If any of your customers need to have transactions with more than one of your subsidiaries, then you should look into the NetSuite Multi Subsidiary Customer feature. Let’s take a look at how this feature works in NetSuite.
Overview
At its core, the NetSuite Multi Subsidiary Customer feature allows you to associate multiple subsidiaries with your customers and subcustomers. For each customer or subcustomer, one subsidiary would be listed as the primary subsidiary, while other subsidiaries would be available for selection on the line level. Transactions involving any of these customers will connect to the customer’s main subsidiary by default, but you would have the option of choosing any secondary subsidiaries on each transaction. One main benefit from connecting transactions with the appropriate subsidiary is increased accuracy in transaction and subsidiary reporting.
Setting Up the Multi Subsidiary Customer Feature
To set up this feature, you just need to turn it on in Enable Features and associate the appropriate subsidiaries on customer records.
Enable the Feature
You can enable this feature on the ERP General section of the Company tab in Enable Features. Then, save the page and navigate to a customer record.
Customer Records
On the main line of a customer record, you will see that customer’s primary subsidiary in the Subsidiary field. For previously existing customers, this field cannot be edited if any transactions have been saved against the record.
Then, to include additional subsidiaries on this customer record, scroll down to the subtabs. On the Subsidiaries subtab, you will see the primary subsidiary listed at the top, and you can add multiple secondary subsidiaries to this list as needed.
Using the Multi Subsidiary Customer Feature
Once this feature is set up, what does using it on transactions look like? Let’s look at a new Sales Order. Once you select a customer on a new Sales Order, the Subsidiary field will automatically populate with that customer’s primary subsidiary. To edit the subsidiary, simple select the dropdown arrow on the Subsidiary field and choose the appropriate subsidiary.
Other Situations
If you use the NetSuite Multi Subsidiary Customer feature, then there are some special situations you should be aware of.
Primary Subsidiary Dominance
For one thing, there are several scenarios where secondary subsidiaries (and their related information) will not appear. For example, the Customer Center displays only the primary subsidiary’s data on each customer. Similarly, only primary subsidiary information will appear on the Communication tab on customer records. And each customer’s bank account and tax information will be tied to the primary subsidiary.
The Multi Subsidiary Customer/Multi Subsidiary Vendor
Another aspect of this feature that might be useful to know is that you can merge a multi subsidiary customer with a multi subsidiary vendor. This would allow you to have just one entity for both a customer and a vendor. This ability might be particularly useful if you have one entity in your system that is a customer for one of your subsidiaries but a vendor for another.
Disabling the Multi Subsidiary Customer Feature
And finally, if you ever find yourself in the position of needing to disable this feature, you should know that it will not be simple. Before you can disable the Multi Subsidiary Customer feature, you would have to first remove all the transactions that are connected to each customer’s secondary subsidiaries. Then, you would need to remove any secondary subsidiaries from each customer record.
Conclusion
With the Multi Subsidiary Customer feature, you can be confident that you are accurately tracking your customers and their transactions. If this blog was helpful, subscribe to our mailing list below to receive new NetSuite blogs right in your inbox each week!