One potentially confusing aspect of NetSuite is the apparent overlap between Enable Features and the three major Preferences: General Preferences, Set Preferences, and Accounting Preferences. However, each of these sections serves a unique purpose. Understanding the main goals of each of these sections will help you to anticipate which category includes a specific function.
Enable Features
The Enable Features page (located under Setup > Company > Enable Features) allows you to control the features that you have access to in NetSuite. On this page, you will see all the features that you could be using in your NetSuite instance. Whether or not the general users of NetSuite in your company do have access to these features, however, depends on whether or not the administrator has turned on those features.
The menu on the Enable Features page includes a category for every aspect of NetSuite, from features that apply generally to your company and features that help you manage transactions to features related to CRM and features that control your accounting systems. If you want to drill down more deeply into the specifics of the features available to you on Enable Features, check out this page in the Help Center.
The Preferences
The key to differentiating between Enable Features and each of these Preference categories lies in understanding that Enable Features is the broader category. What you can do under the Preferences will always be more specific than what you can do under Enable Features.
General Preferences
The General Preferences page, like the Enable Features page, is located under Setup > Company > General Preferences. So, what can you control on the General Preferences page? While Enable Features controls which NetSuite features occur in your NetSuite instance, General Preferences controls the appearance of some of those features. For example, what date format do you want to see in NetSuite? Or, when you open up a list of records, how many rows do you see on a single page? These are the kinds of things that General Preferences controls.
General Preferences also has several subtabs. The subtab Overriding Preferences is perhaps the most significant of these subtabs. In this subtab, the administrator can control what the individual users of NetSuite are allowed to customize in their personal experience of NetSuite. In General Preferences, the administrator sets the default appearance of certain things for the whole company. However, the administrator can permit individuals to override certain of these defaults with the user’s own personal preferences.
Set Preferences
What is the exact difference between Set Preferences and General Preferences? These can be easily confused, but there’s an easy way to differentiate them. Set Preferences deals with any user’s personal preferences. When you log into NetSuite, how do things look for you? Set Preferences controls how things look on your NetSuite instance through your own personal login.
You can access Set Preferences directly under the home tab. When you understand that Set Preferences is for personal preferences, then it makes sense that this page is located under the home tab. When you hover over the home tab, you have only two options: your own, personalized dashboard and your own, personalized preferences.
Remember the override option under General Preferences? If your administrator has permitted you to override a general company preference, then that option will appear for you under Set Preferences. Alternatively, if your administrator hasn’t given you permission to do something or to access something, then it won’t appear at all in your Set Preferences.
Accounting Preferences
Hopefully you’re not confused yet! We have one last page to discuss: Accounting Preferences. You can find this page under Setup > Accounting > Accounting Preferences. The confusing thing about Accounting Preferences is that there is also an Accounting subtab under Enable Features. So, if you need to change something related to Accounting, which page should you go to?
Accounting Preferences, like General Preferences, is more specific than Enable Features. When considering which page you need—whether Accounting Preferences or Enable Features—you should ask yourself, is this an actual accounting feature (like accounts receivable or vendor prepayments), or is this a specific functionality that you can adjust within those features? If you need to adjust a more specific aspect of a broader accounting feature, then you need the Accounting Preferences page.
Conclusion
If you’ve made it this far—congratulations! Having a high-level understanding of what differentiates these pages in NetSuite will help you to better understand and remember the specific elements that occur on each page. In the next couple of posts in our SuiteFoundation series, we will dig deeper into Enable Features, exploring some of the specific things you can do with it. Be sure to subscribe to our mailing list so that you don’t miss out on any of our upcoming posts!