How to optimize NetSuite vendor payment processes
What’s the best way to streamline the vendor bill payment process in NetSuite?
Oracle NetSuite is a powerful ERP that helps rapidly growing companies automate and streamline business processes. Highly customizable and flexible, NetSuite is a valuable asset because it adapts as businesses grow and their needs and processes change.
NetSuite customers can use the platform’s built-in accounts payable features to process and pay supplier invoices. However, this manual process is more suited to small businesses that don’t have large invoice volumes. Larger companies may need a more efficient invoice processing system, especially if they’re growing and expect invoice volumes to increase.
In this article, you’ll learn how to streamline the vendor payment process in NetSuite. We’ll walk through the basic NetSuite bill payment workflow and explore the benefits of using alternative ERP payment processing solutions.
We’ll start with an overview of the supplier payment process.
Steps of the supplier payment process
Most businesses use a five-step process to pay suppliers.
- A supplier sends an invoice to the company’s AP department.
- The AP department enters the invoice data into NetSuite or another ERP or accounting system and assigns GL codes.
- AP verifies the invoice by matching it to the associated purchase order and sends it to an approver.
- The approver signs off on the invoice and forwards it for payment.
- The AP department pays the invoice according to the supplier’s payment terms.
While NetSuite accounts payable can partially automate some of these steps, manual intervention is still needed for many tasks, such as vendor payments. Let’s take a closer look at the NetSuite vendor bill payment workflow to better understand the process and how it can be improved.
Making vendor payments in NetSuite accounts payable
NetSuite’s vendor bill payment process begins after the vendor bill is approved. Users have two options: they can pay one or more bills to a single vendor, or they can pay several bills to multiple vendors.
How to pay single vendors
There are two ways to pay bills to a single vendor in NetSuite:
- Make a bill payment using “Pay Single Vendor” in the Payables menu.
- Pay a single vendor from an individual bill within the payables list.
Let’s walk through how to make an ACH payment to a supplier using each method.
To use the Pay Single Vendor method, navigate to Transactions > Payables > Pay Single Vendor, then check the To ACH box. Next, complete the rest of the payment form. There are several fields where you can change the payment details or add additional information. For example, if you use the multiple currencies feature in NetSuite, you can select the currency of the bills you want to pay. After you have completed the form, click Save to make the payment.
The payables list method is a simple and quick way to pay single vendor bills. Begin by navigating to Transactions > Payables > Enter Bills to open the payables list. Next, click View beside the vendor bill you want to pay, then click Make Payment on the bill and check the To ACH box. Then, confirm that the payment information is correct and check the Apply box next to any bill credits you wish to apply to the payment amount. Finally, check To Be Printed or Voucher to add a check or voucher to the print queue and click Save to complete the bill payment.
Paying bills to multiple vendors
The manual pay single vendor workflow allows you to pay one or more bills to a single vendor, but it’s a very slow way to pay multiple vendors. To help streamline the vendor payment process, NetSuite also provides a process to pay multiple vendors.
To begin, go to Transactions > Payables > Pay Bills to open the Pay Bills screen. Then, in the A/P Account field, select the accounts payable account to associate with the payment, and in the Account field select the bank account you want to use to pay the bills. Next, select the period you want the payment to post to, and enter a date in the Start Date field to filter the transactions in the list. Check the To Be Printed box to print the bill payments and select the Use Bill-To Address from Vendor box to use the vendor’s default billing address. Then, click the boxes in the Pay column next to the bills you want to pay and select any credits you want to offset the bill amounts. As you select bills to be paid, the total payment amount will appear in the Amount field at the top of the page. Finally, click Save to submit the bills for payment.
Streamlining the vendor bill payment process
Although it’s an improvement over managing payments manually, the NetSuite vendor bill payment process is slow and inefficient. Users must navigate through multiple screens, select payment options, enter payment details, and confirm bills before payment. Because it’s partially manual, it’s prone to errors and lacks scalability to handle increasing invoice volumes.
NetSuite customers have several options to streamline the process.
Pay vendor bills through electronic bank payments
NetSuite’s payment management feature includes access to the Electronic Bank Payments module, which allows customers to make electronic funds transfers (EFTs) to vendors via ACH, direct deposit, and other methods. To streamline vendor bill payments, customers can purchase the optional Advanced Electronic Bank License to access automation features such as automated payment batch creation and a multi-currency processing solution.
Implement an integrated SuiteApp payment processing solution
Customers can streamline the vendor bill payment process by using an integrated SuiteApp payment processing solution. SuiteApps are third-party applications that integrate with NetSuite to augment its functionality. By using a dedicated payment solution, customers can access advanced payment automation features while retaining NetSuite’s power and flexibility. Leading financial automation SuiteApps, like Stampli, synchronize vendor records, transaction data, and invoice details with NetSuite in real time, ensuring data integrity across the organization.
