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Katie Ketchell
Hello, everyone, and thank you for attending today's webinar, Flexport's native NetSuite integration, how Tracksmith automated their global supply chain. My name is Katie Ketchell, and I'm a senior director for our control tower product here at Flexport. Now we have a great webinar for you today. I know I'm a little bit biased, but I think the content's gonna be excellent, and you're gonna love it. But before we begin, let's cover a few housekeeping items. So on your screen, you'll see a sidebar on the right of the main stage where you can submit questions. So at the end of the presentation, we're gonna host a q and a and answer a few audience questions if we have time. Be sure to get in your questions early. On that same sidebar, you're gonna see a tab labeled docs. This is where you can download a copy of today's slides. So if you really like something, you don't have to whip out your phone and take a screenshot. We have everything ready for you to download and share internally if you'd like. And then also above the stage, there's a button called get started with integrations. You can click here to access the settings page within the Flexport platform to set it up if you're already a Flexport customer and want to explore the integration that we're gonna be talking about. Next slide, please. Okay. My favorite part of every webinar, the legal slide. Try to contain your excitement, everyone. Please keep in mind that all information provided in this session will be based on the situation at the current time, may not be customized to your specific business requirements. So we always recommend reaching out to a FlexBoard expert to discuss your particular situation. Alright. The people, the best part. Joining me today is my colleague, Ollie Cunningham, staff technical program manager here at Flexport. Welcome, Ollie, and thank you for taking the time to be in this webinar. And then also joining a little bit later in the presentation, we are very pleased and fortunate to have John Papavizas, who's a senior operations manager at Tracksmith joining us. And John was actually our first beta customer on this integration. He survived and lived to tell the tell, and he's gonna tell the tell later on in this webinar. So thank you, John, in advance. Alright. Next, we have oh, I think we skipped a slide. There we go. Here's our agenda. So we're gonna kick it off with an overview of the NetSuite integration. Ollie's gonna run us through an actual live demo to show you what it looks like. And then John will join us on stage for a conversation around his experience with the native integration, and then we'll close it out with q and a from the audience. So with that, I will kick it over to you, Ollie.
Oliver Cunningham
Thanks, Katie. Hi, everyone. My name is Ale, and I lead our native integration efforts here at at Flexport. Before diving into what we built, I wanna start a bit broader, and I'm trying to explain the problem we're trying to to solve. So today, running a business is very complex. To do your day to day job, you're probably interacting with numerous stakeholders, both internally and ex externally, and using many different sources to get the data that you need to make critical choices to drive your business forward. You need key data like arrival dates, land of cost, updates on your purchase orders to decide on things like product costing, inventory re re re replenishment, and or order placement. And to help make sense of all this data, you're probably using an enterprise resource planning system or ERP, such as net NetSuite. NetSuite or an ERP act as a single source of truth for all of your teams to operate out of one place. From logistics and operations to finance to sales to an inventory planning, everyone is working off of the same data. However, the reality today is that this data that you that your your that your ERP needs actually lives across other various places. So this creates our problem. How do you get that data from those systems into your ERP so you can empower your teams to do their their jobs? Generally, there are two ways to do this. First, you do it the the old fashioned way. You hire people who copy and paste data from spreadsheets and emails and other platforms, or two, you look to integrations to automate this this data flow. As companies grow, option one for the manual approach does not scale. It breaks very easily, so companies typically look to integrate. And not only does it streamline the data flow into your e ERP so all teams have that great data, but it also gives you other benefits, like fewer data errors, time savings for your teams so they can level up and focus on higher value add tasks. And now let's say you picked your your your ERP and you decided to integrate. Great. You're starting to scope, and you're happy with your choice. You're excited about all the benefits you're you're gonna get. You just need to start setting it up. That should be easy. Right? Not not so much. A lot of us on this call probably have some form of p PTSD from a past integration project that went way longer than expected, went way over budget, and drained your team's bandwidth. So, unfortunately, this is a common case for integrations as of right now. Progress can take multiple months and require touch points from weekly meetings to long long e e email chains to phone calls when things things are on fire. It hinges on technical resources or I IT teams to be available and assigned. Without these stakeholders, nothing actually happens, and business teams are blocked. And in some cases, you might not even have a dedicated technical team in house, so you'll have to go outside and hire a third party vendor, which further adds the investment that you