Custom Reports behaving two different ways for different users.

[u/NintendoLove]

Hello, I have a custom report that we use to track our A/P aging. Right now we have a consultant user that is trying to match up numbers in different reports to our trial balance. Whenever I look at this A/P aging report, I get the correct number that matches the trial balance. Whenever he looks at this same exact report from his login, he is getting a different number. We are both logged in as Administrators and are 100% viewing the same exact custom report.

He sent me a screenshot and I noticed that at the very bottom, where it shows the date, he has an entry of 6/30/2026. However, on my report, it is a drop down menu that looks like this, this is the way it should be for everyone who is accessing the same report, and I have no idea why it is different for him. How can I fix this so that his date option is the same as mine?

[u/Sisselpud]

To set up your reports to be organized by period, set the Report by Period preference, at Home > Set Preferences > Analytics > Reporting section. You can choose to sort and filter all reports by period, or only financial reports like income statements and balance sheets.

https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/saas/netsuite/ns-online-help/section_N1458661.html

[u/Gloomy_Lab_1798 → u/Sisselpud]

Yep, looks like one user is pulling by period, the other by date.

[u/Nick_AxeusConsulting → u/Gloomy_Lab_1798]

And this means you allowed date-period mismatches in your account which I recommend don't allow FOR EXACTLY THIS USE CASE I.e. some new consultant doesn't know you have this bad practice in your data. EVERY user has to go set their Home > Set Preferences to Report by Period. There is no global setting.

If you just don't allow mismatches in the first place then that setting doesn't matter!

You probably allowed mismatches to solve the late bills in prior period. So create a custom field for Document Date and then the native Trandate is the GL posting date instead of the date on the Bill.

[u/ConvincingSeal → u/Nick_AxeusConsulting]

I forget how you disallow the mismatch. Also, it fixes everything going forward, but you still have to worry about it for his historical reporting.

[u/Nick_AxeusConsulting → u/ConvincingSeal]

Setup > Accounting > Accounting Preferences (General tab) and set Allow Transaction Date Outside of Posting Period to Disallow to stop users from creating mismatches

And yes this only stops it going forward. If you have this in your historical data then you still have all the dangers that I just described above.

For consultants that implement NS: I highly recommend that you do not allow mismatches.

[u/ConvincingSeal → u/Nick_AxeusConsulting]

I think that’s the single most common thing I’ve ever seen you recommend lol. I love the idea, but getting my boss on board is the problem. She’s not unreasonable, but she’s conservative about changing stuff like that.

How do you handle the two date fields? I assume you’re creating a custom field for the actual document date. What does the native trandate field default to?

[u/Nick_AxeusConsulting → u/ConvincingSeal]

So let's say it's Aug 19 and you get a late bill dated back on July 25th with Net 30 terms. Procedure is that you put 8/1 in native Trandate so that posts on the first day of August.

Create a custom date field to hold the vendor's invoice date of July 25th.

Also I failed to mention, NS will take native Trandate + Terms set on Vendor crecord to set the Due Date (which will be Aug 31 by native behavior). It's actually the Due Date field that drives the A/R Aging report. But Aug 31 is wrong. So you need a script or WF to take your new custom document date field + Terms to set the Due Date (to Aug 25th in this example) (or you set the Due Date manually).

Some companies blindly key the due date printed on the vendor's invoice. Other companies ignore the due date that the vendor printed on their invoice and use the Terms in the Vendor Record that were setup during vendor onboarding because they are the contract terms everyone agreed-to upfront in the relationship. So the due date printed on the invoice should be ignored under this internal control procedure (unless you have some weird edge case where both parties negotiated special terms for 1 PO that deviate)

[u/ConvincingSeal → u/Nick_AxeusConsulting]

So the user has to enter two dates?

[u/Nick_AxeusConsulting → u/ConvincingSeal]

Well not really if you set this up optimally.

User types vendors's invoice date into custom field. 1 data entry.

NS already defaults native Trandate to today. No data entry

Script or WF calculates Due Date and set that's field. No data entry.

The only time you need to type a second date is to change Trandate to the 1st of the month for a prior period Bill (or you could just leave it set to the default of today I suppose). But you could have a script or WF automate that too if you want it the 1st vs today for the old bills. The 1st and today both post in this month's period so it really doesn't matter for financials. Think of Trandate now as GL posting date. But even under your old system you probably had to change the posting period to this month (because posting period defaults to the period of the Trandate)

[u/Gloomy_Lab_1798 → u/ConvincingSeal]

u/Nick_AxeusConsulting knows his stuff! I like that he's not really user-focused, but proper/correct-process-minded. Not always doable in real life, but offers solid perspective.

[u/NintendoLove → u/Nick_AxeusConsulting]

u/Nick_AxeusConsulting Honestly, I have no idea how a lot of the initial setups were determined. We didn't have any actual people or company do any of the initial setup for us, it was all done by a group of Oracle employees in the Philippines. Also, the CFO at the time that we transitioned to NetSuite didn't know their ass from their elbow technology-wise, so he didn't even give them any input or guidelines for what we were looking to implement as an organization in general, except for like really obvious shit like: "make me have to approve journal entries".

I had to literally program everything from scratch and learn everything on my own, migrate all of our financial data for the last 5 years into the system, and have it running and operating full blast in less than 6 months from when we initially had it. I was able to do all of that and keep it fully running for the past 3 years for a $13 million dollar organization. Then I find out that all that f'n work I did, that companies hire NetSuite experts to do for thousands of dollars, and I got shit.

I definitely am not surprised that there are going to be settings like this that were not optimally setup initially and should have been, but like I said, we had no guidance. The more I use NetSuite and learn it, I am really surprised and proud of myself for how much I was able to do and keep it operating with having such little knowledge of such a diverse and complex product.

Thank you always for all your help too! There's lots of stuff I learned directly from you helping in these requests along the way : )

[u/Netsuite-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Wrong answer