2.1 What Enable Features Controls

How to Study This Objective

The current exam page and NetSuite's March 2024 study guide state the objective in plain language: identify the general functionality that can be controlled under Enable Features. The study method in NetSuite's 2024 notes is to review what the account can do when a feature is turned on, and what that feature stops you from doing when it is turned off. Those notes tell you not to spend study time memorizing which subtab holds each checkbox. The comparison that carries the items is the four-layer contrast among Enable Features, General Preferences, Accounting Preferences, and Set Preferences.

Read every stem for the job the person is trying to do. If the company needs a new kind of transaction, field, or account, the answer lives on Enable Features. If the company needs dates, numbers, or phone values to display in a certain way for the business, the answer lives on General Preferences. If the company needs a posting, void, or fulfillment rule for transactions it can already enter, the answer lives on Accounting Preferences. If one signed-in person wants a different screen, the answer lives on Set Preferences. Subtab titles are a navigation detail inside those pages. The scored fact is which page owns the capability.

Four Setup Layers

Oracle Help treats these pages as different kinds of setup. Enable Features, General Preferences, and Accounting Preferences are company configuration, and each of those three pages has an Audit Trail an administrator can open from the More menu. The audit lists the preference or feature that changed, who changed it, when it changed, and the before and after values, including whether a feature was enabled or disabled. Set Preferences does not sit in that company audit. It is the signed-in user's own page.

Help's preference-level overview matches the way the lower rows behave. A user preference applies to the current user and is stored from Home > Set Preferences. A company preference applies to all users and is stored at General Preferences. Role preferences, and subsidiary preferences in OneWorld, exist as well. Foundation items on this objective usually ask you to separate a company capability, a company default, an accounting rule, and a personal screen. Enabling the capability is the step the other levels cannot replace.

Enable Features

An account administrator, or a role that has the Enable Features permission, opens Setup > Company > Enable Features and checks or clears boxes. Help states that the records and transactions available in the account depend on the features enabled there. After you turn a feature on, you complete the related setup, such as currency records, location records, or price levels. SuiteScript can read feature values from this page. Help is explicit that SuiteScript cannot change them. A script is not a substitute for the administrator's checkbox.

Turning a feature on changes the product surface the company can use. The change can add fields on customer, vendor, or item records, add a transaction type, create system-generated accounts, and reveal preferences that have no effect while the feature is off. Turning a feature off, when NetSuite still allows it, removes that capability going forward. Several features refuse to turn off once the account has used them. Study those warnings as part of the impact:

• Multiple Currencies supports customers and vendors that transact in a currency other than the company's base currency. After transactions and records exist that rely on the feature, you cannot disable it.
• Multi-Location Inventory tracks inventory across locations. After you enable it and distribute items, you cannot turn it off without contacting Customer Support. Enabling it creates system-generated Transfer Orders and Inventory In Transit accounts.
• Serialized Inventory cannot be turned off after serialized items exist. Lot Tracking cannot be turned off after lot-tracked items exist.

You are not expected to recite every lock in the product. You are expected to pause before enabling a feature on a live account, because the checkbox can add accounts and transactions that later block a clean reversal.

General Preferences

General Preferences is company-wide behavior. At Setup > Company > General Preferences an administrator sets defaults such as Date Format, Long Date Format, Time Format, Number Format, Negative Number Format, Phone Number Format, and First Day of Week. Help's formatting topic shows how a single calendar day looks under each pattern. March 5, 2025 is 3/5/2025 in M/D/YYYY and 5/3/2025 in D/M/YYYY. The abbreviated date format shows on reports, forms, and data-entry pages. Number format preferences affect how values appear on screen. Help also notes the boundary of those formats: they do not apply to exports, SOAP web services, SuiteScript, or CSV imports, and amounts that carry a currency symbol follow the currency format instead.

None of that creates a feature. A company that switches from M/D/YYYY to D/M/YYYY has changed a default. It has not enabled foreign-currency vendors, warehouse quantities, or billable project costs.

Users often may override the company date format. Help says that override is allowed by default. An administrator who wants one company format for everyone clears the Allow Override box beside Date Format or Long Date Format on the Overriding Preferences subtab of General Preferences. Clearing that box is still a preference decision. It does not belong on Enable Features, and it is the wrong page if the only goal was to change one person's screen.

Accounting Preferences

Accounting Preferences at Setup > Accounting > Accounting Preferences is where a user with the Set Up Accounting permission sets accounting behavior. The page assumes the related features already exist. It decides how those transactions act.

