Your guide to NetSuite automation

Countless processes keep a business running, from managing customer relationships to handling inventory and processing finances. To keep everything in sync, you need a reliable system that ties it all together.

NetSuite is the tool for the job. It's an all-in-one business management platform that provides enterprise resource planning, a built-in CRM, accounting software, and plenty more so you can have full visibility into your operations. 

But even if you're managing most processes on NetSuite, you're probably still using other business apps for tasks like marketing and selling your product or collaborating with your team. To make sure your data flows seamlessly between all systems, try pairing NetSuite with Zapier to create automatic workflows—what we call Zaps. 

Jump ahead

• What is NetSuite automation?

• What are the benefits of NetSuite integration?

• Popular ways to integrate NetSuite with Zapier

What is NetSuite automation?

Simply put, automation is a process or workflow that runs automatically without manual intervention. NetSuite automation refers to the act of connecting said app to other business applications so you can automate the data flow between NetSuite and the rest of your tech stack. This keeps everything in sync across platforms.  

In essence, when you automate your NetSuite app with an automation tool or app, you streamline, manage, and optimize tasks that you'd normally do manually. 

NetSuite automation can encompass a range of tasks—from streamlining lead capture to syncing eCommerce orders across platforms. These automated actions can significantly enhance the customer experience, bookkeeping, financial ops, customer service operations, and more, saving your business time and resources in the process. Think of it as a better way to create a unified platform across your whole organization. 

With Zapier, you can take NetSuite automation to the next level. For example, you can handle crucial customer tasks like creating records in NetSuite when new leads are captured in Google Forms or syncing sales and purchase orders from Shopify. Or, you can generate invoices and financial reports in NetSuite when payments are processed in Stripe and QuickBooks or update your NetSuite inventory when stock levels change in Amazon. 

What are the benefits of NetSuite integration?

NetSuite automation with Zapier provides a robust, efficient, and seamless way to manage operations across your entire business. Benefits include:

• Cross-platform visibility: Integrate data from various business applications into a single, unified platform, improving visibility, communication, and efficiency across departments. 

• Real-time access to business data: Automation ensures that data across all platforms is synchronized in real-time, providing a single source of truth and enabling quicker, more informed decisions.

• Greater data accuracy: By automating data flow, you reduce the potential for human error, resulting in cleaner, more accurate data across all connected systems.

• Enhanced customer experiences: Gain a holistic view of customer interactions by integrating your different channels, so you and your team can apply those insights and create more personalized experiences.

• More space for priority work: Automation reduces the time and resources spent on manual work, translating into lower operational costs and freeing up your teams to prioritize more impactful work. 

• Scaled operations: Zapier's automated workflows are scalable, able to grow with your business, and adapt to changing needs, processes, and additional systems.

• Competitive edge: Automation enhances business agility, enabling quicker responses to market changes, customer inquiries, and internal needs, giving you a distinct advantage. 

Popular ways to integrate NetSuite with Zapier

When you pair NetSuite with Zapier, your entire business can run like clockwork. With just a few Zaps, you can sync your data across systems, market your product, and more—automatically. Here are some popular workflows to get you started. 

Boost your marketing efforts 

If you're using NetSuite's CRM capabilities, it's likely your sales team has a steady stream of leads (and customers) they're reaching out to. 

You can help move those prospects through the sales funnel faster by adding them to your targeted marketing campaigns. But asking your sales team to pull a list of contacts manually and then upload them to your marketing tools every other day or so is a waste of everybody's time. 

Instead, use these Zaps to automatically add NetSuite contacts to campaigns in apps like Mailchimp or even another CRM app like Salesforce. That way, you can kickstart your marketing efforts from the get-go. 

These workflows work the other way around, too. Need to add the leads you capture in other tools to NetSuite? Use these Zaps to do the heavy lifting for you: 

Sync your accounting across platforms

You can use NetSuite's vast range of financial capabilities to keep track of your company's spending, product sales, and any other transactions. Doing so allows you to create a visual overview of your finances as a whole—and then you can generate financial reports for accounting purposes directly within NetSuite. 

But what if you're also managing orders, invoices, and payments in different systems? Manually transferring that data not only eats up valuable time but also increases the risk of errors. 

With these Zaps, you can automatically sync accounting data between NetSuite and apps like QuickBooks or Xero. Whether you're creating new transactions or updating invoices, these workflows ensure that your records are consistent across all platforms. That way, your reports will always be accurate.  

Streamline your eCommerce operations

It makes sense to diversify the platforms upon which you market and sell your business's products—on top of NetSuite. From Shopify to WooCommerce and even eBay, there are plenty of platforms out there that will do the trick. 

But you still need to ensure that you capture every order and customer in NetSuite. Without doing so, you risk errors like overselling stock or missing key order details, which can lead to a poor customer experience. 

With these Zaps, you can keep your entire eCommerce operations running smoothly. Whenever a product or order gets created or updated in your platforms, they'll automatically update in NetSuite. That way, your product inventory, customer records, and orders are always in perfect sync. 

Automate team collaboration

Whether you're using it to triage tickets for customer support or prepare expense reports, NetSuite can cover it all. But it's exactly because it's such a diverse platform that tasks can fall through the cracks. 

To make sure that all your team members are in the loop, you should think about using automation to notify the right person in team chat apps like Slack or Teams. Whatever the update—from inventory changes to customer follow ups—these Zaps will send a message in your team chat app with a link to the update. That way, you and your team never miss anything important going on in NetSuite. 

You can also do more than just notify team members. With automation, you can create tasks for teams like customer support or product management automatically. Use one of these Zaps to create new support tickets or product issues from new Netsuite records.

Seamlessly manage your files

No matter how secure and robust your apps are, it's always, always a good idea to back up your files elsewhere. Notice I said it twice? Because if you do lose important records, starting from scratch can be an absolute nightmare. 

Using tools like Google Drive to store NetSuite files or Google Sheets to duplicate records can be an easy, digestible way to share them with your team. But don't spend all day copying and pasting records into a spreadsheet. Use these Zaps to automatically upload files and create records in your file storage apps whenever they're created (or updated) in NetSuite. 

Streamline business operations with NetSuite

While NetSuite can help you take care of a lot of business operations across the board, all your other apps deserve a say, too. By connecting them to NetSuite through Zapier, you can sync your business data, streamline your marketing efforts, and manage everything from files to collaboration—automatically. 

When you automate NetSuite, you free up your team to focus on more strategic tasks and scale your business more effectively. And this is just the start of what you can do with NetSuite and Zapier. What will you automate first?