Nonprofits face an evolving environment as they work to re-establish themselves. Aside from the obvious concerns about financial stability and the related need for better planning, budgeting and cost control, the nonprofit sector is seeing accelerated technological innovation, a continued move toward online giving and more reliance on remote work and virtual events.

NetSuite 2021 Release 2 is packed with new features and capabilities providing nonprofits with unprecedented financial transparency. Teams can use the enhancements to more clearly tie dollars to outcomes, better manage funds and grants and improve the constituent experience.


Delivering Your Mission

  • The new Development Director role and dashboard introduces a customized fundraising role based on NetSuite Sales Center, with a dashboard delivering metrics such as donor retention and fundraising efficiency.

  • The improved nonprofit deployment model employs a new Update Verification SuiteApp and a set of scripts to simplify updates to all nonprofit SuiteApps. Nonprofit users can confirm their readiness to receive bundle updates in the Verification SuiteApp, which also serves as a checklist of pre-update tasks and gives guidance during implementation.


Smart Financials and Operational Automation

  • An enhancement to the expense commitment and budget validation feature ensures that budgets are followed by providing an option to validate purchase requests, orders and vendor bills against available budget set up in NetSuite’s native Budget record.
  • Organizations can now email invoices that link directly to an online payment portal where customers can view and pay their bill via credit or debit card or other online payment method. They can pay partially or in full depending on rules you set, and NetSuite automatically records the payment accordingly.
  • Nonprofits can now add project managers as approvers in the enhanced SuiteApprovals. Project managers can review, approve and/or reject project-based transactions, giving them more control over project budgets and flexibility in the approval process.
  • Users can elect that changes made to the COGs or Asset account be reflected only on future transactions entered in the system using a new preference settable in the Accounting Preference tab. This preserves accurate data in past transactions and reports.
  • Automated cash application reconciliation automatically matches imported bank payments with open invoices. General Ledger payments are automatically created in NetSuite, reducing manual invoice entry and clearing.
  • Teams can now consolidate purchase requisitions across subsidiaries with the new cross-subsidiary requisitions and procurement feature. Purchased items are always received at the target subsidiary, and cross-subsidiary transactions are automatically cross-charged to balance intercompany accounts.


Continuous Employee Engagement

  • The introduction of automated performance reviews adds kudos given during a review period to an employee's performance review. Automated notifications tell reviewers and employees when a review requires action, speeding up the review process and keeping both parties engaged.
  • Customized performance review acknowledgments bring flexibility to the language of required acknowledgments and eliminate the need for employees to sign additional acknowledgments.
  • Employees and managers can see current goal status via enhanced performance management UI, leading to higher goal achievement rates and faster manager approval of reviews.
  • The new ability to capture areas of focus in performance reviews encourages better alignment between employee and manager and lets HR report on focus area data to spot competency gaps.
  • Rules-based formulas are used to calculate employer match amounts for 401(k) plans with the new automated 401(k) calculations feature. Employer matches are automatically updated when employee contributions change, reducing related manual processes and maintaining compliance with relevant laws.
  • New retirement plan calculation enhancements add age-matching calculations for employees over 50 and automatically calculate catch-up amounts if employees are eligible. The enhancements ensure compliance with IRS retirement plan contribution limits and prevent employees from over-contributing.


Additional Resources

Any customer who's gone through previous NetSuite refreshes knows that no blog post can do justice to all of the new functions and capabilities in NetSuite 2021 Release 2.

For a more complete picture of how nonprofit organizations can take advantage of the new features, read the release notes.

Most importantly, don't forget to request access to your Release Preview test account. Nothing substitutes for hands-on access to see how all the new features will work with your data, workflows and customizations.

The preceding is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, timing, and pricing of any features or functionality described for Oracle’s products may change and remains at the sole discretion of Oracle Corporation.