Ask the Expert | NetSuite Legacy Test Outage Window | Oct 2025

Evie: All righty, let's go ahead and get started. Hi everybody. Thank you so much for joining. This is the October/H Halloween edition of the uh Ask the Expert sessions. Today Simon and I are going to give you an important update on the NetSuite 2 migration, and then we're going to go into some questions as the Q&A portion comes up. If you have any questions during the presentation, please post them in the Q&A box at the bottom of your screen, and we'll answer as many of those as we can. Um, apologies in advance if we don't get through to your question. All right, Simon, over to you.

Simon: So, hey everyone. Welcome to um I I actually think this is the second one we've done in October, so I'd say welcome to this month's, but it might be this month's times 2 um Ask the Expert. We wanted to we wanted to squeeze one in just before the um webinar test window kicks in, just to give people an idea as to what's going to be happening next week and how to prepare for that, and really just to give those customers that are still on the legacy data source, the the NetSuite.com data source, just to give those people a nudge um to start thinking about migrating to NetSuite 2, because if you're not on the NetSuite 2 data source, you will experience an outage next week. Uh as always, this session is being recorded. We're putting every all of these particular Ask the Expert webinars we're putting into a um a playlist specifically to do with the migration process, so the phase one phase 2 migrations, uh migration steps, the follow-up webinars, and this webinar are all available on the Solution 7 YouTube um channel and available on this link if you just want to make a note and jump directly to that link.

Let's review the timeline again um just to give you an idea where we are. So we are well underway with migrating customers over to NetSuite 2. We are now entering this test window that NetSuite have set up specifically to try and um how can I best describe it? Let's describe it as tough love to to um force customers who are unaware that this migration is happening to to help them understand the impact of the switch off of the the legacy NetSuite.com data source and to see what's going to happen. We, along with NetSuite, have been trying very hard to tell customers about this outage window and about the migration, and what we found is we're still seeing a lot of customers are just not responding to those emails. So when this happens on Tuesday, Wednesday, if you're watching this webinar as a recording during that test window, please understand we've been trying to reach out to you. NetSuite have been trying to reach out to you. Um there's been notifications inside of NetSuite. NetSuite have been emailing customers directly. We're still seeing a lot of customers that are not acknowledging those emails and have not begun their migration. So again, please, we have been writing to customers to let people know what's happening, when it's happening. And again, here's an example of a notification that was specifically put inside of NetSuite that customers had to acknowledge just to say this is happening. We have had customers turn around um and suggest that it's not going to happen. Um I can tell you now it is going to happen. Um there's nothing stopping this outage window on Monday. Um and um the Netv2 migration has to happen by February. We are seeing on with our statistics we are seeing roughly 50 to 55% of Solution 7 customers are now on NetSuite 2, which if we look at that from a from an overall picture means that there are still several hundred customers that are yet to migrate. So again, please don't get left behind. Please don't um please don't be impacted by this outage. Please prepare now um so that you can continue with your reporting and um we can all get through this process as simple and as easily as possible.

So just to confirm, and that's the reason we wanted to run this webinar, November 4th through to November 5th, and these are going to be based on Pacific times. If you are running the legacy NetSuite.com data source, Solution 7 will stop working for those two days, and that's from midnight of the 3rd through to the 4th, and then it will start working again from midnight of the 5th through to the 6th. So Solution 7, if you're running the legacy data source, it will stop working, and there's nothing we can do about it. This is a NetSuite outage window, nothing to do with Solution 7. Again, for all those customers that are running um NetSuite2.com data source, and I'll show you how to tell the difference between the two, um you are unaffected by this.

How can you tell? Well, there's two ways. The simplest way is to go into Solution 7 itself, go to the Configure button, and have a look at the configuration dialogue. If in the data provider section it says NetSuite2.com as the selected item, you are running NetSuite2.com. You will be unaffected by this outage window. If you currently have the legacy data source selected, you will be impacted by this outage window. Um but that's not a case of then just saying we'll just switch to the NetSuite2.com data source and everything will be fine. You have to go through a migration process to not only convert you and all your users to NetSuite2.com, but you've also got to convert your spreadsheets so they're compatible with NetSuite2.com. So just changing that setting is the beginning of a testing process that you need to go through with all of your spreadsheets to make sure that your reports that you've built with Solution 7 work. And I referred to the YouTube um webinar series earlier. We cover all of this in all of the videos that we've produced about the migration, what to expect, how to go through it, how to change your settings, what you need to do once you've changed your settings, and so on. All of that's covered in those videos. So please, you can you could try as a quick test switching to NetSuite2.com, but don't expect it to just work. There is a testing cycle that you need to go through.