need before you realize any value from the inner inner integration. And even after you're live, the work doesn't stop. Maintenance and support can be very complex as any changes that are needed are requiring your technical teams to dive deep to figure out what the issue is and what needs what needs to be fixed. So what does Flexport do? We build an out of box native integration with NetNetsuite. The goal is very simple. We wanna take away the complexity of integration setup and get you live as quickly as possible to give you the high value data you need where you want it. Put very plainly, we wanna fix all of the cons of integrating while keeping all the pros. So what we've done is we've built an easy self-service onboarding experience that takes months of integration setup and simplifies it into thirty minutes. The setup module is available directly in our platform, and you no longer need technical teams to be involved. Any tech any stakeholders, they will do the setup. You just need admin access in both NetSuite and Flexport, and the product takes care of the rest. And by the way, the slide says 30, but this is actually out out of out of date. Last week, we had a client do setup in eighteen minutes, which is the current record. So maybe a call to action would be if someone's looking to break that record, trying to go off and do that after after we're off of here. The integration supports a two way sync, so you can have the confidence that both NetSuite and Flexport are always in sync, and you'll get the data you need where you need it when you need it. It doesn't matter what system you're working from. The data will always be there. We're also providing data that truly matters across five key flows from purchase order updates to SKU level tracking to miles in Atlanta cost data. We allow you to toggle each one of these things on or off as well based off of your needs. And then all of this is built on top of the most secure and re reliable framework. We leverage OAuth two via NetSuite REST web services, and all of your data, access keys, tokens are gonna be an an ensuring that we have the highest level of data security possible. And the best thing about all this is that that I haven't mentioned yet is that all this integration tech is offered for free. So right after this call, if you have thirty minutes to spare, why not go ahead and give this a try yourself? Because it's relatively low cost and low effort for for you. Now let's go one level deeper, and I'm gonna talk about some of the key capabilities and features that the integration actually actually has. So we integrate with two NetSuite objects of inbound shipment and and per purchase order, and these two things work to streamline both your shipment management and your purchase order management prep prep process. Starting with the first of inbound shipment, we'll automatically be creating inbound shipment records for you as FlexSport shipments are booked. The inbound shipment record and your FlexSport shipment will be automatically linked so future updates are able to flow through without any manual touch point needed. We'll provide key shipment data, like the flex ID, where the shipment is going, involve parties, service details so you can easily associate your inbound shipment with what's happening in the in the real world. Then as shipments begin moving, you'll see key shipment milestones get pushed from Flexport into your inbound shipment record. So you and your teams always have the latest and greatest estimate of when something is tracking to be de de delivered. This can directly help your downstream teams, such as sales and and and inventory planning. And as cost on your shipments become finalized, we'll also push Lambda cost data into your inbound shipment as well. This will allow you and your finance teams to be able to see directly in your inbound shipment how much it costs to manufacture and transport your goods. The second integration is the purchase order. This is designed for clients who use our FlexScore order management pro product. The features you see on the screen here on the right hand side are used in conjunction with the the features listed on the left hand side. So the PO integration is not an either or. It's actually an add on. So POs will sync from NetSuite to Flexport based on a client defined set of filter values, such as vendor, which ensures that only the POs that you want to sync will sync. Then as updates are made in our order management system, those will then push back to the PO record in NetSuite, ensuring those two records are always in sync. Then as PO lines are added to your shipments, we'll automatically attach those to your inbound shipments in NetSuite. This is a really key part of what this what the solution offers as this then unlocks SKU level visibility to tell you which products are traveling on what shipments. And then finally, leveraging these PO lines, the integration enables SKU level tracking or SKU level and a cost tracking in NetSuite as well. We send freight and cost data, and then we specify which lines those those costs cover. And NetSuite calculates the unit level cost, and you can see that directly within your system. Okay. Next, I'm gonna go through a demo, and it's gonna cover a few things. The first will be a simplified look at setting up your integration in the Flexport platform. Second, it will be purchase order data syncing from NetSuite into Flexport. And then third, it will be shipment level data syncing from Flexport back to net NetSuite. So starting with the setup process, you're gonna come into Flexport platform. You're gonna click business profile. You're gonna go to settings. You're gonna find our newly created ERP integrations tab. This is the landing page. Click ERP integration, then