One of the greatest benefits of working in a NetSuite environment is the abundance of available dashboards and configurations. It can be easy to get “dashboard fever” and flood the environment with an abundance of dashboards. Still, it’s common for the executive to export everything to Excel or Google Sheets before a board meeting. Lack of data isn’t a problem, per se. It’s really that many organizations don’t have a common, trusted set of role-based KPIs that update in real-time and can reconcile to the GL.
In this article, we are going to take a few minutes to lay out a practical and intuitive CFO-friendly framework for selecting, constructing, and governing your KPIs in Netsuite–with an eye toward Field Services and Business Aviation in particular.
Start With Strategy: Pick Fewer, Better KPIs
Good KPIs start with identifying your business objects. Whether you are measuring by month, quarter, or annually, choose 3-5 goals you are trying to reach (e.g., greater profitability, shorter close times, margin expansion, etc.). Then, take each business objective and identify a couple of KPIs that include:
- A clear definition of the KPI and formula for measurement
- The owner responsible for the KPI
- The KPI target/threshold
- A review cadence to ensure the objective stays on track
Try to keep your KPIs to 10 or fewer and find a balance between your leading indicators and your lagging indicators. Examples of learning indicators could include:
- charter utilization
- DSO (days sales outstanding)
- pipeline coverage
Examples of learning indicators could include:
- EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization) margin
- technician utilization
- project margin
Once you have clear KPIs defined, layer in role-based drilldowns Finance, Operations, and functional leaders so they can act on those KPIs without turning the whole dashboard into number soup.
Build It Right the First Time (A Lightweight Playbook)
Strategy is just the start. Once you have a clear understanding of the strategy, it’s time to get into processes. To help save you time and ensure you get the build right on the first pass, we’ve broken it down into five actionable steps.
- Define the KPI specs. Start by documenting the objective, the owner, the formula, the data sources, the thresholds, and the review cadence. (Seriously, write it down; an idea is no good if it stays in your head.)
- Create (or optimize) the saved search. Leverage filters and summary types to maintain tight performance. Remove any duplicate records. If a KPI aligns to period-close numbers, make sure the search matches the same calendar and posting periods.
- Put each KPI on the right dashboard. Use role-based dashboards so CFOs, Controllers, Ops leaders, and NetSuite Admins can all focus on the KPIs they own and don’t have to sort through a pool of KPIs to find the ones for which they are stakeholders.
- Make it actionable. With KPIs on the right dashboards, you can then set your thresholds, reminders, and alerts (e.g., email, dashboard reminders) so that each KPI triggers action if needed and doesn’t just track data. This is key for not getting surprised in monthly reports when it can sometimes be too late to address issues that were tracked earlier in the month.
- Schedule refresh and secure it.Automate your updates and match permissions to each stakeholder. This is important, because sometimes sensitive data like, say, certain financial KPIs, shouldn’t be included in generic ops dashboards.
KPI Packs That Generic Guides Miss
If you have read other NetSuite KPI articles, you’ll notice that many of them stay top-level to the point where they are more conceptual than actionable. Those articles have their place, but this is not that type of article.
Let’s take a gander at KPI packs that are particularly important to Field Service and Business Aviation industries.
Field Service = (ServiceTrade + NetSuite)
Avialent Systems’s ServiceTrade Connector for NetSuite seamlessly connects ServiceTrade with NetSuite. So, if you are running ServiceTrade alongside NetSuite, your KPIs should feature common high-value KPIs related to metrics related to technician productivity, job profitability, cash speed, and contract health. Here are some KPIs that do just that.
- First-Time Fix Rate. This KPI is an indicator of performance related to quality, training, and customer satisfaction.
- Technician Utilization. Knowing your planned vs. actual billable hours is directly related to margin and capacity planning.
- WIP (Work in Progress) Aging. Incomplete jobs and/or late invoices can have a negative impact on close timelines, yes, cash flow.
- Maintenance Contract Margins. After parts and labor, are your recurring agreements as profitable as projected?
- AR Days / AR Aging. Service billing and collections efficiency keep the wheels turning. If there are hiccups in accounts receivable, it’s always best to know sooner rather than later.
