NetSuite Document Management: Best DMS Solutions

The document problem nobody plans for

You implement NetSuite, migrate your chart of accounts, configure your workflows, and go live. Six months later, someone asks where the signed contract for a major customer lives. The answer? Maybe in the File Cabinet. Maybe attached to the customer record. Maybe in someone's email. Maybe in a shared drive that half the company forgot about.

Document management is one of those problems that doesn't feel urgent until it is. Auditors show up and need to see every vendor bill for the quarter. A customer disputes an invoice and you need the signed PO. A new hire needs the onboarding documents that were "somewhere in NetSuite." Every one of these moments reveals the same gap: NetSuite is great at managing transactions, but managing the documents behind those transactions requires deliberate planning.

Most NetSuite users end up with documents scattered across the File Cabinet, email inboxes, local drives, SharePoint, Google Drive, and Dropbox. No single source of truth, no consistent naming, no retention policy. It works until it doesn't — and when it doesn't, it usually fails at the worst possible time.

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NetSuite's native File Cabinet: what it does well

Start with what you already have. NetSuite's File Cabinet is a built-in file storage system available in every account. You can create folder structures, upload files, and attach documents to transaction and entity records. It's not a full document management system, but it covers basic needs.

What the File Cabinet handles well:

• Record-level attachments. You can attach files directly to customer records, vendor bills, sales orders, purchase orders, and most other record types. When your AP team processes a vendor bill, they can attach the PDF invoice right to the bill record. Anyone who opens that bill sees the attached source document. This is genuinely useful and most companies should be doing it.
• Folder organization. The File Cabinet supports nested folder structures. You can create folders for departments, document types, or any other taxonomy that makes sense for your business. Folders can be restricted by role, so your HR documents stay separate from your finance documents.
• SuiteScript access. Developers can read from and write to the File Cabinet programmatically. This opens up automation possibilities — scripts that auto-file documents, generate PDFs, or process incoming files.
• SuiteLet and web hosting. The File Cabinet can host web-accessible files like images, CSS, and JavaScript for SuiteCommerce or custom portlets. This is a niche use case but important for development teams.

Where it falls short:

• The 10MB file size limit. Individual files uploaded to the File Cabinet are capped at 10MB. That sounds reasonable until someone tries to upload a signed contract scan, a detailed engineering drawing, or a product catalog. Large PDFs hit this wall constantly.
• No versioning. Upload a new version of a document, and the old version is gone. There's no version history, no ability to compare changes, no rollback. For contracts, policies, or any document that evolves over time, this is a significant gap.
• Limited search. You can search file names, but there's no full-text search across document content. If you need to find every contract that mentions a specific clause, you're opening files one by one.
• Storage limits. NetSuite accounts have file storage limits — typically 10GB for standard accounts, with additional storage available for purchase. Companies with high document volumes hit this ceiling faster than expected.
• No workflow integration. There's no built-in way to route a document for review and approval through NetSuite's workflow engine. You can build it with SuiteScript, but there's nothing out of the box.

For small companies with light document needs, the File Cabinet is functional. For companies dealing with compliance requirements, high document volumes, or any need for version control and full-text search, it's a starting point, not a solution.

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NetSuite Document Management SuiteApps

Before jumping to third-party platforms, check the SuiteApp marketplace. Several vendors have built document management solutions that run inside NetSuite, which means no external system to manage and no integration to maintain.

NetSuite Document Management SuiteApp (by Oracle). Oracle offers an enhanced document management module as a paid add-on. It extends the File Cabinet with better organization, tagging, and record association. If your needs are moderate — better filing, easier retrieval, basic categorization — this might be enough without adding an external system.

Netsuite Advanced PDF/HTML Templates. Not a DMS per se, but worth mentioning: NetSuite's advanced PDF capabilities let you generate professional documents (invoices, POs, packing slips) directly from records. Combined with a SuiteScript that auto-saves generated PDFs to the File Cabinet or attaches them to records, you can automate a significant portion of your document creation workflow.

Third-party SuiteApps for document capture. Several SuiteApp partners offer document capture and filing tools. These typically add drag-and-drop upload interfaces, batch filing capabilities, and better metadata tagging than the native File Cabinet provides. Search the SuiteApp marketplace for "document management" to see current offerings — the landscape changes frequently.

The advantage of SuiteApp-based solutions is simplicity. Everything stays inside NetSuite. The disadvantage is capability — none of these match the feature depth of a dedicated document management platform.

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Third-party DMS integrations

When the File Cabinet and SuiteApps aren't enough, companies integrate NetSuite with a dedicated document management system. The three most common choices are SharePoint, Google Drive, and Box.

SharePoint + NetSuite

If your company runs on Microsoft 365, SharePoint is the natural document management choice. Most of your team is already using it (or at least has access), which reduces the adoption barrier significantly.

How the integration works: A middleware layer — typically Celigo, Workato, or a custom SuiteScript integration — connects NetSuite records to SharePoint document libraries. When a transaction is created in NetSuite, a corresponding folder can be auto-created in SharePoint. Documents uploaded to SharePoint get linked back to the NetSuite record. Users see the document list on the NetSuite record but the files physically live in SharePoint.