Um, while we're talking about whether you're on NetSuite 2 or not, um, if you became a Solution 7 customer after the 1st of June 2024, and that's a really important cutoff date because that was when we stopped customers from going onto the legacy data source, and there was kind of a window in the run-up to that where a few customers went onto legacy, but most customers went onto NetSuite 2. The hard cutoff is the 1st of June 2024. So if you became a Solution 7 customer after that date, you will be on the Nets2.com data source. However, I do also suggest that you um that you do check that setting as well. Now, what are we going to expect during the outage window? You will not be able to activate solution 7. It will not work. We asked, we specifically asked NetSuite to apply the outage window to one of our test accounts, and this is what we saw as a result of trying to use solution 7. So you can specifically see you'll get an error message when the software starts, and if you hit the details button, you will see an error message that says we're in a temporary um test window from the fourth through to the 5th. Um, and it's pointing you at a um you'll see it's pointing you at an article on um Suite answers I think. So follow that through, have a look um have a look on the article. Um, but as I say, solution 7 will not activate. For those people that are in the process of migrating to NetSuite 2 or are about to start NetSuite 2, please please let us know where you are. We've put this really simple survey together. It's literally three or four questions. You don't have to answer all of them, but if you can give us feedback via the install and migration survey, that would be super helpful. It's easier to actually help people when they fill in the survey than it is to wade through emails and find specific questions and emails. So, as you're working your way through the migration, don't be afraid to um fill in the survey. It's not ownorous. It's like three or four questions, but it helps us keep track of where customers are. Um so here's a link to the survey, and again, we'll we'll link to it when we send out a recording to this session.

The only caveat to everything I've said, and I and I'll repeat this again, I mentioned it in the last webinar, is that if you are using legacy tax fields to report in solution 7, please send us an email. Um NetSuite have recognized that there is a migration issue to do with legacy tax versus Suite tax, and we are in dialogue with NetSuite about that um about that issue. If you email us, we can pass your details on to NetSuite, and between us and NetSuite, we can help you through the migration. So if you are reporting from legacy tax fields, please let us know ASAP.

Most importantly, if you haven't started migrating, please start now. Ple please I cannot express enough the solution 7 will not work on Tuesday or Wednesday during the test window if you haven't migrated. And finally, the the drop dead date for the migration is the 2026.1 release. Once upon a time that seemed like an awfully long way away, but that is only a matter of what we now November December January February we're only four months away. If you haven't started migrating, migrate now, because as of 2026.1, the legacy data source stops working.

Just as a quick reminder, that's the link to the YouTube page. So all of the recordings, this recording, all of the migration steps, how to how to migrate, they're all covered by um Evie and myself on um our YouTube channel, and more specifically on a playlist that we put together of all of these webinars. So u do do check that out and do jump on to um do jump onto YouTube and follow that along. If you get stuck, raise a support ticket with Evie and the team, and we'll see. We'll do our best to help you out.

Oh, I missed anything, Evie.

Evie: No, I think that pretty much covers it. Yeah, I think that's good. Okay, Q&A. Um, all right. So we do have a few questions that you guys have presubmitted to us like always. Um, we'll go through those, and then we will go through some of the questions from our last webinar that we didn't manage to to get to. Um, I have the first question, Simon. Is the session being recorded?

Simon: Yes.

Evie: And will it be sent out to everybody?

Simon: Yes, of course.

Evie: All right, fantastic. Um, so we did have a question, and actually this question hasn't only just only come from one customer. It has come from a couple of customers about um their custom functions that we used to create way back in the day. Yeah. Um, and they're asking if there's a way to automatically um migrate those to NetSuite 2.

Simon: Ah, now that's a really that's an interesting question. So how can we migrate customers where we built custom functions in the very early days of working with NetSuite? So for those customers that have been with us for a while, you'll see that we we went through three or four different iterations of building custom functionality for people. Um, but custom fields, custom functions weren't really a thing in the early days until custom segments came along, and then it really exploded in terms of users customizing their NetSuite.

In the very very early days, we would handcript functions specifically for customers. Clearly, that wasn't sustainable. So we switched over to a semi-automated way of doing it. And we're refining that semi-automated way of doing it. And hopefully where we end up, we're going to actually the the end game is to allow customers to build their own um um support for custom fields and and and segments and so on. The challenge that we have is especially for very early customers with those hands scripted customizations, we don't know how those functions are being used. We don't know whether you've got functions embedded within functions. We don't know whether you've got if statements inside one of our formulas, outside of one of our formulas. We looked at whether we could migrate some of that custom functionality. With the volume of customers that we have, it's impossible for us to know every single variation of every formula that exists out there in a spreadsheet built with solution 7.

If you think about hundreds to thousands of customers with between 10 and 50 spreadsheets each uh sorry well between let's say between 10 and 50 users each each with between 10 and 50 spreadsheets each, and each spreadsheet with thousands of formulas in it, there is literally no way we can write migration code for every single formula to migrate it from an old shape to a new shape. It's just not possible. And if we were to have a go at it and it not work properly, we won't cope with the volume of calls and tickets that that's going to raise where people are expecting spreadsheet migration to just work magically. So with upgrading formulas from legacy to NetSuite 2, for the most part they are just compatible, and they will just work. It's those early custom functions that we just physically cannot migrate. And unfortunately, you're just going to have to go into your workbooks, have a look at the shape of those formulas, and try and figure out how to migrate them.