click NetSuite, and then click next. This will bring you to our get started page. On the left hand side, you'll see the six high level steps that we'll take you through. This demo will focus on a subset of these steps to give you a glimpse of what this process what what this process feels like. The first step is naming your integration. You'll enter those details there, and then the next series of steps will be where you authorize NetSuite so Flexport is able to establish a cut cut cut establish a connection with the system. This includes consumer ID and secret, which would generate from an integration application that you create in NetSuite. The next step will be where you configure data, beginning with purchase orders. You'll tell us if you want POs turned on or off and to be able to view the data you get by doing this. We'll then ask you to create a test purchase order in NetSuite, which we will use to validate that you we can read and write POs in your environment. From there, we'll go into shipment level data, and we'll ask you if you want milestones or in line with cost. And then you'll see the data points you get within each of these data types. Then you'll trigger the second integration test, which will allow us to create a test in management record in your NetSuite environment. We'll ask you to validate the data looks good, review the inputs, click activate, and then you're live. It's really as easy as that. And once your integration is live, you'll see a display on the landing page here. At any time, you could come back into this page and edit the configurations that you had just gone through. So let's say you started out not wanting to land at cost, but then down the road, you wanted to add it back in. You would come back in here. You'd be able to edit these details in a self serve manner, toggle that on, and then that data would start flowing. So the next portion I'm gonna show you is the purchase order sync. So what you see on screen now is an example purchase order in NetSuite. I have prepopulated some information just for this demo, such as the the vendor, which is AL Systems, the receipt by date, the PO creation date, the PO number, for this example, which is PO1003, and then the memo field, which is the free text field that you can use to easily identify your PO and include any other references that you want. Additionally, from the the header level, we also have our buyer. So as an example, it's Honeycomb Manufacturing, and then our ship date. At the item level, I've added two line items. The first is for a 150 units. The second is for 225, and I've included the unit cost as well. We're also able to sync the ship to address. For this example, it's Academy Sports and Outdoors. And we also are able to sync the Incoterm between your vendor and you. So coming back in the Flexport side now, this is our order management product. You can see now that p 01003 has been synced into the Flexport system. And at the header level, you see the various data points that I just went through now populated. Carton ready date, must arrive by date, our buyer and seller for Honeycomb and AL AL systems, destination address for Academy Sports and Outdoors, and the Incoterm two. The memo field populates right in the middle there, as you can see order for FluxSport. And at the line level, you see the two line items that were added to the NetSuite PO for a 150 units and 225, along with the unit cost that were also added. Next, we're gonna go to the shipment level. So this portion of the demo will cover a few things. It will show inbound shipment getting created. It will show miles to the Atlantic cost flowing from Flexport to NetSuite, and it will also show what the process looks like to attach PO line items. So what's on screen now is an example Flexport shipment that I've created with some information prepopulated, such as the container number, which you can see here ends in 564, and an estimated schedule entered where we have estimated pickup from origin of October 29, and then we have an estimated delivery to final destination of November 21. Additionally, in the details tab of the shipment, you'll see service information. This includes Incoterm, what mode, the flex ID, which for this example is ending in 819, what custom service is included, import, export, or both, the container number and the container size, as well as the house bill of lading number. Now on the NetSuite side, you'll see the inbound shipment record has been created. The first data that populates is the flex ID, which goes into the external document number. When I refresh this page, the remainder of the header level information will populate. This includes container number and our estimated schedule. So you can see our expected ship date of 10/29 and expected deep delivery date of 11/21 have been have been entered. As these dates get updated in Flexport, they'll automatically also change here as well. So let's say that your expected delivery date changes from 11/21 to 11/25. That update would automatically show up here as well. You'll notice that the actual dates have not been populated yet, and that's because they've not yet been entered in Flexport. But when they are, those will show up. The service details I was going through show up in the memo field. You'll see shipment name and other information such as involved parties, the the freight type, custom service, and the anchor term on the shipment. And on the right hand side, you'll see other details like vessel number and bill of lading. Notice here that the items have not yet been populated, and that's because those have not yet been entered on the Flexport side, which I'm gonna show you next. So back into Flexport, within the purchase orders tab, you'll see now that there's been two line items that