Financial Exception Management Frequently Asked Questions
Financial Exception Management (FEM) is currently a limited release feature that’s not available to all customers. Eligibility depends on data volume and model training readiness; accounts with a large amount or insufficient historical data may be restricted. If you can’t access FEM, contact your NetSuite Account Manager for guidance and next steps.
Additionally, FEM is a production‑only feature and can't be enabled in Sandbox Accounts because those environments typically lack the required historical transaction data (approximately 18 months) needed for model training and inference.
Below are some of the most common questions received when working with Financial Exception Management (FEM):
General
What is a financial exception?
Financial exceptions are transactions in NetSuite that appear to be outliers based on your historical patterns.
Currently, the FEM dashboard identifies transactions with unusual transaction amounts and accounts, with an 'Expected Transactions' tab that displays missing transactions.
Who should use Financial Exception Management?
Financial Exception Management is for NetSuite users who work in the financial or accounting teams. This includes anyone who is responsible for ensuring all recorded transactions are accurate and up to date.
How can I enable Financial Exception Management?
To enable Financial Exception Management, as an Administrator, go to Setup > Company > Enable Features > Accounting subtab, then under Advanced Features, select FINANCIAL EXCEPTION MANAGEMENT. For more information, see Setting Up Financial Exception Management,
Why isn’t FEM available in Sandbox Accounts?
FEM requires sufficient historical transaction data to train customer-specific models. Sandbox environments typically don't have enough data (approximately 18 months of stable history) needed for reliable training and inference.
Can I customize the criteria for an exception?
Yes, you can set preferences at Setup > Accounting > Accounting Preferences > Financial Exception Management tab. For more information, see Using the Financial Exception Management Preferences.
Interface
Where can I find my identified exceptions?
Go to Lists > Accounting > Financial Exception Management.
How often does FEM detect exceptions?
Every hour, FEM reviews all transactions that were created or edited in the past hour. Edited transactions, even if they were previously labeled as exceptions, will be re-evaluated by the model—if there is still an issue with the transaction, a new exception will be created.
What should I do with my exceptions?
Ideally, review each exception and determine if they are properly-entered transactions or not. You can correct any incorrect transactions, or indicate that exceptions are not an issue. For more information, see Resolving Financial Exceptions.
What if FEM marked a transaction as an exception, but I know the transaction is correct?
Because FEM looks for transactions that are different from your usual patterns, it will flag and alert you of any transaction which is off the normal pattern. When this happens, click on the exception's View Details, then click No Action Needed.
For more information, see Resolving Financial Exceptions.
As you resolve more exceptions, FEM will get better at identifying your transaction patterns and will offer more accurate suggestions.
AI Model
What data does Financial Exception Management (FEM) use to learn my transaction patterns?
FEM uses your transaction data of up to 18 months to understand your transaction patterns. This allows it to make sense of your most recent data trends to make suggestions. Your organization's data is only used to train a dedicated custom model. This model will only make suggestions relevant to your organization.
When training, the models search for recurrence patterns from which predictions are made.
What is the minimum amount of transaction data I need to use Financial Exception Management?
For best results, Financial Exception Management (FEM) requires historical transaction data of up to 18 months to learn from. After you have enabled FEM, it begins learning from the data in your records. Then, every hour, FEM reviews transactions that you created or edited in the past hour.
FEM is more accurate if you have consistent data to learn from over the last year. Its performance will be impacted if your business changed recently, or if you have insufficient data for it to learn from.
How does FEM learn from my feedback?
FEM's machine learning capabilities improve with user feedback.
Dismissing a suggested exception provides feedback to the system, indicating that the transaction is not an exception. Similarly, resolving a suggested exception validates that the suggestion was correct. Therefore, both positive and negative feedback help FEM improve the accuracy and quality of the suggestions it can make.
Sometimes, FEM may display similar exceptions that were previously dismissed, and user feedback on those exceptions is valuable for the system to improve its suggestions for similar transactions in the future.
Model and feature experience will be evolving over time based on user feedback. Therefore, consistent feedback is valuable to the system.
Is FEM available for all transactions?
The feature covers over 30 transaction types, including custom transactions.
Missing transactions cover transaction types that are likely to have recurrence patterns.
Incorrect Amount and Incorrect Account exceptions cover most transactions that have an amount and account property, respectively.
How often is the model retrained?
The models for Incorrect Account and Incorrect Amount are retrained weekly for any recent trends in your data.
The Missing Transaction model is retrained at the beginning of every accounting period, predicting transactions through the period that started and surfacing missing transaction exceptions after the expected date of the transaction has passed.