What do you know about departments, classes, and locations in NetSuite? What are these features, what do they do, and why are they so central to your NetSuite account? Let’s check it out!
Classifications Overview
The departments, classes, and locations features are all located under the Classifications section of the Company tab in Enable Features.
When these features are turned on, you can create records for each classification. And once the classifications records have been set up, they can be associated with other records, enabling you to organize and identify the data in those records. Using classifications to identify records and transactions gives you a powerful tool for understanding and reporting on data.
If you have OneWorld, then the primary means of organization for your company is its subsidiaries. You would use the classifications, however, within each subsidiary. For this reason, when you create new classifications records you always have the option of associating the classification with a subsidiary.
The Three Classifications
Let’s take a closer look at each of the three types of classifications.
Departments
First, there are departments. As the name suggests, departments are the official segments of your business, such as the marketing department or the accounting department.
Creating a new department is simple. Navigate to Setup > Company > Classifications > Departments > New. On this page, all you have to do is name the department, though you also have the option of associating your new department with a parent department and/or a subsidiary. In the event that your company ceases to use this particular department in the future, there is an inactive checkbox that allows you to avoid deleting the department altogether or having an unused department clutter your department list on records and transactions.
Once you have created department records for the departments in your company, you are ready to start selecting them on records and transactions. For example, on an employee record for a sales rep, you would select the sales department option. You can also associate departments with transactions, such as a purchase order. Connecting departments to transactions enables you to run reports on those transactions by department.
Classes
Next, there are classes. You would use classes when you want to categorize records and transactions in ways that do not fall under the departments or locations categories. For example, suppose you want to categorize your sales by corporate sales, retail store sales, and webstore sales. Each of those would be a different class. As with departments, classes can have parent classes. So the sales classes could be further divided into new and returning customers within each class.
To create a new class, navigate to Setup > Company > Classifications > Classes > New. As with creating departments, when you create classes you would name the new class and have the option of associating that new class with a parent class and/or a subsidiary.
Locations
Finally, there are locations. Locations are exactly what they sound like–the physical, geographical locations of your business. The location records you create can be as broad as “East Coast” and “West Coast” or as narrow as “Boston Warehouse” and “Administrative Office.” Making a broader location the parent record for a more specific location allows you to be exact when you use locations on records and transactions. It also increases the accuracy of your reporting for both the parent and the child location records.
To create a new location, navigate to Setup > Company > Classifications > Locations > New. While new departments and classes simply needed to be named and associated with a subsidiary, new locations require much more information. Some of the standard NetSuite fields you might fill out while creating a new location include the type of location (whether store, warehouse, or undefined); the time zone of the location; the address of the location; the parameters for location-specific document numbering; a logo for the location; and several inventory options if this location stocks inventory.
After you have defined a location record, you are ready to start using it on records and transactions. You can create up to 1,000 location records. In order to create more than 1,000 location records, you would need to enable the Advanced Item Location Configuration feature. With that feature, you are no longer limited on the number of locations you may create.
Per-Line Classifications
So far, when we’ve mentioned using the classifications as identifiers on transactions we’ve meant that the entire transaction (at the header level) would be associated with a particular classification. In other words, a sales order might be linked to one department (like the sales department) and one location (like the Boston Warehouse). But what do you do if each line on a transaction needs to be associated with a different classification? For example, you might have a sales order where the line items are in different warehouses. Setting your per-line preferences for each classification type gives you the flexibility to select classification records on the line level. To enable these preferences, navigate to Setup > Accounting > Preferences > Accounting Preferences.
Under the Classifications section of the General tab, you’ll see Allow Per-Line Departments and Allow Per-Line Classes. The Allow Per-Line Locations preference will be available if your company does not use the Multi-Location Inventory feature, since per-line location is automatically enabled with that feature.
Conclusion
Using departments, classes, and locations in NetSuite allows users to confidently organize and track key business data. No matter what your business does, chances are you’ll need to use all three of these essential NetSuite features. To have more NetSuite feature spotlight blogs delivered right to your inbox each week, subscribe to the SuiteRep newsletter below!