This article was originally published on LinkedIn.

Budget season has a way of showing where your finance process cracks. Timelines compress. Leaders want deeper insight and faster "what-if" answers. Meanwhile, your team is still buried in spreadsheets and exports.

That can be expensive and frustrating — especially when you've already invested heavily in NetSuite and still feel like you're doing too much work by hand.

I was recently asked by a client if there are ways to apply AI to give them some relief during the budgeting process. What follows are some of the suggestions I gave them — including practical, incremental steps you can start using right now.

Get Real About Where You Are

Before jumping to solutions, take stock of how you actually plan and budget today:

  • Spreadsheet-heavy: Lots of Excel outside NetSuite. Manual imports/exports. Email approvals. Static reports.
  • Basic NetSuite: Saved Searches, SuiteAnalytics Workbooks, maybe some workflows. Variance analysis is mostly manual.
  • Advanced: Planning & Budgeting is on. Allocations and driver-based planning inside NetSuite. Some scenario modeling.
  • AI-enhanced: Predictive forecasts, anomaly detection, narrative commentary, ad-hoc Q&A ("explain this variance"), and maybe small autonomous agents running checks for you.

Most of my clients seem to fall somewhere between the first two - and I think that's okay because it seems to me that their first wins are obvious.

How AI Can Make Budgeting Easier

Here are some things that become possible once you bring AI into the mix:

  • Automate the repetitive tasks. Allocations, consolidations, rollups — the work no one wants to do manually.
  • Smarter forecasting. Models that learn your history and drivers like price, volume, and headcount.
  • Catch issues early. Outlier and bias detection before leadership sees a surprise.
  • Narratives without the grunt work. AI writes first drafts of variance explanations and exec summaries.
  • Ad-hoc Q&A with your data. Using the NetSuite AI Connector, you can ask ChatGPT or Claude questions like "Why are Q3 marketing costs up?" and get a reasoned, linked answer.

A Simple Plan to Get Started

Don't try to overhaul your whole planning process at once. Start small and prove the value fast. Here's a simple three-step way to begin:

1. Unblock Your Data

Look at where your planning data gets stuck or stale — sales pipeline trapped in CRM, manual subsidiary rollups in Excel, operational metrics off in another system. Connect what you can (SuiteFlow, SuiteTalk, or even ask an AI tool like ChatGPT/Claude via the NetSuite AI Connector to show you where key data isn't flowing).

2. Automate One Painful Thing

Pick the single ugliest manual step — maybe an allocation that eats hours, or a recurring variance analysis task. Set it up once in NetSuite Planning & Budgeting or script it. Show your team how much time it saves.

3. Use AI to Explain the Numbers

Next time leadership asks "what changed?" run a quick AI prompt against your NetSuite data (Connector + ChatGPT/Claude). Generate a first-draft narrative or quick variance summary. Edit and share.

That's it. Three moves. No major reimplementation — just immediate relief and a visible win.

Move From Being Reactive to Predictive

Here's how AI can start to feel like a superpower.

Smarter Forecasts

Go beyond "last year plus 5%." Blend:

  • Seasonality from your own NetSuite history.
  • Correlations with marketing spend, sales pipeline, headcount.
  • External signals (freight indexes, weather, industry benchmarks).

Generative tools can help you explore relationships — no data scientist required.

Scenario Libraries

Pre-build the "what ifs" your execs ask for every time:

  • Pricing changes.
  • Market expansion.
  • Profitability improvements.

Use NetSuite Planning & Budgeting or AI agents to model and update them automatically.

Narrative Intelligence

Don't hand-type every variance note. Have AI draft, then you edit:

"Gross margin down 2% — freight +18% and mix shift to lower-margin SKUs."

Reporting That Leaders Will Actually Use

Executives don't want more slides — they want answers. They want to know what changed, why it changed, and what you recommend. AI can help you deliver that without wasting time building decks that no one wants.

