Automating Business Process Using NetSuite SuiteFlows Bestir Software Services, India Anand Rajaram
Introducing NetSuite SuiteFlow It is hard to keep track of financial and client activities, especially in today's fast-paced business environment. This is where, NetSuite, the number one Cloud ERP, comes into the picture. Currently, more than 40,000 companies use NetSuite to align their business processes and manage their financial inflows and outflows. Consequently, with the advent of the NetSuite SuiteFlow, automation and as a result of this, faster and accurate handling of business processes has become possible. The major advantage of the SuiteFlow is that it provides a customizable user interface. This means that you as a business entity can now modify your NetSuite configurations and flows by yourself to reflect your business processes and rules. To put it simply, NetSuite is like clay; you can mold it to suit your business needs.
Customize your NetSuite instance Depending on your company's business needs, you can customize using various tools such as:  Form field customization  NetSuite Suitescripts In this post, you have an example of automating a business process using SuiteFlow. You will review the other customization options in subsequent posts.
What is NetSuite SuiteFlow?
The NetSuite SuiteFlow helps automation of a business process for any NetSuite record. Examples are transaction approval, lead-nurturing, and managing records or any transaction in your business that needs a set of activities to follow through. Using SuiteFlow, you define a workflow for a particular record, and the stages (state) of the record as it moves through the business process. For every state, an action can be defined. Examples of actions can be 'sending emails' or 'adding buttons to a record form before the workflow completes' or 'transitions to another state'. Triggers are events that occur when you view, create or update records in NetSuite. Once you define a workflow for a particular record, you can add Triggers. The triggers (i.e. events) can be the starting point of the workflow, i.e. NetSuite starts an instance of the workflow on the record when the event occurs.
Instantiating a Workflow NetSuite also provides options to instantiate workflows on a record based on a schedule. A typical use-case for the SuiteFlow would be Purchase-order approval. E.g. In order for the Purchase Order to attain 'Approved' status, the following two roles should approve the purchase order in the sequence given below: 1. Operation Manager 2. Stock Executive
If either of the roles does not approve the PO, the purchase order cannot proceed to the next stages of operation.
Workflow Approval Flow
Creating a Workflow in NetSuite.  Ensure you enable 'SuiteFlow' in your NetSuite account. To enable this feature, go to Setup > Company > Enable Features. On the SuiteCloud tab, select the SuiteFlow box and click Save.
Enabling SuiteFlow
In 'New Workflow' section, enter your new workflow’s Name, ID, and Description.
New Workflow section
Select the initiation option for the workflow. If the initiation option is set to “Event” based, select the appropriate event and trigger type for the workflow to fire. If the initiation option is set to “Schedule”, set the appropriate schedule conditions for the workflow to fire. Click on Save. Now you have saved the basic details of the workflow
Saving the basic details of the Workflow
To define the action for the workflow, double click on the “State” and define the action conditions i.e. action name, action ID, action trigger point, etc. accordingly. After defining the actions, click on save. Your workflow is now ready to process your records accordingly based on the selected trigger.
Summary You can use the NetSuite SuiteFlow feature to set up a number of workflows in your NetSuite account and automate various business needs and processes. This way, you will definitely increase your operational efficiency and reduce errors! Bestir has a capable NetSuite functional and technical team. If you need any help on NetSuite SuiteFlows or NetSuite customization's, please contact us at
http://bestirtech.com/contactus. or you can visit us at http://bestirtech.com/services/netsuite