Troubleshooting Mass Updates in NetSuite

A customer recently asked us:

“I started a Mass Update in Sandbox yesterday for over 100k records, which it said it would take about 5000 minutes to complete. I went to check on the status of it today, but the option to “Click to View the Details of Your Last Mass Update” isn’t even there. I know the update didn’t complete, because I still have over 80k records that do not have the attribute I was updating. I know that just under 12k records were updated via this Mass Update. What happened after that, I don’t know.

Is this expected behavior / have you seen this before? If so, what’s the recommended workaround?”

This is definitely unexpected behavior. NetSuite’s default behavior creates a link that allows users to view the details of their last mass update. Fortunately, there is a workaround…

Our recommendation for working around problems with mass updates is to perform the same update through a CSV import. It is important to note that CSV imports can handle up to 25,000 lines in a single CSV spreadsheet. When dealing with 100,000 records, as was the case with our customer, successfully updating a large number of records will require multiple CSV imports. In order to have the CSV imports work as smoothly as possible, we recommend exporting the Internal IDs of the records that will be updated in order to better match them to records that you are trying to import.

Fortunately, NetSuite allows for users to save their desired import mapping and queue multiple imports. By saving your field mapping and queuing up imports to run immediately after the other finishes, NetSuite users can successfully update a multitude of records without using NetSuite’s standard Mass Update functionality.

For more information on CSV imports or for more information on how to best utilize the NetSuite cloud-based business management platform, please contact us at 888-500-5207 or email info@aminian.com.