NetSuite’s vendor bill payment workflow is best suited for small businesses with light invoice processing requirements. Businesses with larger volumes of vendor invoices may find it inefficient and difficult to scale to meet their needs. Automating vendor bill processing in NetSuite using an integrated payment processing solution streamlines the process, saving time and making it easier for AP teams to manage spending.
Top 5 benefits of automating vendor bill payments in NetSuite
NetSuite customers who implement integrated payment automation solutions realize numerous benefits. Automating vendor bill payment processes ensures fast and accurate payment processing, eliminating errors, missed and late payments and improving vendor relationships.
Let’s look at the top 5 benefits, as shared by real users, of integrating financial process automation platforms with NetSuite to manage vendor bill payments:
1. One platform for all vendor bills simplifies processing
Leading financial automation solutions simplify the vendor bill payment process by bringing invoice and payment processing workflow onto a single platform. They prevent delays, errors, and missed payments by ensuring every invoice is captured and processed.
One Stampli customer describes how Stampli has eliminated ‘exceptions’ that were causing delays in their NetSuite vendor bill processing workflow. “Stampli is the solution we’ve been looking for,” they said, listing how Stampli has transformed their accounts payable. “Easy Set-Up and Integration with NetSuite. Option to export a single document to NetSuite rather than sync the entire system. Payments are managed by your payment services. There is no complication burden to another exclusive payment service.
“Provides a single source of receiving and processing ALL of our bills into one platform and syncing with NetSuite. We no longer have ‘exceptions’ with our complicated processes that a platform cannot handle. If Stampli cannot handle it by its native features alone, there are simple workarounds that have been able to work out perfectly. No expensive customizations or bypassing of their system is required.”
2. Improved invoice matching reduces errors and rejected invoices
Manual invoice capture, data entry, and coding processes in NetSuite are susceptible to errors. If these errors aren’t detected, they can create exceptions during the NetSuite approvals workflow, causing delays as approvers and AP employees investigate the discrepancies.
Financial automation platforms automate invoice capture and coding and enforce internal controls to significantly reduce processing errors and delays.
Stampli synchronizes accurate, real-time invoice and purchase order data with NetSuite to enable precise three-way matching and reduce exceptions. It uses a sophisticated validation algorithm to ensure data integrity and keep NetSuite lists in sync without loading delays.
One Stampli customer shared how Stampli has improved three-way matching accuracy and reduced errors and payment delays: “Stampli has been a game-changer for our finance operations. It has significantly streamlined our Accounts Payable process, making it more efficient and error-free. The automation features have saved us countless hours of manual work, allowing our team to focus on other important tasks. After a very quick and simple integration, our employees adopted it very quickly and have been loving it ever since.
“[It] automatically processes invoices, identifies duplicates, and matches them to purchase orders. This has greatly reduced the risk of human error and ensured accurate and timely payments.”
3. Scalable to support business growth
Companies invest in NetSuite because it’s a flexible and scalable platform that reliably supports business growth. However, as they grow, they may find the growing scale and complexity of their accounts payable needs may exceed NetSuite’s AP automation capabilities. In that case, they may need to graduate to a dedicated AP automation system like Stampli.
Integrated AP automation solutions let growing businesses transform their AP productivity within NetSuite. Leading platforms like Stampli have the capacity to process large invoice volumes, interpret complex invoices and documents, handle international payments, and support multi-location scenarios.
Many financial automation platforms promise to support NetSuite’s functionality. However, they often fail to deliver, and customers find themselves compromising how they run NetSuite. As a Built for NetSuite provider, Stampli is committed to supporting NetSuite’s full native functionality, fields, and use cases now and in the future. With Stampli, NetSuite customers get full P2P automation without changing or compromising anything in NetSuite, and they won’t be constrained from changing or adding anything to NetSuite in the future.
In a July 2024 review, the AP manager at a growing business describes how Stampli supports their business growth: “My finance team knows how much I love Stampli because I sing its praises so often,” they say. “We recently outgrew our old system and needed to look for something affordable and scalable that would interrupt our day-to-day operations as little as possible. That’s when we found Stampli. It’s incredibly easy to use, allows me to keep up with A/P on my own, thanks to my buddy Billy the Bot. Implementation was quick and quite easy, and while we don’t run into problems often, customer support is always super fast to respond and kind to explain what’s happening and how to resolve it.
