Setting up segmentation—subsidiaries, locations, departments, classes

We use segmentation in NetSuite to classify and categorize the purchases, sales, and items, among other things. NetSuite's Help also refers to this as classification. Both terms work the same. This is most helpful for accounting and other types of reporting, and so the accounting teams usually have a lot of opinions about exactly how this needs to be done.

NetSuite offers the following lists as the primary means for segmenting the company's activities.

Subsidiaries

A subsidiary is the highest level of segmentation. It represents the business's legal entities (in fact, many businesses use this term). Talk the client through setting these up in the Setup | Company | Subsidiaries screen, and talk about how they'll use the system's hierarchy (with multiple levels of parent companies) and whether they'll need to use Elimination subsidiaries as well (in which case, select...