In most cases, you can use search and replace. Search off the first part of the formula, replace it with what you expect. Search off the last part of the formula, replace it with what you expect. But again, we don't know what they ultimately need to look like based on how they're being used. Try that. If you find you can get that working, maybe record a macro to go through the workbook and update it for your specific scenario. And if you get completely stuck, raise a support ticket. We can have a look at those formulas with you, and we can try and give you some guidance as to the best way that you can migrate, but it's not going to be automatic. It's just too complicated, I'm afraid.

Evie: Um, and I wanted to add to that with the formulas. I suppose the only part that isn't automatic. Um, we have however um provided a migration tool that should take care of your lists and tables. So that part, Simon, we can um reassure the guys that it it should be somewhat...

Simon: And again to add to that, Evie, if if you need to migrate your lists and tables and you're unsure what that looks like, I think if you watch the phase 2 webinar, we go through that process in detail during the phase 2 webinar. So so you're absolutely right, Evie. Lisks and fun lists were relatively easy to migrate because we know the shape of them, and so we cover that off in one of the webinars.

Evie: Awesome. Should we talk about custom adapters, Simon?

Simon: Go on then.

Evie: Um, so some of you guys might have a custom adapter which provides custom fields and segments in solution 7. We have had lots of questions about, um, where their custom adapter is in the process. I just want to let you guys know that we are working through them as quickly as we can. I know this outage window doesn't help timelines, but, yeah, we'll try and get through them as quick as we can. If you have not received your adapter yet and it's been a week or so, please, you know, um, reach out and follow up with us.

Simon: And, and I'd add to that, I'd add to that as well, that if you are running a custom adapter, and again, we cover in the last webinar how to know if you're running a custom adapter. If you're, if you do have a custom adapter and you haven't heard from anybody our end, please reach out to us and let us know. We, we, we, it may be that people have moved on within your organization. We might have the wrong contact record on file. We are trying our best to contact everybody. Um, we know there are people that we've not been able to contact. Um, so if you think you're in that situation, again, ping Evie and the team and a ticket via the support email box that's on screen now. And, um, we'll do our best to get you in the queue and to get you through it as quickly as possible.

We are very confident that they'll be done by February. If I'm honest with you, this test window that next week have planned has kind of taken us by, um, I wouldn't say by surprise, but it wasn't in our original plans as we were working through these customizations. So, it's unfortunate that it's now when we haven't completed all the customization work. Um, so again, please bear with us as we get through them, and we're going to see a bit of a stall next week unfortunately as we deal with all the support tickets that come in as part of this, um, this outage window. So again, please do bear with us.

Again, to repeat, if you haven't heard from us and you do have a customization by the way, we mix the language custom adapter customization but if you do have a customization, please reach out to Evie and the team via our support email address and we'll try to get you in the queue as quickly as possible.

Evie: Cool. And we do have one question about adapters again. Um, there is nothing in their adapters menu, which is good news. Um, so, yeah, if you don't have anything in your adapters menu, you're pretty safe to assume an adapter...

Simon: Let me show you what EV means by an adapters menu. So, if you go into Solution 7, Configure, go to the Adapters tab, can you see mine's empty? That's what we mean by nothing in the adapters menu.

Evie: And you'll only have something in there if we have created something for you. So don't worry if you don't have one.

Simon: Yeah. In fact, in fact, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Celebrate if you don't have one because it should make your migration that bit simpler.

Evie: Yeah. Great. Okay. Um, and one question we do have in the Q&A box I think is relevant for this conversation. Um, Fman, how long do you reckon the migration process will take?

Simon: Oh, that is, that's almost a "how long's a piece of string" question. Um, you, it, r, it ranges from if you've never built a spreadsheet, it takes 30 seconds, through to it depends on how complex your workbooks are. Um, if you've got, let, let's come at it from a, from a different angle, which is how do I prioritize my migration? Um, you prioritize your migration based on your most important users and your most important spreadsheets. If you've got a critical spreadsheet that you rely on every day, every week, do that first. If you rely on a, a workbook once a month, once a quarter, maybe hold back on, on some of that testing, um, so that you can guarantee to meet your reporting targets for whatever those dates might be.

And I recognize we, we're probably just going into u month end now. So things like P&L, balance sheet, you know, management type reports, management accounting reports, prioritize testing those. If you've only got three or four users and you've only got three or four spreadsheets, I know based on some practice migration work that we did early on it's probably about an hour. But again, it all depends on configuration of your machines, whether you have admin, whether you have enough rights to change the configuration, whether you have access to all of the spreadsheets that you've built, whether they're easily accessed, whether you've, whether you're asking one person to do all the testing or whether you're sharing the testing load amongst all of your users.

Um, let's be honest, because we're talking about software here, if you bump into any bugs along the way, that might mean that it slows your migration process down. I'm going to be honest that all software contains bugs, and anyone that says that software doesn't contain bugs is lying. So if you bump into a bug, that might slow you down. So again, how long is a piece of string? Well, it's no longer than the 30th of October through to sometime in February. That's how long a piece of string cannot be any longer than. If you start now, you'll, you'll get through it, and you'll, you'll get through that, um, you'll get through the window between now and then. If you leave it till late January, early February to start migrating and you bump into problems and NetSuite turn off the legacy data source, then you're in trouble. And that, that's the best I can offer you, afraid.

