Everywhere one looks in the business world, industries are facing challenging transitions, and the nonprofit world is no different. Nonprofits find themselves having to adapt to shifting donor expectations and new regulations, as well as compete more than ever for donors and volunteers. Meanwhile, the frenetic pace of technology is forcing them to refine how they manage program delivery and provide the financial transparency that donors have come to expect.

NetSuite has been on the frontlines of this transition, having developed a deep understanding of nonprofits and their challenges through its Social Impact program, which provides donated and discounted cloud software that enables these organizations to streamline their operations and focus on their missions.

NetSuite 2019 Release 2 includes new features and functions that provide nonprofits with additional financial transparency and compliance capabilities, enable them to better manage funds and grants and allow them to transform the constituent experience by unifying finance and fundraising.

Equipped to Succeed

NetSuite has enhanced the set of tools nonprofits rely on in its 2019 Release 2. Here's what some of those enhancements will bring to nonprofit organizations:

  • The new Project Budgeting and Scheduling experience simplifies the task for grant and program managers. Budgets can be built quickly and easily from within the new Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) hierarchical grid. Automatic calculations can be generated using Estimate to Complete (ETC), and automatic cost calculations and flexible periodic budget distributions are now supported. And Budget Versions makes it possible to explore the impacts of different approaches to projects before committing to one.

  • The tedium of bank reconciliations is alleviated with the ability to import bank data of any file format, from any financial institution, directly into NetSuite. Enhancements enable the creation of custom bank statement parsers to read bank files in any format, as well as direct bank connections for automatic file upload via SFTP connection. What's more, the new Bank Statement Parser SuiteApp includes out-of-the-box parsers supporting the MT940, BAI2 and OFX file formats.
  • Vendor deposits can be easily added and applied against open bills from within NetSuite. Similarly, vendor deposits can be recorded, tracked and applied against a specific bill or different bills for the same vendor. Vendor Prepayment makes it possible to pay vendors before a purchase order is accepted, and it's now possible to create standalone vendor prepayments and apply them against related bills.
  • Multi-Sub Customer/Vendor functionality makes it simple for larger nonprofits to manage intercompany relationships with vendors. Single customers and vendors can be assigned across multiple subsidiaries, reducing the manual effort of managing single subsidiary customers and vendors and ultimately reducing the number of customers and vendors by replacing them multi-sub ones.

Learn More About NetSuite 2019 Release 2

There's much more for nonprofits in the updated NetSuite than can be covered in a single blog post, so be sure to check out the release notes for a full list of benefits that NetSuite's latest release can bring to your nonprofit organization and the blog highlighting new functionality for all organizations.

Finally, for a hands-on primer, be sure to access your included preview account as soon as it's available. There, you'll be able to see how the new features will work with your own data and get a jumpstart on maximizing the impact of NetSuite 2019 Release 2.