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NetSuite for food and beverage
Lot traceability, expiration dates, recipes and quality: protect your products and your margins, from raw material to customer.
6 NetSuite solutionsfor food and beverage
Your challenges
Traceability, freshness and margin, all at once
Food producers, processors and distributors work with perishable products, raw materials with volatile costs and retail customers with strict requirements. European regulations also require you to know, for every lot, where it came from and whom it was delivered to.
NetSuite tracks lots and their expiration dates on every inventory movement, links recipes to production costs and brings sales, purchasing and accounting together. SuiteVise sets up these capabilities around your production and distribution constraints.
Industry challenges
The management challenges of food companies
Regulatory traceability
EU Regulation (EC) No 178/2002 requires you to know which supplier each lot came from and which customers received it.
Products with a limited shelf life
Without use-by and best-before date tracking, waste increases and short-dated products reach customers.
Volatile ingredient costs
Price swings on ingredients and packaging hit the margin of every recipe directly.
Demanding customers
Retail chains and buying groups impose their own order formats, lead times and trading terms.
Solutions
NetSuite capabilities for food and beverage
Lot traceability
Lots tracked from receipt to shipment, with forward and backward lookups when an incident occurs.
Expiration dates
Expiration dates tracked by lot, so the lots that expire first are sold first.
Recipes and production
Recipes set up as bills of materials, production orders and actual ingredient consumption by lot.
Quality and inventory status
Inspections at receipt and during production, lots on hold or released, and records kept.
Sales and trading terms
Prices by retail chain, discounts and promotions, and orders received from your retail customers.
Costs and margin by product
Recipe costs and margin by product, customer and channel, updated with every production run.
How we help
How SuiteVise supports food and beverage companies
We start with traceability: which items are lot-tracked, which dates to record, when to inspect. These rules are set up from the start because they affect receiving, production, the warehouse and shipping.
We then model your recipes and costs, and connect NetSuite to your customers and logistics partners. We recommend validating a complete recall scenario, from raw material to delivered customers, before go-live. See also our inventory management expertise.
Key project areas
Lot tracking rules
Use-by and best-before
Recipes and units
Quality statuses
Retailer exchanges
Lot inventory migration
Expected benefits
What changes for your company
- Faster recallsCustomers who received a given lot are identified directly in NetSuite.
- Less wasteExpiration dates are visible at every step and guide picking.
- Margin tracked by recipeActual ingredient costs flow through to product costs.
- Better-prepared auditsLot movements and quality inspections are recorded and easy to retrieve.
FAQ
NetSuite for food and beverage: your questions
Can NetSuite handle a product recall?
Yes. With lot tracking, you can find a lot’s suppliers and original receipts, the production runs that used it and the customers who received it. This information supports your withdrawal or recall procedure.
Can we manage several units (case, pack, kilo)?
Yes. NetSuite supports several units of measure per item, with conversions, so you can buy, stock and sell each product in the right unit.
Does NetSuite replace quality or HACCP software?
Not entirely. NetSuite records inspections, lot statuses and traceability, but HACCP plans and quality documentation often belong in specialized tools. We define with you what should live in the ERP and what can be connected to it.
NetSuite for your industry
Explore our solutions by industry.
Food and beverage
Make your lot traceability airtight
Tell us about your products, shelf-life constraints and customers: we will show you how NetSuite handles them.