On the general accounting preferences, Void Transactions Using Reversing Journals lets the Void button create a reversing journal so a check or other eligible transaction can be voided on a date or period different from the original. Help's voiding topic adds a limit: when this preference is on, only certain transaction types can be voided. Separately, voiding keeps the transaction in the system. The total and the line amounts become zero, and the audit trail remains. Deleting would remove the transaction. The preference chooses the void method. It does not enable a module.

Allow Transaction Date Outside of Posting Period is another general accounting choice, with three settings. Disallow prevents a save when the transaction date falls outside the posting period. Warn allows the save after the user accepts a warning. Allow posts with no warning. That is a posting rule for transactions the account can already enter.

Order management preferences follow the same pattern for fulfillment. Default Items to Zero Received/Fulfilled, when enabled, opens a fulfillment or receipt with quantities at zero so the user marks the lines to process. When the preference is disabled, the form opens with the full remaining quantity and the user clears lines that are not being processed. Fulfillment Based on Commitment affects how item fulfillments are created. Allow Overage on Item Receipts lets a receipt quantity exceed the quantity still open on the purchase order, and Help places that preference in the context of Advanced Receiving.

Preferences can also depend on a feature you enabled earlier. Expenses Billable by Default, under Time and Expenses on Accounting Preferences, checks the Billable box when a customer is chosen on a purchase line. Help says this preference depends on Bill Costs to Customers. If that feature is off, there is no billable cost behavior for the preference to default. Remember the order: Enable Features first, Accounting Preferences second.

Set Preferences

Set Preferences, opened at Home > Set Preferences, is the signed-in user's page. Help describes it as options for your own use of the account: general choices such as nickname, language, and formatting; appearance choices such as color theme and fonts; and further areas for transactions, analytics, activities, and alerts. You can edit more than one area before you save. The change appears on the next record or page you open.

Two rules keep this page out of the Enable Features column. Personal preferences are constrained by the features the account has, by company preferences, and by dashboards an administrator attached to the role. A user cannot enable Multiple Currencies, Multi-Location Inventory, or Bill Costs to Customers from this page. When the same setting exists at user and company level, the personal value normally wins for that user. A buyer may show D/M/YYYY while the company default remains M/D/YYYY, unless Allow Override was cleared. Winning on a date format is not the same event as turning a feature on for the company. Other users are unchanged, and a disabled feature stays disabled.

Show Internal IDs is the cleanest illustration. Help tells an administrator to enable Client SuiteScript on Enable Features, then has the user check Show Internal IDs at Home > Set Preferences. The personal box only reveals identifiers that already exist. The SuiteCloud feature is what makes that display available. A user who changes a personal preference and expects a new company capability has used the wrong layer.

Features You Should Be Able to Explain

The objective is general functionality, so you study the pattern and then practice it on features Help documents clearly. The October 2024 sample key, restated in original words, is that Multiple Currencies applies to customer records and to vendor records, and that inventory stored in more than one location is Multi-Location Inventory. The Locations classification by itself is not that inventory feature. The further examples below are the same kind of Enable Features decision.

Multiple Currencies

If the company uses one currency for every transaction, it sets the currency locale on the Company Information page and does not need this feature. When customers or vendors use another currency, an administrator enables Multiple Currencies. Help calls the company's primary currency the base currency. Other currencies used on customer and vendor transactions are foreign currencies, or transaction currencies.

The international feature description is the sentence to remember. Multiple Currencies lets you enter sales transactions in more than one currency for individual customers and track open balances in each transaction currency. It also lets you enter purchase transactions in more than one currency for individual vendors. On a vendor record you set a primary currency and the additional currencies allowed for that vendor. In a past release, Multiple Currencies, Multi-Currency Customers, and Multi-Currency Vendors were separate boxes. Help says those capabilities were combined into Multiple Currencies. A new account shows the one Multiple Currencies box and, when it is enabled, gains multiple-currency customers and vendors. An older account that enabled only part of the old set may still show separate boxes, and Help says the customer and vendor functionality stays the same regardless. On the exam, the feature that covers both sides of the trading relationship is Multiple Currencies.

After the feature is on, you create currency records and maintain exchange rates. Period revaluation then posts gain or loss as rates move. Those tasks are follow-on setup. They do not replace the checkbox, and a number format on General Preferences does not perform them. Once transactions and records depend on the feature, Help says you cannot disable it.