“Stampli is helping me streamline the PO billing process. Our old A/P system did not pull PO information from our ERP, whereas Stampli does and cuts out an extra time-consuming step or two.”
4. Fast and accurate ACH reconciliation
The manual ACH reconciliation process in NetSuite is slow, error-prone, and often frustrating. Because banks usually lump ACH payments on statements, NetSuite users must manually review each transaction. One NetSuite customer recently described their struggles with the process on Reddit: “Our accounting department is having a heck of a time trying to reconcile hundreds/thousands of ecommerce deposits. Does anyone have an easy [way] to do this? In this example, the bank account that is getting the funds is not tied to NetSuite, so they have a statement and the NetSuite transactions that they are trying to reconcile, but it takes forever and it’s very easy to miss things. They are not confident in the reconciliation at this point.”
Integrated payment automation platforms support ACH reconciliations by synchronizing payment data with NetSuite, ensuring that AP teams have access to accurate and up-to-date information. However, many don’t have the capability to break out ACH transactions, meaning ACH reconciliation is still a slow manual process. Stampli Direct Pay provides detailed bank statements that list ACH transactions individually, making reconciliations much easier.
“So many good things to say about Stampli: Ease of Implementation, Integration, and very responsive support team!,” says one customer. “Also very quick in customizing a report for Positive Pay to match our banks needs…Especially appreciate the ACH payment process, the transactions post to our bank as individual transactions and not as a daily batch total which makes bank reconciliation fast and simple.”
5. Maximize current and future investment in NetSuite
NetSuite represents a significant investment in terms of time, money, and resources for many companies. Yet, despite its power and capability, it still may not meet a growing company’s accounts payable needs.
Third-party financial automation solutions promise to augment NetSuite’s AP processes. However many of these solutions don’t support its full functionality. Businesses could end up investing even more money to get a “solution” that limits how they use NetSuite — which is the last thing they want.
Only Stampli’s pre-built integration provides full AP capabilities while supporting NetSuite’s native functionality. Stampli integrates with NetSuite in days, with no IT rework or changes to existing processes.
In a TrustRadius review, an accounting supervisor describes their experience integrating Stampli with NetSuite: “Stampli Integration with NetSuite is Great!… We use Stampli to process all invoices and credit memos into our ERP. It matches things very well and integrates with very little issues. The time-consuming check printing problem is now out of our hands! This is a huge plus allowing staff to move on to other more important tasks.
“We recently added Direct Pay. This add-on has allowed us to improve our AP processing time and the Option of ACH payments to our vendors is a huge plus! No more delayed USPS mail wait times or missing checks to replace!”
Optimize NetSuite vendor payment workflows with Stampli
Stampli provides complete visibility and control over vendor payments in NetSuite. Its core financial automation platform, combined with Stampli Direct Pay and Stampli Card, gives you the tools to transform how you manage AP spending.
True 3-way matching
Stampli supports 3-way matching against the item receipt, not just the PO, so AP teams don’t need to go into NetSuite to find the receipt.
Streamlined AP processing
Stampli eliminates manual AP tasks to improve invoice processing efficiency and accuracy. With a shorter invoice processing cycle, you’ll pay vendors on time.
Seamless NetSuite integration
Stampli Direct Pay and Stampli Card automatically sync purchases as payment receipts in NetSuite. Finance teams can manage all invoices and vendor payments in one place.
Dynamic approval workflows
Each payment approval in Stampli Direct Pay is based on a dynamic approval workflow that ensures the right approvers sign off.
Unified payment platform
Stampli unites check, ACH, and credit card payment processes onto a single platform. Vendors can be paid quickly, and no payment is missed.
Uniformity across financial reporting
If you use saved searches for reports that originate in NetSuite, the reports generated in Stampli will be consistent, ensuring uniformity across all financial reporting.
“An amazing solution!”
Stampli is “an amazing solution,” according to one financial controller. “We have been using Stampli for close to three years now, and we’ve literally had zero issues. The connection with Netsuite is seamless, any updates/upgrades we want to do are easy to implement and everyone in the company is very happy with the approval process.
“Overall, it’s a great product that does exactly what’s advertised — make the AP function more efficient and easier for everyone!
“Finally, in the odd occasions where we needed some customer support (for trivial issues), I couldn’t have asked for a better team. They were always helpful, quick to reply and very accommodating!
“After implementing Stampli, invoices are processed within one day and sent for approval. Integration with Netsuite is automatic, and the fact that you can record invoices as payments just makes things ever easier for us; all we have to do is reconcile our banks.”
Transform your NetSuite vendor management workflows. Contact a Stampli NetSuite expert today to set up a free demo.