Business Aviation = (NetSuite + X1 FBO / EBis / Flight Schedule Pro)
Avialent Systems’s AviationSuccess for NetSuite provides a fully-featured Business
Aviation solution with integrations to multiple industry-leading software providers, including X1FBO, CORRIDOR, LevelFlight, EBIS, and Flight Schedule Pro, and more. Leaders of Aviation finance and operations require a certain level of granularity visibility into profitability and utilization to keep the business not just profitable, but on track for growth.
- P&L by Tail Number.For tracking accurate cost and revenue attribution, this one should be non-negotiable.
- Fuel Margin.Fuel is a necessity, so regular monitoring of that margin is a core profitability driver for many FBOs (Fixed Base Operators).
- Charter Utilization.Fleet and crew productivity measured by revenue per available hour.
Hangar Occupancy and Margin. Hangers that are too far above or below capacity can both cause bottlenecks. Get insight into profitability per location. - Maintenance TAT (Turnaround Time).Planes in maintenance are not in operation and that can often be a revenue leakage indicator. Keep an eye on operational efficiency.
- AP (Accounts Payable / Accounts Receivable) by FBO LocationTrack cash discipline at the local level.
These KPIs usually depend on tight integrations with line-of-business systems (X1 FBO, EBis, LevelFlight, ServiceTrade). The team at Availent Systems can build and govern these integrations allowing your KPIs to pipe right into your NetSuite environment clearly and cleanly.
KPI Governance: Keep Them Trusted, Lean, and Auditable
Governance is critical for KPI maintenance; without it KPIs quickly decay. We’ve found the best course of action is to put a lightweight—but explicit—process in place, which includes:
- Ownership & cadence: Each and every KPI needs to have an owner responsible for accuracy, targets, and quarterly review.
- Reconciliation to the GL: Finance has to be able to track KPI numbers back to NetSuite, not some mystery tab in a spreadsheet that was hastily downloaded and is making the rounds..
- Version control & documentation: Cull the definition, formula, and search ID all in one place—particularly critical post‑mergers and acquisitions or during staff turnover.
- Quarterly pruning: Remove or combine redundant KPIs to avoid dashboard bloat.
- Scalability: Design KPIs and dashboards for new subsidiaries, currencies, or business lines; avoid hardcoding today’s org chart into tomorrow’s KPI logic.
If this sounds like a lot, don’t fret. This is where Availent’s CPAs, functional consultants, and technical developers bring an integrated approach to ensure KPIs are technically correct and financially defensible.
Common Pitfalls (and Fast Fixes)
When you do as many setups as we do, you come across common missteps that can be fairly easily rectified. Here are some common mistakes we see and some fast and easy ways to rectify (and ideally prevent) them.
- Metric theater (too many KPIs).
- Fast Fix: Cap the board set (we recommended a cap at 10 KPIs earlier), be diligent with quarterly pruning, and leverage role-based dashboards.
- Spreadsheet leakage.
- Fast Fix: Move current KPI logic into NetSuite (saved searches / SuiteAnalytics) and automate distribution through a combination of dashboards, reminders, and the Dashboard Service.
- One-size-fits-all dashboards.
- Fast Fix: Draft a master template for each role (CFO, Controller, Field Ops Manager, Aviation Finance Director, NetSuite Admin, etc.) then clone from there.
- No alerting.
- Fast Fix: Set and add thresholds and reminders so the designated stakeholder owns the next action when a KPI crosses a threshold.
- Unclear math & ownership.
- Fast Fix: Document all of your formulae, data sources, and owners in a KPI Definition Canvas; store it centrally for easy access to all stakeholders.
In Conclusion
NetSuite provides the capability for real-time, trusted KPI reporting. Making that reporting valuable really hinges on the discipline to pick fewer, better KPIs, build them correctly the first, and govern them regularly—all while honoring your vertical realities, whether that reality is a first-time fix rate in Field Services or P&L by tail number in Business Aviation.
Availent Systems helps you do that, quickly with a CPA-led process to identify and validate KPIs, industry-specific KPI packs and integrations that generic guides ignore, and our Dashboard Service for NetSuite that puts the right numbers in front of the right people at the right time via dashboards, TVs, and mobile devices—securely and in real time.
Ready to turn your NetSuite dashboards into a decision engine? Contact Availent Systems today for a consultation and get ready to start measuring success in a whole new way.