Locations and Multi-Location Inventory

Locations is a classification, grouped in Help with Departments and Classes. Departments classify transactions by category. Classes sort transactions in whatever way the company finds useful. Locations tracks activity by location and adds a Locations link on the Lists page. With location records you associate employees and transactions with offices or warehouses, filter reports, and restrict a role to one location's data. You can group sales, purchases, and bank activity such as checks and deposits by location.

That classification is not quantity on hand. Help's item-record guidance says that when Multi-Location Inventory is not enabled, a location on the item only classifies the item so roles can be limited. You cannot use that field to track how many units are in stock in a location. The inventory setup topic says the same thing from the setup side: defining location records alone does not let you identify each item with a location. To track purchasing cost, sales, stock level, and valuation for each item in each location, and to transfer inventory between locations, enable Multi-Location Inventory.

Multi-Location Inventory also requires Locations, Inventory, Advanced Shipping, and Advanced Receiving. The Inventory feature itself creates system-generated Inventory Asset and Cost of Goods Sold accounts. Multi-Location Inventory adds the transfer-order and in-transit accounts named above. After items are distributed, disabling Multi-Location Inventory requires Customer Support. Use a bin feature for a shelf, dock, or aisle inside a warehouse. Help warns that using location records for those internal spots causes trouble with fulfillments, costing methods such as LIFO and FIFO, and reporting. Locations name the sites. Multi-Location Inventory counts the inventory at those sites.

Multiple Prices, Advanced Receiving, and Bill Costs to Customers

Multiple Prices lets the company keep more than one price for an item. Help's example is a wholesale price level and a retail price level, with the chosen level assigned on the customer so the sales transaction fills in that customer's price. You can maintain up to 1,000 price levels. With the feature off, the item has a single price. With it on, the pricing sublist becomes a matrix of price levels. Only an administrator enables the feature, from Enable Features. A user preference cannot switch it on, and a price level is not a currency.

Advanced Receiving separates receiving a purchase from billing it. Without the feature, receiving items creates the vendor bill at the same time. With the feature, you can receive an entire order or part of it and bill later. The item receipt records what arrived. You can still bill in the same step when that is what you want. Help says the feature creates a system-generated Accrued Purchases account. The accounting preference Allow Overage on Item Receipts only adjusts a receipt the feature already made possible.

Bill Costs to Customers lets the company invoice customers for costs incurred on their work. Help describes billing expenses back to a customer, and the revenue topics describe the same feature as the way to bill time, items, and expenses from project work. An administrator enables it on Enable Features. Purchase lines can then name the customer or project and be marked billable. The related accounting preference only controls whether Billable starts checked. The feature is what creates the capability.

Scenario: Quantity on Hand by Warehouse

An administrator wants on-hand quantity for each warehouse. The administrator enables Locations, adds a location record per warehouse, and opens an item. The item still does not show a quantity by warehouse. Locations did the classification job: transactions can carry a location, reports can filter by location, and roles can be limited to one site. Help's rule is that stock by location waits for Multi-Location Inventory. Enable that feature together with Inventory, Advanced Shipping, and Advanced Receiving, and only after the team accepts that turning it off requires Customer Support once items are distributed. Making the location field mandatory in Accounting Preferences forces users to pick a location. It still does not count inventory. Renaming the item or the location does not count inventory either.

Scenario: A Personal Preference Does Not Enable a Feature

A sales manager opens Home > Set Preferences, sets a preferred language, switches the date format, and picks a new color theme. The manager then looks for foreign-currency fields on a customer and for a billable box on a vendor bill, and neither is there. Set Preferences changed the manager's interface only. Other users keep their own preferences and the company defaults. Multiple Currencies and Bill Costs to Customers turn on at Setup > Company > Enable Features, for the account, by an administrator or a role with the Enable Features permission. If the manager had wanted every user to see dates as D/M/YYYY, the company page would be General Preferences, and even that change would leave both features off.

Traps

Memorizing subtab names will not carry this objective. Checkboxes sit across several areas of Enable Features, and a stem will describe a business result. Learn the result: customer and vendor currencies, quantity by location, price levels, a receipt separate from a bill, and costs that can be billed onward.

The second trap is treating Set Preferences as a company switch. Personal formatting can override a company format for one user. It cannot enable a feature, and it cannot change Accounting Preferences for everyone else.

The third trap is assuming every feature turns off as easily as it turns on. Multiple Currencies stays on after dependent transactions and records exist. Multi-Location Inventory stays on, unless Customer Support intervenes, after items are distributed. Enable a feature when the company is ready for the fields, transactions, and accounts it adds.