have been added. The first is for three units, and the second is for eight units. And these are coming from the PO ABC123. So I didn't show it in this demo, but the way that these get added is either at the time of booking, these lines can be added from your PO, or after the shipment moves, you can also do it as well. Once entered in Flexport, on the NetSuite side, when you refresh, these PO lines will now be be shown. So you're able to see the PO number populate, use A BC123, with the two lines entered for our two SKUs that were on the Flexport side. And then you can see on the right hand side, for the quantity expected, this is the number of units that were booked. Any remaining units still on the PO will show in the remaining quantity right to the right. And then finally, from a land of cost point of view, we're gonna come back into the Flexport side, and you're gonna navigate to the products tab. For any shipment you have with Flexport, you're able to come into this view and see the landed cost details. What we'll show you is three components of landed cost of purchase cost, which is your commercial value, the customs cost, which is how much it's costing you to clear customs and the the processing fees with that, and then the freight cost, which should be the transportation related cost as well. Land of cost is the total sum of these three categories. The integration will be focused on sending you customs cost and freight cost, which we will send by looking at which PO line items have been booked on the shipment and sending that to NetSuite so they're able to associate those lines across across the cost. This will show up in the land of cost tab. You'll see that we have two cost categories that are populated for freight and for duty. And just to show you the numbers tie out, on the FlexSport side, you'll see our freight cost is $43.8 and our customs cost is $1,500 And on NetSuite side, you'll see those two numbers show up in the relevant categories. The currency, exchange rate, effective date, and allocation method are prepopulated by the integration. And then the associated items column to the right hand side is where we'll specify which line items from the inbound shipment that these costs cover. What that allows for is back in the items tab, NetSuite is then calculating the unit line of cost and the total unit cost to show you your your cost for the line items and for the individual units on those line items as well. Okay. Thank you for listening. That is the end of the demo. And next, we're gonna go into our conversation with Tracksmith. So I'm gonna invite John to come up back onto the virtual stage with us as well as Katie, and we're gonna have a quick chat about how the integration has been helping Tracksmith so far.
Katie Ketchell
Amazing. Thanks, Ollie. That was that was awesome. Thanks for the overview and the demo there. And welcome, John. We're so excited to have you here joining us today. Are you doing? How are you feeling?
John Papavizas
Sound good. Thanks for having me, Katie.
Katie Ketchell
Awesome. Awesome. So you've been using Flexport's native NetSuite integration for a little over eight months now. So we're excited to talk to you about your real hands on experience and working directly with Oli for a while. Sorry about that. But to kick things off, can you tell us a little bit about just Tracksmith in general? Your brand mission, maybe how complex your global supply chain is, what a peak season looks like. Tell us a bit about the company.
John Papavizas
Sure. Yeah. So Tracksmith's an independent running brand. We were founded in 2014 and we're based in Boston. We've been a partner with Flexport for most of that time. And then we've also been on NetSuite for approximately five years. So our mission is really to celebrate and contribute to running's culture, and our products really support runners from head to toe. In terms of operations, we have a number of suppliers across Asia, Europe, and North America with most of our inbound shipments going to The US. And in terms of channels, we started as a d2cecom brand, but we're also in retail and wholesale now. So that's a growing part of our business. And, yeah, in terms of seasonal peaks, that's pretty important for us. So we have kind of two seasonal peaks in spring and fall. So that means we have a lot of shipments leaving factories at the same time. So traditionally, a lot of a lot of manual work for me in this during those times, and, you know, this this integration has really kinda transformed those those periods for me.
Katie Ketchell
Awesome. So specifically, your role and, like, your daily life, how how does your role interface with both the logistics side of things with Flexport and the financial slash data side of things in the NetSuite environment? Tell us a little bit about that.
John Papavizas
Yeah. I mean, think they go hand in hand. We job is really part of my job is, at least, is managing the relationship with Flexport and coordinating shipments end to end. And at the same time, I'm playing a kinda key role in reporting and data management at Tracksmith, so making sure that, you know, the data flowing into NetSuite is accurate and updated in a timely way. Yeah. That's, you know, important for our finance team who, you know, rely on it every day for for billing and for planning, but it's, you know, also important for other teams as, you know, that NetSuite data, becomes the source of truth. So, you know, we're pushing information from NetSuite into to other systems that, support the business, you know, from our, you know, go to market team, so they can understand when products arrive, and then to our wholesale platform for, available to promise states. So, yeah. So that that data accuracy is is is a big part of my role as well.