Um, Evie, do you have any idea based on your experience of working with customers how long a simple migration would take? Let's say it's one to three, one to three users with maybe three or four vanilla spreadsheets. Yeah, I'd say an hour. Okay. In total. There you go. So it's anything from the piece of string is anything from an hour through to four months depending on complexity and volume. And, and, and is that, is that reasonable?

Evie: Yeah. Well, I'll put it this way. So I had a, uh, meeting this morning with a customer. We migrated, and we migrated the configuration and migrated a workbook in 10, 15 minutes. So it's pretty quick and easy. Just again depends on how complex your workbooks are.

Simon: Okay. Awesome. Thank you. So, yes, we've tried to make it as painless as possible. And if I'm honest with you, we've tried to make it as painless as possible because we've tried to make it as painless as possible for us from a support perspective. Because if every customer took half a day to a day, we would never get through the volume of customers that we need to migrate. We cannot, we cannot vouch for those sort of extreme edge cases where there's some formula that we didn't expect or we bump into a bug in the software or we bump into a bug, which we have done, by the way, on the NetSuite side, where we then need to raise a ticket with NetSuite to get NetSuite to change something.

Um, if I can, if I can share with you that where we are now with the migration process, we are coming to the end of probably a three-year journey to get this migration done. I don't think NetSuite realized when they said, "Oh, we're going to switch to a new data source," they realized how many problems and issues would need to be solved on that journey. And when I say a three-year journey, I'm not even talking developer days and support days. That's just a, a time lapse. If we include people hours in that equation, we've probably spent five, um, person years on this migration. It's been very complicated with lots of bumps in the road. So, let's hope we can just get through this last four months as painless as painlessly as possible. And then what are we going to do at the end of it, Evie? We're going to go out and celebrate.

Evie: Yeah, we're going to have a beer. Absolutely. All right. Should we do some reporting questions now? Okay. So, we have one question, um, from one at Possible Finance. Um, this are a way to create a trial balance at a point in time that has a determined number of GL accounts, and then as new accounts are added to NetSuite they will be prepopulated in the workbook.

Simon: So, so let's, let's, let's split that question into two. So we're talking about, we're talking here about point-in-time reporting, and we're talking about how to futureproof your reports so that as GL codes are added and removed from NetSuite, you can update your reports. So let's talk about point-in-time reporting. So NetSuite itself, when you post transactions, you have the ability, and I'm going to show you it from within Solution 7, 'cause I show you it from a formulas perspective. So you have the ability to post by financial period. We've got the, what we call, the APNTP bal functions to cope with that. And we've got the ability to do it by date. Now, can we reproduce a report? Can we guarantee to produce a report as at a point in time? No. No accounting system can ever guarantee to do that because there's nothing stopping a user going in and changing historic data. Now, obviously, you've got financial controls in place to prevent people going back and editing old journals, old invoices. You close a period, you lock it down. But from an admin perspective, there's nothing stopping someone with the right, with the correct rights, going back and altering data. So, how do you lock down historic data? So, as I said, we've got the ability to post by period, and we've got the ability to post and report by date. So, as long as that data hasn't changed, you can go back to any period using the AP bow functions. You can go back to any date using the date-based functions. If you want to produce a spreadsheet where you guarantee that the numbers are never going to change, so you create an as-at snapshot, I always recommend taking advantage of our locking functionality. Now, what our locking functionality will do is it will take a worksheet and it will lock the formulas in such a way where they cannot recalculate. If you then save a copy of that workbook into a folder, put some sort of time-date indicator on that file or on that folder, you will have a record as to what that report was like when you ran it. That's probably the only way of being able to fully, totally guarantee that you can get back to a number that you've reported historically because, again, if numbers change within NetSuite, numbers change. Um, so you can use the locking functionality. It's a bit like copy-paste special but not quite because we do something a bit more clever than copy-paste special. And again, if you watch through some of the older videos, you'll see how to do that.

