How to Create a New Service for Sale in Netsuite

Written by Ricky Nave in Automation & Organization

Netsuite is built for product companies more than service companies. However, companies can still invoice customers for services through Netsuite. This article explains, step-by-step, how to create a new invoicable service in Netsuite.

Step 1: Log into Netsuite

You will need to login as an administrator in order to create a new service.

Step 2: Open the New Service Item Form

Hover over the following sequence of menu buttons “Lists” –> “Accounting” –> “Items” –> “New”. Click on “New”.

You should then see a screen like the one shown below. Look under the “Service” header and click on “For Sale”. This will open a form to let you create a new “Service for Sale” (which means a service your company sells but doesn’t buy).

After clicking on the “For Sale” button, you should see a form like the one shown below. The purpose of this form is to specify details about the type and price of the new service your company will offer.

Step 3: Specify a Name for the Service

On the form, you must specify a name and/or number for the new service in the “Item Name/Number” field. Most other fields are optional and can be left blank or changed. However, if your new service represents a unit of some sort (e.g. 1 billable hour), you should change the “Primary Units Type” field to “Count”.

Step 4: Specify a Price for the Service

After you finish filling out the top part of the form, scroll down to the “Sales / Pricing” section. Enter the price of the service in dollars in the upper left price cell as shown in the screenshot below.

Step 5: Specify whether the Service is Subject to Sales Tax

Click on the “Accounting” tab next to “Sales / Pricing”. Select the appropriate option from the “Tax Schedule” field drop-down menu. Many companies configure this field to either be “Taxable” or “Nontaxable” (referring to whether or not sales tax must be collected). Most services in most states are not subject to sales tax. However, there are exceptions so you’ll need to check state law or ask a sales tax expert in that state to know for sure.

Step 6: Save the form

Finally, click the blue “Save” button to save this new service type to Netsuite.

Ricky Nave

In college, Ricky studied physics & math, won a prestigious research competition hosted by Oak Ridge National Laboratory, started several small businesses including an energy chewing gum business and a computer repair business, and graduated with a thesis in algebraic topology. After graduating, Ricky attended grad school at Duke University in the mathematics PhD program where he worked on quantum algorithms & non-Euclidean geometry models for flexible proteins. He also worked in cybersecurity at Los Alamos during this time before eventually dropping out of grad school to join a startup working on formal semantic modeling for legal documents. Finally, he left that startup to start his own in the finance & crypto space. Now, he helps entrepreneurs pay less capital gains tax.

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