Four Fundamental Areas to Get The Most Out of OpenAir Reporting

NetSuite OpenAir is a powerful PSA tool. However, like every other business tool, you want to get the most out of it. To achieve this, it’s wise to understand tips and techniques that can work in your favor. In this article, we explore the fundamentals of:

• How to review your configuration to support reporting needs
• Best practices for report development
• Features to aid in your reporting challenges
• Handling report challenges

Configurations Driving Reporting

There are two aspects to using OpenAir – the raw data and the information you’re trying to get out of OpenAir. Filtering is vital to get what you want from your system. The system should be set up in a manner so you can get the right information out of it.

Filtering in OpenAir focuses on lists and not text or context. For instance, you cannot say, “show me all records where the field contains the letter A.” It has to be a list, and OpenAir has multiple options. Think through what is the right type of list for the data you’re putting in and where it should live so you can use it in your reports.

The system has multiple object tables with lists associated with those objects. Here you can see all of the fields associated with the objects in any crosstab report and use them for filtering. Examples include:

• User
• Client
• Project
• Invoices
• Cost center
• Services
• Customer PO

Please note and be mindful where you put the fields you’re trying to report and what fields feed certain types of reports.

Custom Fields and Lists

Pick List

The custom fields are a key component in setting up OpenAir and being able to get report values. Custom fields feature a variety of types with respect to lists. Pay close attention to when to use certain types of fields. A key consideration for choosing a custom field is the specific information you want from the system—for example, sales reps. The dynamics of values change with sales reps and vary over time. So, how do we maintain such a list? In this case, the pick list makes more sense.

Radio Group vs. Dropdown

In another scenario, values may remain fairly static and not subject to continuous change, as is the case with the sales rep. Here, it’s okay to use a dropdown or radio group. However, radio groups come with a set of challenges. For instance, it cannot be cleared once selected and has some reporting limitations. As such, dropdown fields are a more favorable option that we encourage our customers to use.

A benefit of the dropdown field is that you can limit the dropdown for a related field. There’s a feature that allows you to drop down values and have one dependent on the other. Another way to use the dropdown is to use permissions where you select if values of a particular item is A, then the dropdown values for the related field will be those only in the value A’s list.

Multi-Select

So, keep in mind that we recommend dropdowns and pick lists when configuring OpenAir. However, Multi-select can be a great alternative. The problem with this option is that the reporting you get is basically text.

Dates and More Dates

Dates are everywhere and are a standard requirement for project management and other aspects of any business process. Dates in the system can be confusing, especially for new users. So, you want to think about the dates that you want to use because the system offers nine different date options that support a time entry, as listed below:

• Date
• Create date
• Accounting date
• Timesheet start date
• Timesheet end date
• Timesheet created date
• Timesheet submitted date
• Timesheet approved date
• Timesheet archived date

With the option above, determining what date to use can be tricky. That will depend on the story you’re trying to tell or the objective of the report. For example, if you’re running a financial report, then financial dates such as accounting dates or dates when transactions occur would be appropriate.

Report Development

Once you’ve configured the system, designing and developing your report comes next. This can be a complex process. Fortunately, there are only a few things to consider. For instance, ask yourself questions like what am I trying to achieve? Who is the audience? What do they care about? What level of detail should I include? Your audience will determine the kind of report you’ll generate in terms of the level of detail, subtotal groups, columns of information, currency considerations, time periods, total view or future view, custom calculations, or data restrictions.

Subtotal Groups

You can reconfigure reports using the subtotal groups option to improve readability on screen by leveraging detailed fields such as clients, projects, and tasks to get a more organized and minimized report output. You can play around with the configurations if what you see is not as minimized or organized as you want.

Columns of Information

This option allows you to control the order of the report by rows. Using a scenario where you are subtotaling tasks then user – the screen will show task detail and user. If you decide to go user first then task, the UI of the report will change by moving the columns around.

Data View Controls

Not many people take advantage of this feature to its full potential. Data view controls aim to control the specific details they see on the report. It involves using a set of filters that enables you to see what you only want to see—for example, your utilization instead of everybody’s utilization. The filter set is user-based and also project-based.

Challenges and How to Overcome Them

Why can’t I report on the bill rate?

This is a challenge experienced by many users of OpenAir – the inability to report on a bill rate. Unfortunately, even though bill rates are on the billing rule, it’s not a value you can just pluck out of the system and put on the report and run. The good news is that there’s a simple solution – custom calcs.

Using custom calcs involves commanding the system to show you projected data divided by projected hours or actual data divided by actual hours at either user or project level. You can use the value you get in other custom fields.

6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon AKA Object Relationship

You might think the database tables are all there, so you should be able to generate a report depicting different relationships. For example, if X is related to Y and Y is related to Z, you may think pulling the values of X and Z into a report is the right idea. Unfortunately, this is not possible since, in this scenario, X may not be related to Z. For example, billing rules don’t have a direct relationship with charges, so if you run a charge report, you can’t pull billing rule data.

In such a scenario, you’ll have to determine the common type that ties the data sets together. For example, billing rules have a direct relationship with billing transactions which have a relationship with the invoice. So, based on this commonality, when you’re customization charges based on billing rules, you’ll have to go back to billing transactions to determine what billing rule needs updating.

OData Connector

This feature in OpenAir allows you to publish a report that can be transferred to Microsoft Excel or other business intelligence (BI) systems. The feature comes in handy when you want to publish a report of two unrelated data sets, such as billing rules and charges, into a single report. OData Connector allows you to pull data from those two separate reports and import them to your BI tool and play around with those data. Here are a few things to consider while using this feature:

• Use OData connector with list views or tabular reports to generate a reporting source for BI tools
• Consider implementing API integration to pull data from OpenAir into a data warehouse for a more complete field access
• Consider the Automatic Backup Service to leverage data analytics outside of OpenAir

Where’s that report again?

Where’s that report? Where can I find it? This can be an issue among OpenAir users while trying to access reports after a period of time, say, three years. Reports can get lost during the cleaning or maintenance processes.

To avoid this problem, use naming conventions like using a prefix of the primary audience for the report or creating folders by role or functions. This gives you a certain level of organization to ensure you can access your reports even after ten years.

Also, dedicate a user account to own standard reports, separating them from go-to or other reports. In addition, using notes on reports to explain what the report is all about is a useful trick in maintaining your report.

Deleting Old Reports

The problem with finding your reports can partly be attributed to having a large database of reports, most of which are old and irrelevant or outdated reports. This is true hence the saying, “old reports hide good reports.” Identify and eliminate these outdated reports and do this at least once a year. We recommend you implement a policy that requires you to:

• Delete reports not run since a certain date
• Rescue old reports by running them
• Delete all reports from inactive users
• Rescue a shared report.

Conclusion

NetSuite OpenAir is a business tool, and just like any tool, it’s wise to know how best to make it work for you. These tips and tricks above are a great place to start in understanding OpenAir and getting the most out of it as far as reporting is concerned.

Need help configuring and setting up reporting that will provide the insights you need? Contact us to review your OpenAir reporting challenges. We are happy to help.