Oliver Cunningham
Awesome. Thanks for that, John. So you've mentioned that Tracksmith runs fairly lean on, like, tech team. You don't really have tech resources, in in house. So before Flexport came to you and offered kind of this easy self serve integration, was integration even an option for you?
John Papavizas
No. Would say simple answer is no. Not really. I think it's something that we considered. As you mentioned, it would have taken considerable outside resources, so not something that we you know, really, really went down the path of of pursuing. So, yeah, when this came came along, we were we were really excited and, know, jumped on opportunity.
Oliver Cunningham
Yeah. That's awesome. And, John, just to confirm, you don't really have any tech background. Right? So when you came into the the self serve onboarding, experience, what was that like for you kinda as, like, a nontech stakeholder?
John Papavizas
Yeah. Yeah. It was it was it was really simple. Yeah. So I had conversation, like, with with you and and your team, and that was it was just really easy. Like, it was, you know, really simple to to map everything and, you know, including our our custom fields, which, you know, that was that was kind of the thing that was you know, I had some some questions on and wanted to, you know, make sure that we some of our our custom fields for for purchase orders and and waiter for for inbound shipments were were supported. And that was also, like, you know, really, really easy to set up in addition to, you know, all the standard fields that we we've. mapped. And I don't know. Yep. Thirty minutes. I'm I'm happy to hear that. Like, so someone did in eighteen minutes as well. We'll see see what the new record is coming up.
Katie Ketchell
So, John, to follow-up on that, you've been a Flexport client for a number of years, and you started or you went on the new integration eight months ago. And prior to that, you were not doing order management with Flexport. But during this integration setup, like Ollie explained, there was the ex there's the, you know, available option to exchange the PO data and have that SKU level visibility.
John Papavizas
Yeah.
Katie Ketchell
So why did this integration make it, you know, order management a must have for you?
John Papavizas
Yeah. So yeah, we considering flexible order management. And I would say that this integration definitely didn't make it a must have. And that's the automatic syncing between the systems really that contributed to that and then the line item updates to inbound shipments in NetSuite. So we started with the header level data syncing to NetSuite, that was great. And that's continued to work really well. And then the line item data, having that synced back and forth, is really helpful. And then, that's also unlocked some some efficiencies in terms of the way we plan shipments with suppliers and, you know, the way we we the way we book shipments as well. So they have they have visibility on all of our POs that we have with them and how those POs are being planned onto shipments.
Katie Ketchell
Maybe tell us a little bit more about that because I remember you mentioning this in one of our prep sessions that your team or maybe you were actually owning that booking process you just mentioned of placing the bookings and, which typically we see shippers do that, but you were able to transition that responsibility to your shippers. And so tell us a little bit more about that and how the FlexSport platform and this integration allowed you to do that without having to I don't wanna use the word babysit, but increase your oversight workload and and watching that.
John Papavizas
Yeah. So I think the main thing is, like, all of the the controls, that the system has, that are, you know, easy to set up. So there's there's a number of, you know, business rules in terms of, like, when suppliers are prompted to book shipments, when they, in terms of, like, quantity variances, like, if if, if a PO is, you know, plus or minus a certain percentage. So so I was able to set all that up, you know, at the kind of the outset, and that was really helpful for, you know, like, control. But then also, like, you know, now when when suppliers book shipments, like, they have, you know, all of that information. They they know what the, you know, kind of what what the system structure is. And, yeah, I would say that that that that aspect of it was was really helpful. And then also just, like also just the visibility. So if, like, if we make, like, some sort of last last minute change, like, you know, if if I'm making that, the supplier also has visibility on that. So when they go to book the shipment, they have, you know, the latest and greatest information in terms of delivery. So if we decide to change where you know, which ports we wanna ship the ship to because of the transit time is is shorter, things like that. So, you know, the supplier has has that visibility. So that's really, you know, enabled them to to book shipments and that, you know, kinda opens up opens up me to, you know, spend more time on cost management and, you know, really just, like, approving the bookings and managing exceptions.
Oliver Cunningham
That's all really, really great, John. You spoke about a lot of the kinda heavy lifting the integration took off of your plate. If you had to, like, quantify, not to put you on the spot of, you know, how many hours a week you think have been automated away, what what would your number be, or what what what would a range of hours be?
John Papavizas
Yeah. I would say, like, at least a few hours a week would be yeah. I think, you know, the the big thing for me was, you know, managing, like, milestone dates previously. So,
Oliver Cunningham
Mhmm.
