NetSuite Project Management & SuiteProjects Guide

Project management inside your ERP

Most project management tools operate in isolation. Your team tracks tasks and time in one system while the financial reality of those projects lives in the ERP. The project manager says a project is on track. The controller says it's over budget. Neither can prove the other wrong without a reconciliation exercise.

TL;DR: NetSuite's Projects module (SuiteProjects) connects project work directly to the general ledger -- time entries post to the GL, expenses hit cost accounts, and revenue recognition ties to milestones. It handles time tracking, project budgets with EAC forecasting, and project P&L reporting. For firms with 30+ delivery staff, NetSuite OpenAir adds resource management, utilization tracking, and advanced planning.

NetSuite's project management capabilities put the project data where the financial data lives. Time entries post to the GL. Project expenses hit the right cost accounts. Revenue recognition ties to project milestones. Project profitability is a real number, not an estimate derived from two systems that don't quite agree.

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Native project capabilities

NetSuite's built-in Projects module (sometimes called SuiteProjects) provides the foundation for project-centric operations. It's not a replacement for Asana, Monday.com, or Jira — it doesn't have Gantt charts, agile boards, or sophisticated task dependency management. What it does is connect project work to financial outcomes.

Project records

Each project in NetSuite is a record linked to a customer. The project captures: estimated revenue, budget, planned hours, billing type (time-and-materials, fixed-fee, or cost-plus), and status. Projects can have sub-projects for complex engagements with multiple workstreams.

Project tasks break the work into trackable units. Tasks have estimated hours, assigned resources, start and end dates, and completion status. Time entries log against specific tasks, so you can see not just how many hours were spent on a project but which tasks consumed them.

Project templates standardize your engagement structure. If every implementation project follows the same phases — Discovery, Design, Build, Test, Deploy — create a template with those tasks pre-defined. New projects start from the template and adjust as needed.

Time tracking

Time is the primary input for professional services project management. Every hour logged drives billing, utilization, cost allocation, and project profitability.

NetSuite's time tracking works through weekly timesheets where team members log hours against project tasks. Each entry captures the date, hours, project, task, and whether the time is billable. Approval workflows route timesheets through project managers for review before they post.

Mobile time entry lets field-based staff log time from their phones. This is essential for consulting firms and services companies where consultants work on-site with clients.

Time-based billing generates invoices from approved timesheet entries. The billing rate can come from the employee's default rate, a project-specific rate, or a role-based rate. For time-and-materials engagements, the invoice calculation is straightforward: hours × rate.

Project budgets and forecasting

Each project carries a budget that tracks estimated versus actual costs. The budget can be in hours, dollars, or both. As time and expenses post, the actual costs accumulate against the budget, and the system calculates the variance.

Estimate at Completion (EAC) is the projected final cost of the project based on current burn rate and remaining work. If you've spent 60% of the budget with only 40% of the work complete, the EAC flags that you're heading for an overrun.

Budget alerts notify project managers when costs reach defined thresholds — 75% of budget consumed, 90%, or any percentage you configure. Early warning prevents the surprise of discovering a project is over budget after the fact.

Expense management

Project expenses — travel, materials, subcontractor costs, software licenses — track against the project alongside labor costs. Expense reports can be coded to specific projects and tasks, and the costs flow into the project P&L.

For projects that bill expenses back to the client, expense entries can be marked as billable. When the invoice generates, the billed expenses appear alongside billed time, giving the client a complete view of charges.

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Project accounting

This is where NetSuite's project management differs fundamentally from standalone PM tools. Every project action has a financial consequence that posts to the general ledger.

Revenue recognition

Fixed-fee projects need revenue recognized based on delivery progress, not billing milestones. NetSuite supports percentage-of-completion and milestone-based revenue recognition for projects.

Percentage-of-completion uses the ratio of actual costs to estimated total costs (or actual hours to estimated total hours) to determine how much revenue to recognize. If total estimated cost is $100,000 and you've incurred $40,000, you recognize 40% of the contract revenue.

Milestone-based recognition ties to specific project deliverables. Complete the design phase, recognize the design portion of revenue. Complete the build phase, recognize that portion. This approach works when project phases have clear, measurable completion criteria.

For more complex multi-element arrangements, NetSuite ARM provides ASC 606-compliant allocation and recognition across project components.

Cost allocation

Project costs include direct costs (labor and expenses charged to the project) and potentially allocated overhead. The labor cost can be the employee's actual cost (salary-based) or a standard cost rate.

Fully-loaded labor cost includes not just salary but benefits, payroll taxes, and allocated overhead. A consultant with a $100,000 salary might have a fully-loaded cost of $140,000. Using the fully-loaded rate gives accurate project margins; using just salary understates costs and overstates margins.

Project profitability

The project P&L shows revenue versus costs for each project. For a services firm, this is the most important report in the system.

Revenue: Contract value, recognized to date, and remaining Direct costs: Labor (hours × cost rate) plus expenses Gross margin: Revenue minus direct costs Contribution margin: Gross margin minus allocated overhead (if you allocate)

Project profitability reporting lets you answer critical questions: Which clients are profitable? Which service lines? Which project types? Which project managers deliver the best margins? These answers drive strategic decisions about pricing, staffing, and sales targeting.

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When to add OpenAir

NetSuite's native project features handle the needs of most services firms under 30-40 delivery staff. Beyond that, NetSuite OpenAir adds dedicated PSA capabilities:

Resource management with skills-based matching, availability visibility, and capacity planning. When you have 100+ consultants across multiple skill sets and locations, resource management becomes a strategic function that native Projects can't support.

Utilization management with target setting, trending, and forward-looking projections. OpenAir tracks utilization at the individual, team, practice, and firm level with the sophistication that services firm leadership requires.

Advanced project planning with Gantt charts, dependency management, and multi-project portfolio views. If your project managers need traditional PM tooling alongside financial tracking, OpenAir provides it.

Project billing automation with complex billing rules, rate tables, and invoice generation that handles the nuances of multi-element, multi-rate, multi-currency services billing.

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Implementation approach

Start with the financial foundation: define your project types, billing methods, cost rates, and revenue recognition policies. These business decisions drive every configuration choice.

Then configure project templates for your most common engagement types. Get time tracking live first — it's the data that feeds everything else. Add expense management and billing automation once time tracking is running smoothly.

Project profitability reporting should be available from day one, even if the data is limited. Seeing real margin numbers from the first few projects builds organizational commitment to accurate time and expense tracking.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does NetSuite have project management capabilities?expand_more

What is the difference between NetSuite Projects and OpenAir?expand_more

How does NetSuite handle project revenue recognition?expand_more

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How does project budgeting work in NetSuite?expand_more