Keep it simple and focused:

  • A clear health view. A single page that shows the big KPIs, trends, and how you're tracking against plan and last year.
  • Cash at a glance. Real-time cash and runway, with quick scenario toggles ("what if collections slip two weeks?").
  • Margins that tell a story. A quick waterfall: starting margin → volume → price → mix → cost changes → ending margin, with AI-generated notes on what moved the number.
  • ROI tracker. The major investments you made, how they're performing, and early warnings on underperformers.

You can build most of this as custom NetSuite dashboards - and with the NetSuite AI Connector, you can add a conversational layer. For example you might ask, "Which locations missed their gross margin targets?" and get an instant answer with links back to the data.

Some of my clients are using what I call a "Monday Morning Brief" — a single-page email that is automatically generated and emailed first thing Monday that includes high-level information about the company's cash position, key variances / KPIs / ratios, and any flagged risks or opportunities. It gives leadership instant clarity and is a great way to start the week.

Close Faster with a "Continuous Close"

The idea here is to stop letting work pile up throughout the month, and instead spread some of it out to make the close process easier:

  • Daily: run bank recs, scan for anomalies, check key accruals.
  • Weekly: review variances, refresh rolling forecasts, prep likely journal entries.
  • Month-end: just final adjustments and reporting.

You can automate things such as reconciliations, revenue recognition, recurring journals. Let AI watch the GL for unusual entries, so you catch issues early instead of at the last minute.

I've had clients who were initially skeptical about adding daily and weekly close steps — and I think it was because it just sounded like extra work to them. But after a few weeks, they realized that this really will make month-end faster and less stressful.

Make the ROI Obvious

If you want get support so that you can keep improving your planning and reporting process, I recommend showing real results — and do it using plain language.

You can do that by tracking and sharing a few simple metrics:

  • Efficiency: hours saved, days cut from close or budget cycle.
  • Accuracy: fewer manual adjustments, lower forecast error.
  • Decision speed: how quickly leadership gets answers to "what if" questions.

Then frame the ROI in business terms:

"We automated allocations — saved 100 hours a month. That's basically a full headcount back. And it paid for itself in less than 90 days."

Keep it that straightforward. Numbers like that make your case better than any slide deck.

Making the Case for More Investment in NetSuite

When it's time to ask for budget — whether it's for additional NetSuite modules, AI-based solutions, or help automating processes — my advice is to show the potential business impact.

For example:

  • Time back: "We saved 100+ hours a month by automating allocations."
  • Better decisions: "Leadership gets scenario answers in minutes instead of days."
  • Lower risk: "AI now flags anomalies before close — fewer surprises."

Show what standing still is really costing you — long closes, extra hours, constant rework, and slow decision-making. Framing it this way helps leaders see improvements to NetSuite as practical ways to save time and get to better answers faster.

What to Add Later

After you've knocked out the early wins — cleaner data, automated allocations, variance alerts, better reporting — you might want to expand gradually.

  • Deeper integrations. Connect CRM for live pipeline data and HRIS for headcount and compensation planning. Bring in market or industry data if it actually drives better forecasting.
  • Smarter AI use. Evolve from using single, manual prompts to the AI agents that I've written about before. Maybe start with agents that perform some specific checks that run nightly: scan for anomalies, prepare and send variance commentary, etc.
  • Governance and controls. As you lean on AI more, make sure results are explainable, that you're checking for bias, and that human review stays in place where it matters.
  • Team structure. Consider setting up a small "enablement group" — someone to own NetSuite admin, an FP&A lead, and a change champion who keeps adoption moving.

I would wait to add those types of things until after your foundation has stabilized. Don't add complexity until you're getting real value from the basics.

Wrapping Up

Budget season doesn't have to be the annual "stress test" that it's always been. Start by automating one painful step. Use AI to handle variance commentary and do some "what if" modeling. Stop drowning in spreadsheets. Instead, ask ChatGPT or Claude what you need to know from NetSuite and get it in seconds.

Each one of these small wins frees up time, builds trust, and proves the ROI that comes from your continued investment in NetSuite. I think you'll soon find that your planning process is faster, your close is shorter, and your team is working on "higher value" tasks — instead of wrestling cells and formulas.