The other way to, um, the other way to lock a workbook down is print it to a PDF file. There's nothing stopping you taking a, a spreadsheet and printing it out to a PDF and creating an effectively a soft hard copy. So you're not physically printing to paper, but you're essentially creating a hard copy of that report as a PDF. Again, editing PDFs is really hard. Uh, we have a lot of people that use these techniques along with a document management system like Google Docs, SharePoint, Box, all the other traditional document management tools, where you can take a workbook and you can, you can put it into a document management system, which means not only have you essentially frozen the file physically, but by putting it into a document management system, you then end up with the controls that the document management system can provide you with to make sure that if data is physically tweaked within the spreadsheet, you've got a record of that in the document management system that a file has been edited. So, you can use that for audit purposes rather than having it on physical paper. Here's a copy of it. We ran it on this day. We ran it on this time. It's in our document management system. You can see there's no record of change. So, locking, locking formulas or, um, printing out to a PDF if you want a report to be, um, how can I best describe it, to kind of run today rather than having to physically choose dates. Um, you could always build your formulas based on Excel formulas. So you can see this particular report here is running January through to December. If you wanted a report to always run as at today, you can always use Excel's, uh, Excel's TODAY function. Is that right? Yeah, you can always use Excel's TODAY function to produce today's date. And if you, um, wrap that in a TEXT function so that you want to get the current period, if you format that as MM space Y, technically, if you're doing January to December, um, financial years, that will give you the current period. So you can be kind of dynamic that way as well. Let's say you wanted to go back six months. You can use things like the EDATE function, where you've got a start date. I think minus six will go back six months. And if I format that as a date, in fact, let me wrap the TEXT function around that as well. You can see that's running April, May, June, July, August, September, October. That's running seven months. So we probably need to go back minus five, 'cause we need to include today, the current month. So we've got May, June, July, August, September, October. So we got six months there.

Um, so that's how you can do it based on financial periods. If you're, again, let me refer back up here, if you're using our period-based functions, if you want to dynamically calculate periods, uh, if you're not, if you're not doing periods from January to December, let's say you're doing 443-type reporting, or maybe your financial year end doesn't start on a certain date, maybe you would put additional, um, offsets into the formula. So, you might want to say, you may want to offset today by a number of months, so you can tweak the start dates and end dates. Again, all of that's relatively simple to do, just using standard Excel formulas. Um, if you're feeding it into our date-based functions, so these take physical dates and work off of the document tax point as opposed to the period that it's been posted to. So, this will be the, the date of the notional date of the document. So the date of the journal, or the date of the purchase invoice, or the date of the sales invoice, as opposed to the period that it's been posted to. If you want to work with dates again, you know, you can just use, you can just, you can just use the, the dates themselves. And again, if I wanted to do an offset, if I wanted to do an offset and go back six months, make sure I get this right. Let's try five and see what happens. That does 45807 sound like the right date? Let's have a go at formatting it and see what that turn looks like. Uh, if it's not quite the right date, I won't change it. But you get the idea. So you can run it from a date to a date. In fact, that would need to be the other way around, wouldn't it? It would be from a date to a date. And again, you can use basic Excel to do that data arithmetic for you. So you can easily do rolling reports, last six months. Let's say you're pulling in the budget and you want to pull in the next three months' budget. You can roll the date forwards automatically, again using formulas and maybe pickers or today's date and so on and so forth. So, in terms of time-based reporting, um, using Excel formulas, there is your best friend. Could you just repeat the question again, Evie, so, so I don't miss anything because I think there was one other point I wanted to cover.

Evie: Yeah, sure. Um, so updating GL accounts automatically.

Simon: Oh, that's right. Yeah, perfect. So how do we update GL accounts? So, let me actually use one of those formulas and I'll talk about how you can make sure that you pull in, um, new accounts. Again, I'm not, this isn't a 101 on how to build a report. So, I'm not going to go into detail on how to build a financial report. In fact, if you keep an eye out in your emails, I think Simon is going to be running an almost like a back-to-basics, um, session, um, with customers and prospects, where I think he's going to go through, um, the basics in a lot more detail. If I, if I put in a, um, if I put in, let's say, for example, the GL code 4000, and I'll pull in a balance for the GL code 4000. Oh, wanted that. This is old data set. Let me change that to 2023. My machine's just coming to life, so bear with me while it works that out. There we go. So, you can see there we've got a balance for, we've got a balance there for Jan 2023. If you were to type in all of your GL codes one at a time and so on, and let's say at the point of building this report, 4002 didn't exist. When you come to update your reports later, and you want your 4002 code to come through, well, if you build a report this way, you have no choice but to add it manually. You've, you, you've just got no, cho, no choice because it's all been built by hand. Now, there are ways around that. So, for example, if you're building a summary report where you're, where you want all of these codes aggregated together automatically, you can use wildcards. So, let's say four-star, I want all of the GL codes that start with a digit four. So that will automatically aggregate all of my four codes together. There might, I don't know whether that adds up. There might be additional codes in there. Yeah, there's additional codes in there. Um, so that's automatically picking up my GL codes that start with a digit four. This is automatically picking up my GL codes that start with a digit five. Now, to a certain extent, this is automatically future-proofing my report because I may choose to add additional GL codes at a later date. And that scenario where 4002 was a new code because I've said give me all of the GL codes that start with a digit 4, when I run that report at some point in the future with a new 4000 code in there, that will automatically get picked up.

