How to Import Historical Sales Orders into NetSuite and Manage Statuses

Sales Orders in NetSuite are non-posting transactions, meaning they do not directly affect the general ledger. While many NetSuite transaction statuses are system-driven and cannot be directly set by users, certain statuses like 'Pending Approval' or 'Pending Fulfillment' can be specified during import. It is not possible to import Sales Orders with a 'Billed' status directly. Sales Orders can be updated to a 'Closed' status during import by setting each line item's 'Closed' checkbox to true. This functionality applies to updates of existing sales orders, not to newly created sales orders. A Closed Sales Order indicates that no further fulfillment or billing is expected. Importing a massive volume of data, such as 1,400,000 Sales Orders, can significantly impact NetSuite system performance. The effect of such a large import is relative and depends on the NetSuite edition, particularly whether the account is on a dedicated server. For basic, non-dedicated server environments, this volume of data can severely degrade system responsiveness, potentially causing searches to crash or run extremely slowly. Users would need to implement very specific filtering to limit the number of results returned in searches. Due to these potential performance issues, importing such a high volume of historical Sales Orders is generally not recommended. It is advisable to explore alternative methods to achieve the desired business goals without overwhelming the NetSuite environment.