Last updated on January 5, 2025.
“A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding.”
Marshall McLuhan
You’ve made it thus far! You’ve figured out which certifications to take, you’ve prepared and it’s time to take your exam. Let’s close off this series with a few practicalities related to taking your certification exam and sharing your results with the world.
Registering for your exam
If you’ve decided to get certified, simply head over to https://www.webassessor.com/netsuite. If it’s your first certification, you’ll need to create an account. Once logged in, choose the “Register for an Exam” option from the menu bar and select the exam you want. You have two options: onsite or online. If you opt for onsite, you’ll need to go to a designated test center to take your exam. Online is much easier as you can take the test in the comfort of your home. Any decent laptop with a webcam will do. Also, there are on average a lot more slots online than at test centers.
I’ve used both onsite and online options, my most recent exam in December 2021 being online. I remember booking the test for the next day and taking it late at night when there was peace and quiet. No hassles (besides installing the Sentinel software required to “monitor” you; don’t worry, you can remove it right after the test). No commute. Easy. But that’s me. Choose the option that works for you.
If you opt for online, please watch out for the following: While you’re allowed to bring a headset or headphones, do not put them on! I got confused about this based on the instructions I received and thought I needed them to communicate with the host. However, less than 1-minute into my test, I was flagged and had to wait for about 15 minutes because the computer system detected that I had headphones on, an agent had to come on to vet me, reset my exam, etc. Basically, unnecessary stress for such a simple thing. If you’re set up right and obey the instructions, no one will need to talk to you so you really don’t need headsets.
Taking the test
As you might already know, the exams consist of multiple-choice and matching questions. The number of questions and duration depends on the specific certification (see details in part 2 of this series).
I’ve found the allotted time to be sufficient. That said, be sure to keep an eye on the timer. If a question is difficult, mark it for review and proceed to the next one; you’ll be able to come back to it later. I usually go quickly through the entire exam and answer what I’m 100% sure of first. Then I do a few more passes to tackle the harder questions.
Be sure to read each question carefully; one word might completely change the context!
The policy is that you shouldn’t take any questions out of the test or share information about the test with anyone. For the rest, it’s a typical online exam.
Exam results
You’ll get to know instantly whether you passed or failed, which is nice. Hopefully, with all the tips you’ve gotten from this series and your proper preparation, you’ll be greeted with a “Congratulations!” message at the end.
If you passed, you’ll get an email within a day or two with instructions on how to get a PDF version of your certificate as well as links to some other documents like your certification logo and terms.
Sharing your accomplishments
It’s up to you to decide how you share your accomplishments within your circles. If you add your certification to your LinkedIn profile, email signature, or to anything that can be hyperlinked, be sure to add a personalized link to the verification page so that anyone can easily check your certification and its validity.
Here’s how you can get your verification link:
- Head over to the NetSuite Certification website, scroll all the way down to the Resources section and under “Certification Tools”, click on “Verify NetSuite Certification Status”. Here’s a direct link in case the website layout has changed (I last checked in January 2025).
- Enter your Certification ID, Full Name, or Email Address. The Certification ID would be in the email you received from NetSuite. Note that the name and email address are those you used in your Web Assessor account. So the name required here might be different from the name that is printed on your certificate.
- Click the “Search” button and you should find your certification.
- Copy the URL of that page and test it in another window to make sure it works as expected. Voila!
Pro Tip: If you have or plan to get more than one certification, it is better to use the link to a list of all your certifications instead of the individual links. To do that, you start off by following the steps outlined above using your Certification ID to find your name on record. Then redo the search using your name to produce a link like this one. In that way, you don’t have to worry about updating links as you get more certifications (if you do).
Keeping your certification(s) active
To keep your certifications active, you need to take the annual New Release Quiz that NetSuite publishes in the last quarter of the year, typically in November. This requirement only applies to you if you got NetSuite certified before January 1 of the year in question. Moreover, the SuiteAnalytics and Financial User Certifications are exempt from this requirement.
Like the certification exams, the New Release Quiz is administered via Web Assessor. NetSuite usually sends out an email to alert you but if you’ve not received an email by end of November, just log into Web Assessor and look for a New Release Quiz for the year in question.
Usually, there’s a window in which you can take the quiz at no cost, possibly followed by another period where the test is offered at a discount. If you do not take the quiz before the deadline, your certification(s) will expire, possibly after some undisclosed grace period. You don’t want to get into that situation especially because the quiz is an open-book, easy task to help you get familiar with the releases that occurred that year and requires zero preparation. Simply put, there’s no reason not to keep your certification active unless you’re careless about it.
By the way, if you’re a recruiter reading this and you care much about certification (a separate topic of its own which we covered previously), be sure to ask candidates for their Certification IDs as it could very well be that the certifications they are touting are in fact expired. I did a quick random check on LinkedIn and, with little effort, I found prominent profiles that feature expired NetSuite certificates.
Over to you! Wishing you success in your NetSuite certifications and career. Be sure to share your insights and experiences by taking our perpetual certification survey linked below. You can take it twice: Once before certification and once after; the insights at both stages are different and interesting.
The insights in this article represent the views of the author, who, by the way, holds multiple NetSuite certifications. However, the perpetual certification survey that’s been running since January 2021 reflects the collective thinking of the community on the subject matter.
Our hope is that the combination of both resources will provide you with a balanced view. Take the today! Once completed, you’ll unlock the anonymized aggregated survey results with nice charts and stats. Alternatively, you can subscribe to our NetSuite Insights newsletter and email notifications when we publish new insights.
