus on approval workflows and custom scripts. Look at high traffic parts of your instance.

ACS offers custom support, too. If you’re an ACS optimized customer, you’ll get a spreadsheet that covers impact to your instance, and areas on where to focus testing on.

Closing

Overall, I had a wonderful time and met some amazing people. Shout to Kim Boyd and Gerson Rodriguez for educating me about the NetSuite community and product. If you’re looking for help on the staffing side, reach out to the wonderful Tate James at SystemsAccountants. And if you need any help with vendor + contract management, let Alex & Ben at GateKeeper take care of you.

See you all SuiteWorld!

If you’re interested in my NetSuite services (technical or functional), I currently have availability for 2025. Please message me on LinkedIn.

Objectives

In this guide, we’re going to:

• Understand what a PO & PO approval are [you are here]

• Attempt to build a multi-level PO approval workflow in NetSuite using SuiteApprovals, and understand its shortcomings

• Successfully build a multi-level PO approval workflow in NetSuite using SuiteFlow

What is a Purchase Order?

Suppose we run a chairs company called Chairs Inc. We make chairs out of raw materials like wood, linen, plastic, and paint. Our company has to buy these materials on a frequent basis from suppliers like timber companies and paint companies. In fact, our ability to reliably procure these materials have a huge impact on our business: no wood, no chair.

A Purchase Order (PO) is a formal document issued by a chair company like ours (the buyer) to a supplier like a timber company (the seller). Here’s an example of one for Chairs Inc:

What is a PO approval flow?

Once our team at Chairs Inc decides it needs these raw materials, it puts together a PO internally. Before it ready’s to reach the supplier, it has to be approved. This is a standard oversight mechanism that can happen for a couple reasons:

• Finance needs to confirm there’s sufficient budget

• Manufacturing needs to confirm it’s the correct materials

• Legal needs to vet service agreements / contracts

Different companies will have different considerations. For our company, let’s assume the following flow:

I’m a software engineer so I like to view things in code. Here’s the pseudocode for the above:

def approve_po(po)
   if manufacturing_approves(po):
      if po.amount > 1000:
         if finance_approves(po):
            if po.amount > 10000:
               if leadership_approves(po):
                  po.set_status(approved)
               else:
                  po.set_status(disapproved)
            else:
               po.set_status(approved)
         else:
            po.set_status(disapproved)
      else:
         po.set_status(approved)
   else:
      po.set_status(disapproved)

How do we build this in NetSuite?

There are three ways to natively build approval flows in NetSuite: SuiteApprovals, SuiteFlow, and SuiteScript. Let’s try using SuiteApprovals because it’s a no-code method that anyone can approach.

Next

Click here to go to part 2 of our tutorial.

If you’re interested in my NetSuite services (technical or functional), I currently have availability for 2025. Please message me on LinkedIn.