1. Artificial Intelligence in NetSuite
  2. Using Ask Oracle for Business Metrics Insights

Using Ask Oracle for Business Metrics Insights

Note:

This topic describes functionality available to users eligible for NetSuite Next. NetSuite Next is being made available to customers in phases, so these features may not yet be available in your account. You'll receive in-app notifications when your account is eligible for NetSuite Next.

Ask Oracle lets you ask natural-language questions about your business and receive answers based on your reporting framework. You can ask for values, breakdowns, ranked results, short explanations, and visual summaries without having to run the underlying report.

Important:

Ask Oracle uses AI to generate metric results based on your organization's reporting framework. AI-generated outputs may occasionally vary, be inaccurate, incomplete, or misleading. You are responsible for reviewing and validating results before making business, financial, employment, compliance, or legal decisions.

How it Works

  1. Ask a question in Ask Oracle. For more information, see Find Solutions with Ask Oracle.

  2. Start with the business metric you want, then add the time frame. For example: revenue last month, cost of goods sold for the last three quarters, or open invoices as of today.

  3. Name the filter or breakdown you want as explicitly as possible. If you know the exact item, location, subsidiary, customer, status, or vendor, include it in the prompt.

  4. Use standard and custom reporting periods or clear dates. Relative periods such as last month or last fiscal quarter work well, and absolute dates work best when precision matters.

  5. Ask one focused question first, then refine the response in follow-up messages. This approach helps narrow the answer step by step, and lets you correct the output when a prompt generates unexpected results.

  6. If you want a visualization, ask for it directly. For example, request a pie chart for a breakdown or a bar chart for ranked results.

Note:

The results you obtain depend on the data you have access to. Ensure you have access to the fields and records you need before asking questions about business performance.

Ask Oracle Prompting Tips

Here are some tips to help you get better results from Ask Oracle when asking questions about your business performance:

  • Break down results - Ask Oracle can break results down by dimensions such as location, item, or time period. You can also decide for which subsidiary or subsidiary groups you want to consolidate your results. The default choice is Top Subsidiary, consolidated.

    • "Show revenue by location."

    • "Show cost of goods sold by quarter."

  • Apply filters - You can narrow results by adding clear filters.

    • "Show revenue for location = London."

    • "Show sales invoiced amount for Electric Bike."

  • Use time periods - You can use the following time periods to narrow down your results.

    • Relative dates (for example, "last month").

    • Specific dates (for example, "January 1-31, 2026").

    • Fiscal periods and ranges (for example, "last fiscal year", "Q1 FY 2024")

  • Ask for visual results - When your question includes a breakdown, you can ask for a chart.

    "Show revenue by location in a pie chart."

Common Requests and Prompt Patterns

Ask Oracle is especially useful for questions that map cleanly to the metrics, dimensions, and reporting concepts that you use. These are some examples of common requests:

  • Revenue, sales, profit, cost of goods sold, expenses, balances, and cash flow questions.

  • Inventory on hand, A/R aging, A/P aging, trial balance, and general ledger questions.

  • Customer, item, location, subsidiary, and vendor performance questions.

  • Breakdowns by a clear business dimension, such as location, subsidiary, item, customer, or vendor.

  • Top or bottom results, sorted lists, and concise summaries of what stands out.

  • Tables, bar charts, pie charts, or line charts when a visual summary helps explain the result.

These prompts reflect the kinds of business-metrics questions Ask Oracle is designed to handle well:

  • "What is revenue for each location for last month?"

  • "Show sales invoiced amount for the Electric Bike item."

  • "What is the cost of goods sold for the last three quarters?"

  • "Break down revenue by subsidiary for the last fiscal quarter and show it as a bar chart."

  • "Show the top 10 customers by sales invoiced amount this quarter."

  • "What is inventory value as of last week, broken down by item?"

  • "Summarize customer profitability for this month and highlight the top contributors."

  • "Show open invoices for this period and sort the results from highest to lowest."

  • "Summarize key balance sheet totals as of March 31, 2026."

  • "Show purchase totals by vendor for this quarter as a table."

General Notices