Automating Vendor Rebates in NetSuite

A wholesale distribution client approached us to automate their vendor rebate process in NetSuite.
They needed to manage two rebate types:

• Direct Rebate: A fixed percentage applied to the net amount of a Vendor Bill (VB) or Vendor Credit (VC).
• Threshold Rebate: The percentage applied depends on cumulative bill amounts meeting certain thresholds.

The client was struggling with:

• Manual creation of rebate Journal Entries (JEs)
• Tracking overlapping rebate rules
• Ensuring only approved transactions qualified for rebates
• Reconciling actual vs. theoretical rebate totals

We designed a custom NetSuite rebate management system with:

1. Custom Records for Rebate Rules
   • Stored rule details for both Direct and Threshold types.
   • For threshold rebates, a sub-record held threshold levels and corresponding percentages
   • Validation script prevented overlapping rule scopes.
2. User Event (UE) Script for Automatic JE Creation
   • Direct rebate: calculated by multiplying VB/VC net amount by rule percentage.
   • Threshold rebate: calculated by summing running totals of qualifying VBs/VCs and applying the correct threshold percentage.
   • Ensured only approved transactions generated JEs.
3. Discrepancy Monitoring & Auto-Correction
   • UE script displayed actual vs. theoretical rebate totals for each rule.
   • Any mismatch was automatically corrected in the next JE created/edited.

• Efficiency: Completely removed manual rebate JE creation.
• Accuracy: Prevented overlapping rules and ensured correct rebate calculations.
• Visibility: Provided quick insights into rebate totals for decision-making.
• Compliance: Applied only to approved transactions within the rule scope.