So, there is no maintenance to do. The difference there being between the two approaches, typically we see customers build them in detail and then have a sum at the bottom of them. That sum will you can never guarantee that sum is going to be correct unless you maintain all of these GL codes yourself whereas that is always going to be correct because it will automatically pick up GL codes of that correct shape. So I always encourage customers to use wildcards and to interrogate the data directly as much as possible rather than trying to hand-crank GL codes and pull, um, all numbers through at a detail level and then summarize. One thing I would say, though, is with this scenario is what you do end up with is a nice little check total where you've got values coming through in detail to a total and four-star calculating directly off of NetSuite. So we can see here that if we take, if we take one away from the other, you'll see that you do get an imbalance. And I guarantee you there's going to be more GL codes in there that make up that remaining balance. And I suspect if we keep going ultimately we'd, we'd find them somewhere. Um, you can see here we've got a difference of 333,000. I'll show you a quick way of being able to find that difference in a minute. Another way to build this shape of data and, and future-proof your report is to use lists. Now you'll remember that in the earlier question, Evie and I talked about the migration and the fact that we have provided a way of being able to migrate lists. Lists allow you to grab data from NetSuite and throw it into a workbook. So I can, for example, pull in automatically a list of accounts by number. So rather than having to go through the process of typing them in one at a time, you'll see here I can say, "Give me all the GL codes," again using a wildcard asterisk, that start with a digit four. If I click on OK, we go off to NetSuite, we grab the list of GL codes, and we drop them into the workbook for you automatically. Now, because that's been inserted as a list rather than inserting it manually by inserting individual values, we can remember the shape of that list. So in the situation where the 4,000 and cut 2 code is a brand-new code, we can actually reinterrogate NetSuite and grab that value. So let's, let's grab each of those formulas. And why has that not come through? K4 Jan 2023 K4. Oh, it needs to be J4. That's right. So, you'll see there that if I copy that down, those have come through automatically. And let's delete that 4002 code. Where's delete? There. Delete. And shift the cells up. So, we've got rid of the 4002 code. I can right-click on the list, and because it was inserted as a list, you'll see we remember, we remember what the original list settings were, and we can simply go through and we can refresh the list. What that will do is it will go off to NetSuite, analyze the GL, analyze the chart of accounts, and reinsert the missing GL code where it thinks it needs to be. So that's, again, another way of being able to get Solution 7 to help you with your reports rather than building things manually.

Now I did quickly say earlier that I was going to show you a quick way of trying to figure out where the missing value is. Well, we can see here that we're actually missing 408 and 410. Another way to find that out is if you right-click on any cell and use Drill Down by the thing that you want to find here in we're doing it by account you'll see we can actually do a drill-down to go off and find that data for us, and it will effectively tell you where the missing balance is. And there you can see there's our missing 408 code. Does that answer our question, Evie?

Evie: I believe so. Okay, so we have another question, and it was anonymous, so I can't say who it was unfortunately. Um, talking about, uh, computer hardware and how the hardware can affect the performance in large workbooks.

Simon: So what's our recommendation on computer hardware? Um, you can never throw enough hardware at a, at a PC ever. Um, we the laptops that we developed the software on are specifications from about three to four years ago, and Microsoft, and they would have been top of the range at the time, and Microsoft have already moved the goalpost since then. As a minimum specification, I always suggest you follow the guidance that Microsoft provides you with or Microsoft Office. I don't have those to hand. Maybe we can provide a link in the email that we send out to those minimum specifications. If you follow Microsoft's minimum specification, you won't have a great experience. I'd actually suggest you run with Microsoft's recommended or, um, their highest specification, and the more you can throw at it, the better. That's not to say that we are also, with new versions of the software, not continually trying to find ways to speed up workbooks. Unfortunately, some of that, um, process has stalled with the migration, and again we're having to work with NetSuite to try and find performance improvements with the NetSuite 2 data source because NetSuite have also changed some of their underlying plumbing that's impacting us. So, we're constantly trying to work it out ourselves. But again, I would go with Microsoft's preferred spec as a minimum spec, but throw as much hardware at it as you can.

Evie: Good answer. Um, all right. So, I'm going to go into the Q&A box now. Grace has a question about finding account names based on account code. So if they can key in the account number in the sheet, is there a way to look up the account name from NetSuite?

Simon: There is. So I've just shown you one way of doing it, and that's using a list. So there's one answer, and this I would say is the preferred way of doing it because of the problem of keying in values and then not updating automatically. That's not to say we don't want you to key them in. You can key them in, and we can look them up automatically. So, let's create a 4,000 code down here, one of our income codes. And let me introduce you to our lookup functions. Now, what our lookup functions will do is they will look up a value based on another value. And would you have it? We can look up an account. So, we need to fill in the formula. So, it's across all subsidiaries. The field, the field, the filter field that we want to look up is going to be and I haven't used this for an awfully long time, so bear with me is going to be the account number. There he is. There. Now you'll also notice that where we say that optional ah, that's interesting. I'm surprised it doesn't say what the default value is in there, but you can see that that's optional, and typically where the filter field is optional, we will try and automatically filter on the most obvious field. So in this case, it will be filtering on the account number. Then we want the filter value, which is going to be there. Then we can choose to exclude values, should we not want to look them up. And then we can choose the return field. And there you go. See, look, the default is full name. So let's click on OK. There you can see that our 4,000 code is Sales. Let's do our 402 code. Let's do our 404 code. And you can see that I can take that lookup formula and I can drag it down. And you can see that those lookup fields work automatically.