Strengths: Full version history. Robust search including content search. Co-authoring for Office documents. Granular permissions. Effectively unlimited storage on most M365 plans. Compliance and retention policies through Microsoft Purview. If you're already paying for Microsoft 365, you're not adding a new line item.

Challenges: The integration requires middleware and ongoing maintenance. SharePoint's folder structures need to be mapped to NetSuite's record hierarchy, and keeping that mapping clean as your NetSuite configuration evolves takes effort. Permission models between NetSuite and SharePoint don't sync automatically, so you manage access in two places.

Google Drive + NetSuite

For Google Workspace companies, Google Drive serves a similar role. The integration pattern is the same — middleware connects NetSuite records to Google Drive folders, and documents are stored in Google Drive but referenced from NetSuite.

Strengths: Excellent real-time collaboration. Google's search is best-in-class for finding documents across content, not just file names. Storage is generous on Business plans. The Google Drive interface is familiar to most users.

Challenges: Google Drive's folder structure is less rigid than SharePoint's, which can be a blessing or a curse depending on your organizational discipline. Integrations with NetSuite are less mature than SharePoint options — fewer pre-built connectors, more custom development required. Permission management across the two systems adds complexity.

Box + NetSuite

Box positions itself as the enterprise content management platform, and it has a more direct integration story with NetSuite than either SharePoint or Google Drive. Box for NetSuite is a purpose-built integration that connects Box's content management capabilities to NetSuite records.

Strengths: Purpose-built NetSuite integration (not a generic connector). Strong compliance features including retention policies, legal hold, and audit trails. Box Skills can automatically extract metadata from documents using AI. Granular watermarking and access controls. Box Relay provides document-centric workflows.

Challenges: Box adds another SaaS subscription — typically $15-25/user/month for Business plans. For companies not already using Box, that's a hard sell when they're already paying for SharePoint or Google Drive as part of their productivity suite.

Which integration to choose

The short version: use what you already have. If you're a Microsoft shop, integrate with SharePoint. If you're a Google shop, integrate with Google Drive. Adding Box on top of an existing productivity suite just for NetSuite document management rarely makes sense unless you have specific compliance requirements that Box handles better.

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Document scanning and OCR solutions

Paper isn't dead yet, especially in accounts payable. Vendor bills arrive as PDFs, receipts come in from the field, contracts get signed and scanned. Getting these documents into NetSuite — ideally with the data extracted automatically — is where OCR and capture solutions come in.

NetSuite's Bill Capture. NetSuite offers a built-in bill capture feature that uses OCR to read vendor bills and create vendor bill records automatically. You email or upload a PDF invoice, the system extracts the vendor name, invoice number, date, line items, and amounts, and creates a draft vendor bill for review. It's not perfect — expect 70-85% accuracy depending on invoice quality and consistency — but it eliminates manual data entry for the bulk of your AP volume.

Stampli. A popular AP automation platform that integrates with NetSuite. Stampli goes beyond basic OCR by adding AI-powered data extraction, approval routing, and vendor communication tracking. It's particularly good for companies with complex AP workflows involving multiple approvers, coding rules, and exception handling. Pricing runs $10-20+ per user/month.

DEXT (formerly Receipt Bank). Focused on receipt and expense document capture. Field teams photograph receipts, DEXT extracts the data, and the information flows into NetSuite as expense records. Useful for companies with significant employee expense volume.

Tipalti. Combines AP automation with global payments. If your document management challenge is specifically around vendor invoices and you also need better payment workflows, Tipalti addresses both in one platform.

The key with any OCR solution is setting realistic expectations. No system achieves 100% accuracy. Plan for a human review step in your workflow, especially during the first few months while the system learns your vendor patterns.

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Record-level file attachments and the 10MB workaround

The 10MB file size limit on the File Cabinet is one of the most common complaints from NetSuite users. Here are the practical workarounds.

Compress before uploading. Many scanned documents are saved at unnecessarily high resolutions. Compressing PDFs before upload can reduce file sizes by 50-80% without meaningful quality loss. Tools like Adobe Acrobat's "Reduce File Size" or free alternatives work well for this.

Split large documents. A 30-page contract scan doesn't need to be a single file. Split it into logical sections — the agreement itself, exhibits, signature pages — and attach each section separately.

Use external storage with links. This is the most scalable approach. Store the actual document in SharePoint, Google Drive, or Box, and add a URL link to the NetSuite record. You can use a custom URL field on the record to point to the external document. The user clicks the link and opens the document from the external system. The document doesn't count against your NetSuite storage limit, there's no file size restriction, and you get the version control and search capabilities of the external platform.

SuiteScript file chunking. For programmatic use cases, SuiteScript can handle files larger than 10MB by breaking them into chunks. This is primarily useful for integration scenarios where files are being transferred between systems, not for end-user document storage.

The external storage approach with URL links is what we recommend for most companies. It's the cleanest long-term solution and avoids fighting the File Cabinet's limitations.

