How NTR Plc Modernised Multi-Entity Budgeting with NetSuite
Company: NTR Plc
Location: Ireland (HQ)
Industry: Renewable Energy
Engagement type: License + Implementation + Support
Solution: NetSuite + SuiteProjects
NTR Plc is a company operating in the renewable energy sector, developing and managing sustainable energy assets across wind, solar, and other technologies. Headquartered in Ireland, the business is structured around a Head Office and multiple operating Funds, each managing its own portfolio of renewable energy projects, adding a layer of financial and operational complexity that would shape the entire engagement with 3EN.
“3EN's vendor integration replaced five separate, manually maintained supplier records with a single, consistent vendor record automatically pushed across all five NetSuite instances the moment a new supplier is approved.”
- NRT plc
The Challenge
Before working with 3EN, NTR had no real financial system in place. Budget tracking across the business was entirely manual, managed through spreadsheets with no automated controls, no consistency between entities, and no real-time visibility into how much of the budget had actually been consumed.
This was more than an inconvenience. NTR's business model meant that budgets needed to be tracked differently depending on the type of project: Head Office costs, Operational Fund spend, and Construction Fund spend each required different combinations of dimensions, including Activity Code, Project, and Entity. On top of that, NTR needed the ability to reclassify overspend into a separate contingency budget line — a workflow with no natural home in an off-the-shelf system.
Vendor management carried its own version of the same problem. With no central system in place, Head Office and the separate Funds each kept their own supplier records, meaning every new vendor or update to bank details had to be entered manually, account by account. There was no way to ensure that a supplier's details were consistent across the business, making it hard to maintain an accurate, consistent vendor database.
The Solution
3EN delivered a net new NetSuite implementation spanning five instances (Head Office plus four Funds), built around three major pillars.
Real-time, multi-dimensional budget control
Standard NetSuite budgeting functionality did not meet NTR's requirements, so 3EN built a custom budget validation engine. Purchase Order and Vendor Bill approvals are checked against a live budget calculated at the intersection of Activity Code, Project, and Entity. Consumed amounts are not a static snapshot: they are calculated dynamically, combining posted actuals, open commitments on unbilled Purchase Orders, and pending Vendor Bills not yet posted, so NTR always sees an accurate, up-to-date picture of what has been spent and committed against each budget line.
Cross-instance vendor integration
A Vendor Onboarding solution was built at the Head Office level so that once a new supplier is fully approved, the vendor record is automatically created across all five NetSuite instances, with any subsequent updates pushed through the same integration. This removed the need for manual re-keying of supplier data and eliminated the risk of inconsistent vendor records across entities.
SuiteProjects for project-level budget ownership
For Fund II, Fund III, and Fund IV, 3EN implemented SuiteProjects, giving Project Managers direct visibility and control over the budgets they own, rather than relying on Finance as an intermediary for day-to-day budget analysis.
Beyond these three pillars, the wider implementation covered subsidiary and financial segment setup, chart of accounts design, tax localisation across multiple jurisdictions, EFT payment processing, fixed asset management, and a custom Purchase Order and Vendor Bill approval workflow with contingency handling and Out of Office delegation logic.
Crucially, the whole framework was designed to be scalable and replicable, a design principle that would be put to the test when NTR later decided to bring a fourth Fund (and more) into the business.
Delivery
The initial implementation ran from 2024 to 2025 and was delivered by 3EN's Professional Services team. Following a successful go-live, NTR transitioned into 3EN's Customer Support (CS) service for ongoing maintenance and enhancements.
It was through this support relationship that NTR returned to 3EN with a new requirement: to bring a fourth Fund into the business. This was scoped and delivered as a net-new project in 2025/2026, building on the existing architecture while standing as a distinct piece of work in its own right — and proof that the original design could scale to a new entity efficiently.
Alongside this, the CS relationship has continued to deliver a series of Change Requests that refine and extend the original solution, including updates to invoice approval logic, intercompany journal elimination, PO layout and approval workflow changes, and budget calculation refinements.
Follow-On Work
This has been a sustained, multi-year relationship rather than a single project. After go-live, NTR moved into 3EN's Customer Support (CS) service for ongoing maintenance, and through that relationship, NTR returned to 3EN with the requirement to bring a fourth Fund into the business. That work was scoped and delivered as a new project in 2025/2026, the most significant piece of follow-on business to date.
Alongside it, the CS relationship has delivered a continuous stream of Change Requests, including journal activity code automation, invoice approval refinements, intercompany elimination logic, PO layout changes, and budget calculation improvements, most recently, a fix to ensure budget consumption is correctly measured against the fiscal year of the originating Purchase Order rather than the transaction's posting period.
The Benefits
Real-time budget visibility by Activity Code, Project, and Entity, updated as commitments and actuals move through the system, replacing manual, spreadsheet-based tracking with no automated controls
A single, consistent vendor record is maintained automatically across five separate NetSuite instances, removing a manual, error-prone step from every supplier onboarding
Project Managers in Fund II, III, and IV are given direct control over their own project budgets through SuiteProjects, reducing dependency on Finance for day-to-day budget analysis
A scalable design proven in practice — when NTR needed to onboard Fund IV, the existing framework meant the new project could be delivered efficiently, building on proven architecture rather than starting from a blank page
To find out more, contact 3EN on:
e: engage@3en.cloud
t: +44 28 9042 7291
41 Allied House,
Holywood,
BT18 9DP
The 3EN group is made up of 3EN Cloud Ltd and ENCO Consulting Ltd.