Now, what I will add, and this is where it might start to, um, blow people's minds a little, these lookup fields are quite clever in that they return something called an array. So, if I do that again where we use the subsidiary oh, hold on. Let me try that again. Use the subsidiary. We look up what we're going to filter by, which is going to be the account number, which is there. And we say that I want the value to be four-star, which is all of the accounts that begin with four. Again, can you see here that it automatically returns an array? And within Excel, this was a concept that was introduced, I'd like to say three or four years ago. Within Excel, they've got the concept of spilling. So that array will automatically get spilled over the top of any empty cells, which is why I typed into the cell below it. So you can see the hash spill error. So it will automatically spill the, the array values down the sheet. Now that's great if you just want to spill some values. You want to say four-star here. You want to, you want to spill the results of four-star, and then maybe you want to run a formula off the name of the account rather than the account number. Again, that's another technique you can use to build out a report. But what some customers are doing is they're actually using that resulting array and feeding it directly into another formula. And you may remember at the beginning of the webinar I talked about how we don't really understand, we have no visibility of how customers use our formulas. But there is a scenario where I've seen that someone has used the NS account function and embedded it within the NBAL. This is actually the ABAL, but it would be the NBAL function. Let me try changing that. So that what we would be doing here is reporting off of stuff where a lookup has returned a set of accounts, and those accounts have been poked into another formula. And you can see that I'm using the account number here, and that's just worked. You could also, I'll show you another trick as well. You could also, um, you could also use the lookup function to maybe look up by a custom field. Uh, sorry, yeah, custom field on your, um, on your account. So, for example, if I wanted to somehow filter on the account description for whatever reason, I could actually return all of the account names based on the account description where the description is something like this. That array of accounts is then fed into another formula, and so on, so forth. So these lookup functions, they can do individual single lookups, but they can also be used in a very powerful way to return sets of data that can then be fed into additional formulas.

And what I wanted to show you quickly is, if you do end up in a situation where you've got multiple formulas in a single cell, the best way to edit those is to bring up the function arguments dialogue and then click on the formula that you want to edit. And can you see how, as you click between each formula, the function arguments dialogue tweaks itself to show you the relevant parameters, which makes editing formulas a lot easier than trying to go in and find all the commas and the brackets and the quotes and so on, and editing it all by hand. So there's a little trick that you can use within Excel generally if you've got multiple formulas in a single cell. Does, does that answer our question there, Evie? I hope it does.

Evie: I think so. Um, so, on this, John has a question, um, about the lists. Um, so, are the lists going to auto-refresh each time they refresh the workbook? And is there a way to trigger a refresh of all lists within a workbook?

Simon: Yeah, there. So, um, the best way to trigger a refresh of all lists within the workbook is through the list and table manager, which is this option here, because that will show you all of the lists in the workbook, and you can oh, there's interesting. I take it back. There should be a refresh button here somewhere, and there isn't. Uh, so you can't do it through the list and table manager. We'll have to talk, Evie. Do me a favor and talk to the developers when you get a moment. Um, yeah, so we need to so we need to add a feature there to allow you to refresh them en masse. Um, the other way to do it would be, as you set up your lists, you can mark them through the options dialogue here as automatic refresh. Now, lists are always set to manual refresh. You can change them to automatic refresh, which means that when you hit the refresh button up here, any lists either in the workbook, the sheet, or the cells that you've selected that are set to automatic will automatically, select, will automatically refresh. Personally, I don't like doing that because you could break the structure of a report without realizing it. A new GL code might come along. It might get inserted into a place in the workbook where you weren't expecting it, and you won't know that until you actually try and reconcile the numbers. So, personally, I don't recommend turning that feature on, but you can. The other downside is, if you refresh the lists every time you hit the refresh button, you just got to wait. You've got to wait while all the lists refresh before all the formulas can refresh. So again, there's also a time lag that you add to the refresh cycle, where you've just got to sit through that, that refresh. Um, personally, I would go through and refresh them all manually. And yes, I think you should be able to do that from within the list and table manager and just say, "Refresh all." It looks like you can't. We'll get that feature added.

Evie: That would be a nice enhancement.

Simon: Absolutely. I, I thought it was there, and I'm getting mixed up between refresh and remove. Whatever you do, don't do remove thinking it's refresh. It will, hell, will break loose.

Evie: Oh, I've had, um, don't mistake reset for reset.

Simon: Really? Oh, yeah. Go on. So, go on. Do you want to explain the difference between reset and refresh? Do you know the difference?

Evie: Um, I'm not confident I know the difference.

Simon: Right. So, with a refresh, we analyze the current state of the list. We look up the new values, and we try to insert the new values into the correct place. Now, you'd expect them to just automatically go into the right place, but what do you do in a situation where someone's taken those and moved them down here? So, we have to guess where to put the new values, which is what the refresh does. What the reset does is it attempts to reset it back to its original state when you first inserted it. So you may have add, you may have added extra fields through the choose column screen. You may have moved things around. Um, all of that will get lost if you do a reset. And a reset, believe it or not, is far more complicated than you might think. And sometimes, again, it doesn't quite get it right because you may have moved things around in such a way that we just can't accommodate. So it will do the best job it can. Most people don't use reset. Refresh is used quite a lot. I hope that helps, Evie.