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SuiteScript for document automation

If your team has SuiteScript development capability, you can automate much of the document management drudgery. Here are the most common automation patterns we build for clients.

Auto-filing uploaded documents. A User Event script that fires when a file is attached to a record. The script reads the record type, transaction number, and date, then moves the file to the correct File Cabinet folder and renames it according to your naming convention. Instead of files landing in a generic "Uploads" folder with names like "scan_001.pdf," they end up in structured folders with names like "INV-2026-0542_VendorName_2026-02-18.pdf."

Automated PDF generation and attachment. A Scheduled Script that runs nightly, finds all transactions from the day that don't have an attached PDF, generates the PDF using the transaction's print template, and attaches it to the record. This ensures every invoice, sales order, and purchase order has a PDF copy attached for reference and audit purposes.

Document expiration alerts. A Saved Search combined with a Workflow or Scheduled Script that monitors custom date fields on records — contract expiration dates, insurance certificate renewal dates, license expiration dates — and sends alerts when documents are approaching expiration. This is invaluable for compliance.

Naming convention enforcement. A Client Script or User Event Script that validates file names against your naming convention when users upload documents. If the file doesn't match the expected pattern, the script either renames it automatically or prompts the user to correct it. This prevents the folder full of "Document (1).pdf" files that make retrieval impossible.

These automations aren't complex individually, but together they turn document management from a manual, error-prone process into something that mostly runs itself.

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Compliance and retention policies

For companies subject to SOX, HIPAA, FDA regulations, or industry-specific audit requirements, document management goes beyond convenience. It's a compliance requirement.

Audit trails. NetSuite's system notes track who attached, modified, or removed files from records. This gives you a basic audit trail for document activity. For deeper audit requirements, a SuiteScript can log detailed document access events to a custom record, creating a complete history of who viewed, downloaded, or modified documents.

Retention policies. NetSuite doesn't have built-in document retention management. You'll need either a SuiteScript solution that enforces retention rules — automatically archiving or deleting documents after their retention period expires — or an external DMS that handles retention natively. SharePoint and Box both offer policy-based retention management that can be configured to meet regulatory requirements.

SOX compliance. If you're SOX-compliant, your auditors need to see that financial documents are properly controlled. This means restricted access to financial records and attachments, audit trails showing who accessed what and when, retention policies ensuring documents are preserved for the required period, and controls preventing unauthorized modification or deletion. The File Cabinet's folder-level role restrictions provide a basic access control layer, but most SOX-compliant companies need the additional controls that a dedicated DMS provides.

Legal hold. When litigation happens, you need to preserve all potentially relevant documents. Neither the File Cabinet nor most SuiteApps support legal hold natively. If this is a concern, Box and SharePoint both offer legal hold capabilities that prevent document deletion regardless of retention policies.

The practical advice: if you're subject to regulatory compliance, the File Cabinet alone probably isn't sufficient. Budget for either a robust SuiteScript-based compliance layer or integration with a DMS that handles compliance natively.

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Best practices for organizing documents in NetSuite

Here are the practices that actually stick long-term.

Establish a naming convention and enforce it. Something like [RecordType]-[TransactionNumber]-[Description]-[Date] works well. "VB-12345-AcmeInvoice-2026-02-18.pdf" tells you everything you need to know at a glance. Write the convention down, train your team, and ideally enforce it with a script.

Create a folder taxonomy before you start uploading. A common structure: top-level folders for document types (AP Invoices, Contracts, HR Documents, Compliance), with subfolders by year or entity. Don't go deeper than three levels — anything beyond that, and people start dumping files in the wrong place because the structure is too complex to navigate.

Attach documents to the record they belong to. This sounds obvious, but we see File Cabinets full of documents that aren't attached to any record. An invoice PDF floating in a folder is far less useful than the same PDF attached to the vendor bill record. When someone opens the vendor bill, they should see the source document right there.

Use custom fields for document metadata. Add custom fields to records for document-related information: contract expiration date, document type, review status, responsible party. These fields become searchable in Saved Searches, which makes finding and reporting on documents much easier than browsing folder structures.

Set a regular cleanup schedule. Once per quarter, review the File Cabinet for orphaned files, duplicate uploads, and outdated documents. Storage limits make this a practical necessity, but even without storage pressure, a clean File Cabinet is a usable File Cabinet.

Define who owns document management. Every company we've seen with good document hygiene has someone — usually an operations manager or office administrator — who owns the process. They maintain the folder structure, enforce naming conventions, train new employees, and clean up messes. Without that ownership, entropy wins every time.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the file size limit for NetSuite File Cabinet?expand_more

Can NetSuite integrate with SharePoint for document management?expand_more

Does NetSuite have built-in OCR for vendor bills?expand_more

How do I set up document retention policies in NetSuite?expand_more

What is the best document management system for NetSuite?expand_more

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Need help with document management in NetSuite?

Document management is one of those things that benefits enormously from getting it right early. Retrofitting a naming convention, folder structure, or DMS integration after years of ad hoc filing is painful. If you're setting up NetSuite or realizing your current document approach isn't scaling, we can help you design and implement a solution that fits your business.