As businesses grow and start adding international subsidiaries and markets, being able to easily manage and use multiple languages within their ERP becomes essential. The NetSuite Multi-Language feature simplifies the process of providing translations for your website, items, and customer-facing communication. With this feature, individual employees will also be able to view NetSuite in their preferred language. Let’s take a look at how to set up and use this feature. 

Setting Up the NetSuite Multi-Language Feature

Once you’ve enabled this feature, there are some setup tasks you’ll need to complete. First, you’ll need to add any languages that you will be using in addition to your base language to General Preferences (Setup > Company > General Preferences). On the Languages subtab of General Preferences, you can add preferred languages to your account from the list of NetSuite-supported languages. Note that you will not be adding your base language to this list; the base language is selected during initial setup of your account, and it cannot be changed. 

The preferred languages listed in General Preferences are the languages that are available for selection on customer records. And when a language is listed on a customer’s record, it is the language that will be used for any communication with that customer, including things like emails or transactions.

However, users in your NetSuite account are not limited to the set of preferred languages. Each user will have access to all of NetSuite’s supported languages in Set Preferences. Under the Localization section of the General tab in Set Preferences, each user will be able to select their own preferred language for their user interface, as well as a preferred language for the Help Center and for PDFs.

Multi-Language for Your Items

When a preferred language is enabled in NetSuite, the system is able to translate the user interface and any preconfigured NetSuite documents and transactions into that language. A company would need to provide translations for their list of items, however, for each of the preferred languages. 

One way to translate your items and their descriptions is to use a mass update. To do a mass update on item translations, navigate to Lists > Mass Update > Bulk Update Translation. Then, in the Language dropdown field at the top of the page, choose the language that you would like to provide a translation for. You’ll notice that this page has an Item tab, where you could provide translations for your items. But there are also tabs that enable you to provide translations for website items, saved searches, tabs, email forms, and more. 

Another way to update the translations for your items is to use a CSV import. To do this, you would need to update your existing CSV files of your item lists to include the translations and then do a CSV import to get all the translations into NetSuite. 

Multi-Language for Your Website

If you have a SuiteCommerce website, then you will also need to set up your website for multiple languages. 

First, you’ll need to update your website settings. Navigate to Commerce > Websites > Website List, and select Edit next to the website you wish to configure for foreign languages. After you choose which languages this website should use, you’ll also want to create a domain name for this website in each of the supported languages. You can add a new domain name to your account at Commerce > Hosting > Domains > New. 

Once you have language-specific domains for your website, you’ll need to connect each domain to a specific locale code. When someone accesses the website from a specific location, NetSuite will know based on the associated locale code to display the correct foreign language. You can set this up at Commerce > Web Sites > Configuration. 

And finally, you’ll need to update all your landing pages with the correct translation, which you can do either via a CSV import or by using Site Management Tools. 

Conclusion

Setting up the NetSuite Multi-Language feature will ensure that you are serving both your employees and your customers well. If you enjoyed this blog, be sure to subscribe to our mailing list below to receive our new NetSuite posts right in your inbox each week!