NetSuite versus MYOB Greentree

NetSuite and MYOB Greentree — how they measure up

MYOB Greentree and NetSuite have comparable functionality across several modules, but in our experience, when companies are thinking of investing in a cloud-based ERP, NetSuite and other cloud-based ERP solutions are more likely to be on their shortlist. Why?

Both NetSuite and MYOB Greentree cover the fundamental business areas that you would expect from an ERP system, and both are technically cloud-based (although the majority of Greentree implementations are still on-premise running local servers).

We’ve found that companies typically choose a solution that enables them to scale quickly to meet their current and future business aspirations. Which is why NetSuite is a popular choice for fast-growing businesses, particularly once they expand internationally.

One of NetSuite’s key strengths is its ability to support multiple languages, currencies, and countries (foreign regulatory and tax laws) and consolidate reporting, financial or otherwise, with single mouse clicks. MYOB Greentree offers multi-currency capability but doesn’t support multiple languages. In addition, exchange rates for foreign currencies need to be set manually with Greentree. This could create a sizeable manual workload when doing business in multiple markets and especially around financial consolidation. For international businesses, the absence of multiple language options may prove to be a stumbling block.

Table 1: Comparison matrix between NetSuite and MYOB Greentree

Source: NetSuite Australia and MYOB Greentree

Both NetSuite and MYOB Greentree feature core ERP capabilities across finance, manufacturing, warehousing and sales. To understand whether an ERP platform is fit-for-purpose in your organisation, you need to get down to a more granular level of detail. When we did this, we uncovered a significant level of difference in value offered by MYOB Greentree in comparison to NetSuite.

A more comprehensive breakdown of these differences can be found in our whitepaper:

Download now

For now, let’s take a closer look at the features, functionality, and underlying benefits of each:

NetSuite’s core industries include:

• Wholesale and distribution
• Manufacturing
• Services and professional services
• Retail and eCommerce
• Non-profits
• Advertising, media, and publishing
• Technology and software
• Financial services

NetSuite also offers a range of versions for ‘micro-verticals’ in sectors including apparel, footwear and accessories, restaurants, food and beverage manufacturing, health, and beauty and more. Those micro-verticals also benefit from a large selection of SuiteApps that are purpose-built (integrated) to extend the power of NetSuite.

MYOB Greentree has specific industry editions for:

• Distribution and transportation
• Wholesaling
• Manufacturing
• Field service
• Construction
• Retail
• Trade services and financial services
• Non-profits
• Media, marketing, and communications

MYOB Greentree has customers in other industries as well. Customers can build capabilities specific to their industry or business with the ‘Customisation Framework’, a customisation platform. This platform is based on a proprietary programming language called Jade which originates in New Zealand.

Reporting and analytics

Common to most ERP systems these days, both NetSuite and MYOB Greentree come with a set of standard reports that can work ‘out of the box’. When comparing the two systems, be aware that even NetSuite’s SuiteSuccess starter edition brings you over 95 pre-built standard reports, pre-configured dashboards and KPI metrics aimed at the most important user roles in your business. NetSuite also delivers Google-like search, saved search, personalised dashboarding and reporting — all to improve and increase the user experience. In our experience, users migrating from Greentree find these features comprehensive and invaluable.

Core financial management capabilities

Both NetSuite and MYOB Greentree provide core financial management functions that are central to an ERP. NetSuite has a deeper set of features including general ledger (GL), accounts receivable, accounts payable, cash management, currency management, tax, deferred revenue accounting, intercompany accounting reconciliation, recurring revenue management, billing, and fixed assets management.

In addition, NetSuite also offers important accounting functionality that MYOB Greentree does not — for example, multi-book accounting that enables easier compliance reporting. Businesses that are required to apply multiple accounting treatments to the same business transaction due to industry, country or region-specific accounting rules (or a combination of these), can do so in NetSuite and remain compliant with the regulations. Without ERP-based multi-book capabilities, accountants must resort to error-prone and cumbersome manual processes.

General ledger customisation

Historically, ERP systems provided a hard-coded set of transaction types such as vendor bills, customer invoices and inbound/outbound payments that are rigidly reflected in the general ledger. This limited a business’s ability to see and make sense of its GL impact.

With various ERP platforms (including Greentree), customisations that involve the GL require a third-party consulting team to change the core code inside the application. This means incurring additional costs and an added layer of risk. In contrast, NetSuite users can add custom GL lines to standard transactions, avoiding manual journal entries. Users can also create custom transaction types for new business processes such as accruals for vendor bills, and custom GL segments that users can tag to demonstrate the impact of transactions, and improve flexibility and results from reporting and analytics.

Sub-ledgers vs one single database

Sub-ledgers are a series of transactions grouped by type, such as accounts receivable or accounts payable. Because sub-ledger architectures are designed to pull certain transaction types but leave others out, this creates reporting challenges. The detailed data is stored at the sub-ledger level, and a summary is pushed up to the GL through the batch process. Detailed data from reports (which pull from the GL) requires drilling into the sub-ledger to access data on customers, vendors or projects, and building more reports.

This is an area where NetSuite has the edge. It stores all transactions on a single database, so everything in the system is updated in real-time and there’s no need to run batch jobs to update the books. When a NetSuite user needs to access information on a customer, they can conduct a global search and access all the information for that customer in a single view. With the sub-ledger architecture found in MYOB Greentree, they would need multiple screen tabs and reports to produce a similar result.

The sub-ledger architecture also impacts the close process. With batch processing of the sub-ledger, users need to factor in extra time and effort to review all the transactions and approve them for summary entry to the GL. With NetSuite, the GL is updated in real-time with no need to review transactions. This allows businesses to undertake newer financial strategies more easily — like the continuous close.

International trade and subsidiaries

If you have international entities and operations, your ERP solution must be able to handle the various complexities – for example, languages, currencies and foreign regulatory and tax laws. Currently, MYOB Greentree doesn’t offer support for multiple languages, and currency revaluations need to be performed manually — which could be challenging for companies with worldwide users and locations. NetSuite supports 27 languages, 190 currencies and has localised regulatory and tax law provisions for over 200 countries. However, it’s unclear how many countries MYOB Greentree is localised to other than Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

Without the equivalent capability in these areas, users of MYOB Greentree may struggle to achieve the required level of visibility across their international operations. The consequence of lacking this functionality could be an additional manual workload when transacting in other currencies and doing financial consolidation. From Fusion5’s experience in implementing ERP, we often see organisations using Excel and spreadsheets to make these international calculations separately. Doing this outside your core ERP increases the potential for error, and the cost and accuracy issues associated with double-keying are not ideal.

Implementation and support services

The implementation and support that come with your ERP solution are just as important as the software itself. These need careful thought and consideration, and represent another significant area of difference between NetSuite and MYOB Greentree.

NetSuite offers implementation and support services through its professional services and support teams respectively, as well as through partners who tend to be regional or specialists in specific industries. Customers get 24/7 support from NetSuite support services around the globe in addition to its SuiteSuccess methodology. Plus, Fusion5 maintains a relationship with every customer by allocating a dedicated Account Manager who works closely with the NetSuite account manager. Both people help drive the value proposition, actively advising customers on what new features will benefit their business, how that will work for them, road-mapping their individual journeys and keeping them abreast of ways the business can improve using NetSuite.

MYOB also provides a support service for its clients which is accessible 24/7 via their Support website, but the service isn’t global. MYOB doesn’t provide a dedicated Account Manager — that is left to the partner. MYOB does provide consultants based in Australia that clients can contact, but only through the partner (and at a cost).