Evie: Thank you. Okay. Um, we've got one more question. Um, Anna has asked if there is a solution to the maximum number of rows error.

Simon: Yeah. So, um, that's a that's a system question. So that's related to the maximum number of rows that we can return from NetSuite on the configuration screen, and it's this max records setting. So, within Solution 7, the maximum number of records we can return by default is 65,000. Why is that the default? That, in legacy versions of Microsoft Excel, I don't know how far you'd have to go back, probably about 2003, maybe 2011, Excel had a hardcoded limit of 65,000 rows in a workbook. So it made sense to set our limit to 65,000 rows. You can change that limit. You can set it up to a million, I think, so that we can return more records from NetSuite. But just be aware that if it takes an hour to return a million records, you could end up getting yourself into a situation where you've got to wait for a million rows to be returned from NetSuite. And the only way to terminate that is to tear down Excel. And if you're halfway through building a workbook and you don't want to lose anything and you haven't saved it, you're in trouble. So I always say start off with a low limit. See what you bump into. Up the limit gradually to a level where the software is working well for you. Try not to go too far. We cannot also guarantee that in the future there are limits that NetSuite won't apply separately to our limit. So just be aware that that 1 million is an arbitrary value. We're trying to stop people from shooting themselves in the foot. So tread carefully if you do up that limit beyond the default. But you can certainly go beyond the 65,000 that, um, was the original limit to stop us blowing Excel up. I think if you go into Excel and you go to the last row of a workbook, there you go. You've got you've now got 1.04 million rows. Is that one, two, three, four? Yeah. One. So, roughly, a million rows you can have in a workbook. What I would say, if you've got a million rows in your workbook, you've got other problems, because unless you've got unless you've got a machine that you can, um, unless you've got a machine that can, you know, build a rocket ship, uh, if you've got a workbook that, um, that large, then you've got wider problems. Does that make sense?

Evie: That makes sense. I have a quick comment from Maria from the Solution 7 team, who said that Excel well, Microsoft switched to a million rows in 2007 when they switched from XLS files to XLSX. There you go. Fun fact.

Simon: Oh, there you go. Thank you, Maria. We'll have to get Maria presenting this instead of, um, instead of me. She clearly knows more than I do. Thanks, Maria. That's awesome.

Evie: Okay, cool. I think that, um, gives us all the time that we have. Um, thank you to everybody for joining. Apologies if we didn't get to your question. I feel like we never have enough time to, uh, get through all of the questions that are submitted.

Simon: Yeah, I'd like to just I’d like to just close by reminding people about the two next week the two next week windows that are coming up. We've got the window on Tuesday, and we've got the window in February. Please don't please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please get on a migrate if you haven't heard about your customization. Please, please, please, please, please chase Evie. Um, it's unlikely we're going to do a webinar in November just because we are deep in doing the migration at the moment. We'll try to squeeze another webinar in in November. If we don't do one in November, it's unlikely we're going to get a chance to do one in December because we've got the holidays coming up, which means that the next Ask the Expert, well, it's either going to be November or January. Um, so, uh, we'll give you an update on, in no later than January, as to where we think we are from a migration perspective. Um, please let us know how you're getting on via the survey, and, um, and good luck. Is there anything else we want to add to that, Evie?

Evie: Um, I guess, um, the outage the test window. I have had a few, um, emails from customers here who say they have not been included in this outage.

Simon: Right. So, that what does that mean? Does that mean people have had an email to say they are in the outage window, or they're not in the outage window?

Evie: They've had an email to say they're not in the outage window. Um, off the back of these webinars and knowing that it's coming.

Simon: Yeah. So, well, well, well, let's tell everyone that's hang on that's hung on till this stage. If you raise a ticket with NetSuite, you can be excluded from the outage window. So, there's a bonus for any people that have hung on. Just raise a ticket. But, but from my perspective, don't exclude yourself. Get migrated. It it's, you know, then you won't then you're not kicking the can down the road.

Evie: Absolutely. And we're here to help.

Simon: We'll try our best.

Evie: All right. Thanks, guys.

Simon: And if anyone has already migrated to NetSuite 2, let us know. It'd be great to hear any feedback. Yeah. And we'll get you off the list so we don't have to keep annoying you because we're we're only going to annoy people that we don't know that have migrated yet.

Evie: Yeah, we're quite annoying at the moment.

Simon: Yeah. Yeah.

Evie: All right. Well, the recording will be sent out in a couple of days, so watch out for that. And if you want to check out our previous webinars, everything is on YouTube. So, if we haven't answered your question today, we may have answered it in a previous session. Thanks, everyone. Good luck. Bye. See you all soon.

Simon: Thanks. Bye-bye.