John Papavizas
you know, as and it's, you know, really important for, like, our reporting that goes out to, you know, our go to market team and our wholesale teams to be accurate and, you know, managing that expected delivery date was was really, really difficult and manual. So that that automatic syncing is like that alone is saving me a bunch of time, but then, you know so, like, previously, I was uploading line level information to inbound ship, and, you know, that's coming through automatically. By uploading, I mean, like, creating a CSV file and. and uploading that. So that was yeah. Just a lot of lot of CSV files that I don't have to use anymore.
Oliver Cunningham
Definitely. It kinda sounds like not only the the act of getting the data into NetSuite has helped you save time, but, like, proactively answering other teams' questions has been really helpful too. So you can just point them to the data that they already see instead of having to go to you and you go to Flexport, etcetera. So I think kind of, like, two. different two different lenses there.
Katie Ketchell
So, John, now that you're not in, you know, NetSuite and spreadsheets for maybe hour hours a week, you you kinda touched on it. But are you taking on any, like, higher level strategic projects or focusing your efforts in other other ways? Tell us about that.
John Papavizas
Yeah. Yeah. We have, like, a a KPI and, like, reporting project that I may be able to spend some more time on now. That's kind of a a big one, and, you know, some of that is, like, helpful help you know, helped on by the the integration. So, you know, with order management, they're seeing some additional, supplier level information, in terms of performance that we can we can now track more easily. And, yeah, just getting all of that that shipment data, know, the header level data into into NetSuite just enables enables that project. But yeah. As I mentioned earlier too, it's just, like, takes out a lot of the kind of the the manual transactional work and allows me to, you know, manage manage cost, manage performance, and, you know, kinda think, you know, a bit more bit more strategically as well about, like, you know, where where traction's operations were are heading.
Katie Ketchell
Gotcha. Makes sense. So now as you prepare for the upcoming fall surge this year, how do you know, you're fully set up. You're you're you're saving time. How does this connected view of your POs and shipments allow you to manage that high volume seasonality that your business sees more smoothly than in years past.
John Papavizas
Yeah. This will be the first season that we have order management, set up from the outset of a season. So, you know, suppliers can now see all of our POs in Flexport and see, you know, which shipments I've, assigned them to, which is, you know, a custom field that we have that we have to know, that's like shipment name. So, you know, if we're consolidating multiple POs into a shipment. So that's, you know, that's already helpful. And in in general, you know, it's like, you know, those those peak periods, like, previously would, you know, just be super time consuming, and I would have to, you know, pause other projects or, you know, just, you know, deprioritize other tasks. And, like, I just don't have to do that anymore. So it's it's just a lot it's a lot easier to manage, you know, those those higher volume periods.
Oliver Cunningham
Thanks, John. So now that you've been live with the integration and order management for at least a quarter or so now, you've really built like a single pane of glass. What is, like, one feature or workflow from this end to end that you think every NetSuite user or every person on this this call now should be using right now?
John Papavizas
Yeah. I think I think it's that header level, like expected delivery date is is like the big one. Like, order management, you know, took a little bit more time to to onboard suppliers and, you know, get and you we had to make some changes to our SOP, and that took some time. But, you know, like the header level information was an immediate impact and immediate time saver. And order management is like taking it to the next level where we can now add wine level information to inbound shipments. But, yeah, I would say also the real value is, like, the ongoing updates. So as dates change in FlexSport, you know, those those updates come come straight to NetSuite. It's not even like you could probably speak to this best, Alec, but, like, it's not even like a batch run. Like, they come they come through, like, super fast. So, you know, I always can just, you know, be confident that, the information that we have in in NetSuite that, you know, is going out to to other people, including non NetSuite users, is, you know, accurate to to the shipment information in FlashSport.
Katie Ketchell
Awesome. Thanks so much, Sean, for all that. So we're gonna dive into have a couple minutes left before we end the webinar. We'll dive into some q and a. We got a lot of good questions. So I will read out loud the question, and then we can kinda team up and and answer them. The first one, how would the integration work if we are using several forwarders besides Flexport and then having Flexport send the information using the NetSuite integration? So Ali mentioned this in his demo that there is some preset filters that you can choose from to filter which POs are going over to the Flexport platform. You can choose the PO creation date. You can filter it by vendor. You can filter it by a PO prefix. So that's one way. But we also have a product called booking management. And so if you're shipping with multiple providers besides Flexport, whether it's a BCO carrier or another third party NBO, we can provide a booking management service. And thus, you can send all of your POs and have full coverage down to the SKU level across all of your shipments regardless of whether Flexport handles that freight. Next question here. How would NetSuite integration with Flexport take overage and shortage into consideration by PO when sending data for inbound? John, do you wanna talk about that one?
