Exploring the NetSuite Dashboard and Report: How to Get Quick Access to Useful Data

Information is only helpful if it's accessible. A comprehensive NetSuite dashboard puts data at your fingertips.

A dashboard is handy because, as a user, you can access it from anywhere and on any device, so you always have the data necessary to make crucial decisions. You can also drill down into any information featured on it, quickly navigating from a summary of yearly transactions to the pertinent details of a single sale.

Andy Morris, NetSuite’s principal product marketing specialist, says these capabilities equip company leaders with critical information for running a successful organization. 

“The goal of a dashboard is to help users quickly understand key business information, regardless of their technical capabilities,” he writes in an article for NetSuite. He later adds, “This clear view into relevant business data can help teams track performance, set benchmarks, identify hidden trends, drill down deep into data, make comparisons, and more.”

Basically, it’s the tool a business leader might check ten times per day to guide operations.

Can You Customize a NetSuite Dashboard?

One of a NetSuite dashboard’s best features is its flexibility. Even a mid-sized company employs numerous staff members with various roles and responsibilities; all those workers don’t need to see the same information.

For example, an accounts payable clerk’s dashboard will look fairly different from a warehouse manager’s. The AP clerk may have shortcuts to vendors, purchase orders, and bill payments on their screen, along with a KPI meter for payables. They may also have a vendor portlet showing total purchase orders, the value of total purchase orders, and total open purchase orders.

On the other hand, a warehouse manager may have shortcuts to inventory counts on their dashboard, along with a portlet for monthly inventory trends and another comparing sales orders to customer returns and gross profit average.

NetSuite firmly believes that one size doesn’t fit all. That’s why it offers drag-and-drop dashboard customization. Users can add and subtract items they need and arrange the layouts in any way they wish. Of course, users also need experts like those at SuiteDynamics to create portlets and workbooks featuring specific data sets.

What Are NetSuite Reports and Analytics?

Dashboards may provide snippets of information, but a report dives deep into data. NetSuite offers pre-built reports that help convey info quickly and are customizable to suit your needs. These no-code, industry-standard tools save the hassle of inefficient manual reporting. Plus, just like dashboards, they allow users to drill down into information, revealing minute details about a business.

Many people confuse reporting with analytics, but there’s a significant difference. A report tells you what happened within your business, and analytics explain why. For example, suppose a call center experiences an average of 100 abandoned calls. A report will tell you how many people hung up and how long they waited before doing so.

Yet, you would turn to analytics to find out why this happened. You would look at staffing levels and call volumes and examine when those abandoned calls occurred. This information would help decrease wait times so fewer people would quit their calls.

NetSuite SuiteAnalytics provides well-rounded metrics so you can examine each facet of your company and find ways to improve. It consolidates various spreadsheets into one database so all employees work from the same information. It also offers KPI tracking and workbooks to measure and analyze your performance.

On the other hand, if you’re interested in specific analytics, you can create a saved search and attach it to your dashboard. A saved search creates a real-time results list that offers quick peeks into your business analytics. You can use this feature on essentially any record, so you will always have the information you need at your fingertips.

We know that reports and metrics are some of your company's most important aspects. According to Statista, 87.9% of global firms prioritize data and analytics investment, and yours must do the same if it wants a chance to compete in the marketplace. NetSuite reports allow you to use the information you collect quickly and easily to make the right calls and keep operations moving. 

Make Better, More Informed Business Decisions

Everyone knows that data is integral to a company’s success. It must be thorough, correct, and meticulously organized if your business is going to stay on top of industry and customer trends.

NetSuite dashboard and report capabilities allow organizations like yours to arrange mountains of data into easy-to-understand visual representations. Consequently, your team won’t waste valuable time searching for and analyzing data. Instead, they can find info relevant to their roles quickly and make critical decisions on the spot.

We don’t want your company to spend time collecting data only to store it in an unnavigable database where no one can make sense of it. SuiteDynamics experts can help your team create custom NetSuite dashboards and reports that organize and present information so your business can actually use it. Schedule a consultation today and become a data management powerhouse.

We pull information from NetSuite material, SuiteDynamics experts, and other reliable sources to compose our blog posts and educational pieces. We ensure they are as accurate as possible at the time of writing. However, software evolves quickly, and although we work to maintain these posts, some details may fall out of date. Contact SuiteDynamics experts for the latest information on NetSuite ERP systems.

Disclosure: This article was developed with the assistance of Claude, an AI created by Anthropic. Our editorial team used Claude as a collaborative writing tool, carefully reviewing, editing, and fact-checking all AI-generated content. The final text has been thoroughly vetted to ensure accuracy, clarity, and alignment with SuiteDynamics' editorial standards. We take full responsibility for the content presented in this article, maintaining our commitment to providing reliable and informative insights to our readers.