Manage Subscriptions and Recurring Invoices Using SuiteFlow

Thu, 23 Mar 2023 22:37:28 -0600

There are many add-ons and SuiteApps you can purchase to help you manage subscriptions or automate recurring Invoices. These apps provide a lot of great functionality and a nice user experience, however, if your organization does not have the ability to invest in additional modules or 3rd party apps, then you can build your own subscriptions module using workflows! The trick is to setup some new fields on your Quotes or Sales Orders to manage the frequency of your recurring invoices. Furthermore, if you would like a Custom Transaction Type could also serve as the record to hold your main subscription information.

To start we will create a few new Transaction Body fields to help us manage our recurring invoices. These should be added to the Estimate or Sales Order, whichever you would like to use to manage your recurring invoices. (Or you could use a custom Transaction Type if that fits your use case better.)

Recurring Invoice Frequency - this will be how often (in days) an invoice gets created
Next Invoice Date - this will be used to trigger the workflow to create a new invoice.
Recurring Invoice End Date - if recurring invoices should stop at a certain point you can use this field to define an end date.

The next step is to setup a Saved Search that will trigger your Invoice creation. Setup a transaction saved search based of the transaction type of your choice and include the new Next Invoice Date field you created as part of your criteria.

Now let's setup a workflow that will create Invoices. For this we will use the Transform Record action. To start just create a workflow with the type Transaction and sub type that matches the transaction type you are working with.
Remember that you can only transform an Estimate or Sales Order into an Invoice. (Also if you setup a custom transaction type using the "Sales Transaction" type it can be used to transform into an Invoice)

Then set your workflow up as a Scheduled workflow that runs everyday, because we will use the custom field Next Invoice Date to control when recurring invoices are made so we want to check every day if any need to be made.

Create a Workflow State field that will first store the current Next Invoice Date so we can recalculate it later.

The first thing to do is to copy the Next Invoice Date in the Current Next Invoice date workflow field we made in the step above.

Now we can add our Transform Record action into State 1 of the workflow. The transform record action will essentially just take the Estimate and almost Make Copy of it, except the "copy" is an Invoice instead of another Estimate. You can set new values for header fields on the invoice that gets created but unfortunately you cannot change any of the line items so be sure that the Estimate you setup has the correct Line information on it.

Add another action to the workflow to set the NEW Next Invoice Date by adding the Frequency to the workflow field that we created.

Now let's setup an Estimate for our first recurring invoices. The Estimate will always remain in the system and be there to generate Invoices each month.

There is a lot more customization that you can do with this functionality, but what we've built here can maintain the basic functionality of automated recurring Invoices. If you have a Payment Processing Profile setup you can also use this functionality to automatically charge the customers credit card. In that scenario you would want to transform the Estimate into a Cash Sale instead of an Invoice, but the concept is still the same. Also, if you've read our blog post on Invoice collections you can utilize that workflow to make sure your Invoices are paid on time.

We love to find creative ways to leverage workflows to get the best out of NetSuite without having to invest in more modules or 3rd part apps. The power of workflows is pretty amazing and the things you can build with them are quite impressive if you take the time to know and understand their functionality and limitations. If you read through our other Blog posts you can quickly realize the amazing functionality that comes built in with every NetSuite account.

Create a Powerful Dunning Workflow with Just One State

Mon, 06 Mar 2023 21:33:00 -0600

There are many workflows available to help you with your collections process. Many can be quite complex with multiple states and a spiderweb of transitions. Your business might require the complexity in most solutions but even the simplest set of reminders can make a huge impact on your cash flow. Here we can use a simple one state workflow to remind your customers of their outstanding invoices and also add some other powerful tools for your internal processes as well.

To start let's add 2 new fields to our Invoice to help us track some more information about our collections process. These will be Transaction Body fields

Next Invoice Reminder Date - we will use this field to trigger our automated reminder email and also manage different timings for each email
Number of Reminder Emails Sent - this will be an incrementing tally so we can track how many times it takes us to email someone before collecting payment.

Now let's setup the Saved Search that we will use to control our automated emails. We will make sure that we are only considering Unpaid Invoices, as well as validating the Next Invoice Reminder Date.
(Notice we included an expression to look for Invoices where the Due Date is today OR the Next Invoice Reminder Date is today. This way we will send a reminder when the Invoice is due AND then continue to validate the Next Invoice Reminder Date going forward.)

Now we will create a Scheduled Workflow based on our Saved Search. Start by creating a new workflow. Give it a name and select the Type of Transaction and Sub Type of Invoice.

Then setup your schedule. We want this to run every day as the Next Invoice Reminder Date will be used by the Saved Search to trigger when to send Invoices we don't need to worry about setting a schedule in the workflow. It can just run every day and find Invoices that meet our criteria.

Now in State 1 we can start to add our logic and actions. First, we want to add a Field in the state that will record our current number of emails sent. We will use this later in the other Actions we are going to setup

Then add an action to set this new Workflow Field to be the Number of Collections Emails Sent field that we added to our Invoices. This will copy the number at the beginning of the workflow so we can add to it and increment it up by one at the end of the workflow.
(The formula we are using is a nice workaround for Invoices that have not yet had a collections email so the Number of Collections Emails field will be blank. Therefore a NULL value will be considered a zero so we can mathematically increment it up by one.)

Then we will add an action to move our Next Invoice Reminder date based on the logic we want. This will then be used in the Saved Search we made next time the Next Invoice Reminder Date is today.
(Also in this example we will use different timing for customers that only have 1 reminder vs. customers with 2 or more reminders)

Next we will send our Emails out to our customer. We will add successive Send Email actions but add conditions to each action so we are sending out different emails depending on how many reminders we've sent out for the same Invoice. You can also use the Number of Collections Emails Sent field to let your customer know how many times you've tried to reach them about this Invoice.

Next, we can add an action to put this customer on hold so future orders do not get added or fulfilled until payment is made. This step is optional but is a nice feature that you can add if it fits with your business process. You'll notice we are using the MGBC Set Field Value (joined record) custom action. This is a just one of the amazing actions we have developed as a solution to overcome the limitations that native NetSuite functionality has.
Also note that we are only setting the Credit Hold if the customer has had more than 3 reminders on a past due invoice.

Lastly, we need to recalculate how many reminder emails we've sent but adding 1 to the Workflow State field that we made as our first action.

Here's the how the final workflow looks.

Now you have a robust dunning workflow where you can control the frequency between reminder emails AND even track how many reminders it takes to receive payment. Lastly, if you have our Enhance Workflow Actions you can further enhance the functionality of your dunning workflow by manipulating joined records, which current NetSuite functionality does not allow. Let us know if you have any questions about our Enhanced Workflow Actions or need help with implementing this dunning workflow.

MavenCloud - Blog #Accounting

Manage Subscriptions and Recurring Invoices Using SuiteFlow

Create a Powerful Dunning Workflow with Just One State