John Papavizas
Yeah. I can help speak to this, because we kind of changed our process a bit, to accommodate this. So, yeah. So, like, when suppliers go to book shipments, they have, like, the requested quantity, which is, you know, the quantity that's on the NetSuite PO and that's in flex for order management, and then they can book a quantity. What we found is, you know, the simplest approach is that the purchase orders actually get added one after a shipment is is booked. So, you know, we're we've, you know, kinda changed our process. So, you know, if there's variances, this helps, you know, accommodate that. So suppliers are are making those updates to the PO, you know, within our approval ranges, like, right at the time of shipment. And then those purchase orders then sync to the shipment and then come into inbound shipments. So that's that's how we've decided to manage it. It's that we found it easier for suppliers to make that change right at shipment because they don't often know when they're booking the shipment what the final quantity is going to be. The, you know, the the products could still be in production or they could, you know, still have QC check to do, because, you know, bookings bookings tend to happen, you know, at least a few weeks in advance of shipment.
Katie Ketchell
Awesome. Thank you for walking us through that. Next question we have here, how does it allocate cost to individual SKUs per rate based on value, weight? What's the landed cost that are shared? Ali, do you wanna take that one on the method of calculation?
Oliver Cunningham
Yep. I can take that one. Thanks, Katie. So as I was showing in the demo, the way Atlantic cost works is on the Flexport side, we're calculating at the line level what are the individual product costs, custom costs, and freight costs, and then summing that up for each of those categories. What we send to NetSuite is actually that total cost per category. So you saw one number for freight, one number for cut customs, and then we're also able to allocate based off of the SKU according to the PO lines that have been added to your inbound shipment. Today, the default is that we allocate based off of the the value of the lines. However, NetSuite also supports, weight and unit quantity as well, which we can support if the if that's your preference and that's the way that you wanna, allocate as well.
Katie Ketchell
Okay. Awesome. So there's a couple options for people, which is nice.
Oliver Cunningham
Mhmm.
Katie Ketchell
Okay. Next question. Was that the standard inbound shipment template in NetSuite, or do you need to create a custom template? I think they're referring to the demo that you were showing, Oli. Maybe Oli and John, you guys can tag team this. Oli, you wanna start?
Oliver Cunningham
Yeah. So the the template I was showing was just standard. So just for our demo purposes, I made it fairly basic for what fields are included there. However, we've seen a range of, uses of inbound shipments across clients. And I know, John, you guys have a template that that you guys use. Right?
John Papavizas
Yeah. Yeah. We we have a custom form, so, I've just edited that some to add in, you know, some of the additional fields that, Flexport now, you know, supports, and is, you know, supported by the integration. So, yeah, we we use a custom custom form for for inbound shipments.
Oliver Cunningham
And just to kind of wrap a bow on that, we can support either way. So if you use a standard form or a custom form, we're really just looking at the individual fields that are added to your inbound shipment.
Katie Ketchell
Awesome. Thank you, guys. A question around, the demo again, Ollie. Is public API available or only can you only use this if you have the order management module?
Oliver Cunningham
So you can use this, if you have order management or or you don't. So we could support, either use case. If you don't have order management, you're really just gonna get the inbound shipment level. So we're gonna send header level data for you. But if you also use order management, that unlocks the purchase order features. So PO syncing back and forth, attaching the PO lines to your inbound shipments, as as as as well. So either approach, we can support. Just depending on your service, that you purchased from Flexport, you get more more features.
Katie Ketchell
So this next one, thank you, Ali, is related. Can you provide a list of fields that Flexport will be able to sync with NetSuite? So just to add on what Ali was saying, you don't have to use order management, but it's it's available, the PO data exchange. So you can just simply exchange shipment milestone information. You can get landed cost information at the shipment level. But if you elect to do order management, that's where you unlock the PO flow as well as the landed cost and the shipment milestone visibility down to that SKU level. So you can kinda pick and choose your your destiny, if you will. We also have, and we can send it in the follow-up, a functional guide that greatly details how the data flows are exchanged, how the different data points actually feed into NetSuite with screenshots so you can see exactly how it's populating on the NetSuite side as well.
