There’s few things I like more than to look at data. 
Peering into complicated information and pulling out meaningful results is something I really enjoy.
Now if you like complexity, that’s fine, but if you want to make information analysis easy you may want to consider using one or more of, Class, Department, or Location, to segment your business.
Class, Department and Location are 3 ways to divide virtually all the information in NetSuite. They are built in by default and can do a number of things I’ll outline below. There’s a bunch of automation that can be done with them and just by tweaking them can really make your NetSuite implementation work well.
Overview
Most people find Department and Location the easiest to understand. Employees, Items, and Transactions can be assigned to a specific department. It makes department reporting fairly easy. Location is the same way. You can track your business by region, office, etc by applying it to transactions. Class is a bit different. Think of it as “Class of product” for example, Software, Services, Renewal, Hardware.
Rename Them
Class, Department and Location can all be renamed. While each really is designed to work as you might imagine they can really be used to segment the data any way you want. How about Product Line, Region and Channel?
Don’t use them!
You don’t absolutely have to use these. You can turn them on or off as you see fit. Or use them but don’t make them mandatory, it’s up to you.
By Item or By Transaction
You can use these classifications both on each individual line item on transactions or you can use them on entire transactions. It just depends on how you operate.
You’ll be able to decide where each classification method applies. On lines or on the whole transaction. The advantage of applying it on the whole transaction is simplicity. Department and location are obvious ones to do this way. (if you call them by that name!) The advantage of classification by line item is that you get more granularity on the information. Class is often used here.
It’s important to note that items, and employees can have their class, department and location pre-set (or not). This way nobody really has to worry about keying in the information over and over unless you want them to.
Reporting
Obviously all three classifications make it easy to filter, exclude, include and report nine ways to Sunday. Even if you only have 1 class of item, it may make sense to turn it on so that you have the information in the future if you are planning on doing more later.
Looking at all the segments simultaneously in NetSuite can be a bit of a challenge. But it’s easy to dump out to a more advanced graphing tool. I am just waiting for OpenOffice to implement 3 axis bubble charts with a time axis and then I’ll be all set!
Restricting Access
If you’re a slightly larger company it may be nice to restrict access to different classes, departments, or locations. Not to be a pain, but to give users a simpler experience when using the system. Because this restriction is done by role you may want to give certain users access to multiple roles so that they can switch over to the less restrictive role the odd time they need to look up something they don’t normally need to see.
Consider Categories
Outside of these classification methods you can also use categories to classify customers/leads/prospects. This is done by going to Setup, Accounting, Lists, and adding multiple customer categories. It’s yet another way to slice and dice your data, and in the case of categories, perhaps find out which of your customer segments is most profitable.
Conclusion
Class, Department, and Location as well as categories are a few ways to customize your NetSuite instance and get the most out of the information you collect on a daily basis. Done right they’ll allow you to monitor and improve your business. Done wrong, you’ll be frustrated and your users will slash your tires.
If you have questions look me up!
For a simple way to keep up with your visitor reports, you can choose to activate daily activity emails. Each morning open your inbox to find a report of all visitor activity for the past 24 hours. Easily forward the reports to your sales reps or share with others in your organization.
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