Oliver Cunningham
Yeah. And that that guy that Katie was just mentioning, if you click on the get started with integration button at the top, it will take you directly to the ERP integration settings tab. And then there's a button next to, like, the create ERP integration that says, like, help guide. And if you click on that link, it will send you that document which has all of those details for you.
Katie Ketchell
Good call. We're coming short on time, but we have a lot of lot more questions. So let's take one one or two more, and then we will also email the folks so we don't get a chance to answer their questions live. Ollie, question for you. What other ERP systems are gonna be set up with a similar type of integration? Looks like this person likes this, but maybe doesn't use NetSuite.
Oliver Cunningham
Right. This has been a very common question we've gotten. And my answer is we wanna hear from you. Right? So we we're currently evaluating what makes sense for the most or for, like, the most used systems across our clients. So I would definitely urge you to reach out to your Flexport AE to tell them what system that you're using and why this sort of integration would be valuable. And you can stay tuned for future updates on what our next target system is.
Katie Ketchell
Awesome. John, a question for you. How much time did it take for Tracksma to onboard one vendor? In days would be helpful. So maybe give them a general idea for that onboarding time.
John Papavizas
Yeah. I would say it took approximately, like, fourteen days. Some some suppliers were you know, it's kinda just dependent on, like, supplier availability in terms of their schedules. But, yeah, some some we got done fairly quickly. Some got done a little bit later. And, you know, suppliers required, you know, some some additional support from, you know, Flexport's origin teams and some, you know, were able to do it fairly quickly. And, you know, I would say that, like, some some suppliers also, you know, struggled a bit at first, but we were able to kinda smooth that out with, you know, with a lot of support from FlexBoard, I would say. So that was yeah. First first season or so was a bit bit trial and error. And then, you know, now as we head into the a new season, it's it's it's a lot smoother.
Katie Ketchell
Amazing. And just to add on to that for the audience, we have very detailed training guides, PDFs, demo videos, and then we always offer a live training video training session as well with suppliers to make sure they know exactly how to navigate the platform, attach POs and SKUs to the appropriate booking that they're placing. It's pretty intuitive, but we always offer full support. Okay. Great. Let's, I know we're a minute over, but I like this question. So let let's take this one. If purchase orders are edited post approval there's actually two questions related to this. If quantities are changed. So suppliers change the quantities versus what was originally ordered on the PO or if they change the CRD. John, I think, mentioned this in an earlier answer. Maybe it was during the the interview session. What we do on the order management side in the FlexSport platform is order collaboration. And this is something that customers can opt into that allows vendors to say, hey. I wanna make some changes. I wanna request that the CRD moves back or forward, that the quantity changes up or down. And the customer can set controls and rules to define what is allowable. So you can say, hey. I only want them to request changes within two day plus or minus two days of the CRD or plus or minus 5% of the original order quantity. You can set these rules to say, hey. I just want a notification. I wanna require approval, so I want eyes on it. I wanna have to click a button, or I wanna block this behavior. So you can really customize what that collaboration workflow looks like. And once any approved changes are approved on the customer side and they're good with it, or if they don't break any rules, it will automatically flow into NetSuite and update the PO line level detail to make sure that NetSuite and the Flexport platform are always in sync. John, anything to add there? I know you you touched on this earlier.
John Papavizas
No. I think that that all makes sense. And, yeah, it's it's it's quite customizable, so I found that really useful.
Katie Ketchell
Yes. We have a number of configurable business rules, not just with booking behaviors, but must book by dates, a a number of things you can make sure that it works for your particular business because every business might run a little bit differently. And you can also one last call out on this one. You can also set up the rule by vendor. So if you have a certain group of vendors or individual vendor that you want stricter or more lenient rules on, you can customize what rules apply to which vendors. Or if you want the same rule to apply to all your vendors, you just set a default rule for your entire vendor base. So it's very, configurable depending on what you'd like. Okay. We're a little bit over, so I think we will wrap there. But thank you so much for joining. Ollie, thank you. John, thank you. We will follow-up with those who we didn't get a chance to answer their questions live. Thank you so much for your great questions. That makes it extra fun, and hope you have a great rest of the day.
