How to Refresh Sandbox in Netsuite

What is a NetSuite Sandbox?

A NetSuite Sandbox is a copy of your company’s production account. It serves as a test account that is separate from your main account. 

Sandbox has the same data and confuguration as your production account, making it easy for you to test various processes without making changes to your production account’s inventory or finances. 

What is a Sandbox Refresh?

A Sandbox refresh creates a copy of the production account with the latest data at the time of the refresh request. This copy includes various reports, customizations that are made by you and your team, inventory, and all the monetary transactions as well.

You need to make sure to refresh your sandbox as frequently as possible. This will help you test all the new developments in a test environment that is very similar to the actual production environment.

Why do we Need a Sandbox Refresh?

Here are some of the benefits of a Sandbox refresh:

1. Consistent data: It makes sure that the data in your sandbox and the data in your production account are as similar as possible.
2. Safe testing: Testing without any repercussions is a dream come true as it allows you to test all the new developments in a testing environment without affecting the live data.
3. Risk avoidance: As there are no repercussions to our testing, it avoids any risk involved and we are free to test in the sandbox environment and resolve any issues that come up preemptively.

We have understood what a sandbox refresh is and why it’s beneficial. Now let’s get to the main topic of our blog.

How to Refresh Your NetSuite Sandbox?

Let us understand how to refresh your NetSuite Sandbox in a few easy steps.

Step 1

Log in to your Production Account on NetSuite. The sandbox account you wish to refresh needs to be linked to the same account.

Step 2

• Navigate to the ‘Setup’ section
• Under ‘Company’, go to ‘Sandbox Accounts’

Step 3

Select an option for who gets access to the sandbox after the refresh is activated.

You can see 2 options here:

• All Users: You can select this option to give access to all the users who already have access to the production account.
• Administrators Only: You can select this option to give access to the account administrator.

Note that you cannot change this after the refresh is completed.

Step 4

• Click on ‘Refresh Sandbox’. This will open a dialog box asking you to confirm whether you want to go ahead with the refresh.
• Click on ‘OK’ to initiate the sandbox refresh process.

Step 5

Users can continue using the sandbox account while a new copy is being prepared.

However, these changes need to be saved outside the sandbox. This is because any changes made during the refresh process will not be visible in the refreshed Sandbox. They can be added later once the refresh is completed.

Step 6

You can now activate the new Sandbox. Within 24-48 hours(based on the amount of data), you will get an email when the refresh is ready to be activated.

• To do that, go to the ‘Sandbox Accounts’ page as mentioned in Step 2. Activate the new sandbox by clicking the ‘Activate Sandbox’ button.
• A confirmation dialog box will appear, notifying you that the current sandbox will be replaced by the new sandbox. After reading carefully, go ahead and click on ‘OK’
• This will lead to the deletion of the previous sandbox and a new sandbox will be activated with the updated data.

You’ve successfully refreshed your NetSuite sandbox.

Note for Caution

1. Confirm that all your developers and consultants have saved all their work before making a refresh. Any unsaved work will be lost once the refresh is completed.
2. To perform a refresh, your account must have an active sandbox license. You must have the Administrator role assigned to you in your production account.
3. Regularly refreshing your sandbox is crucial to run the tests on updated data from the production environment. If the data is not updated regularly, it might lead to data inconsistency.

Wrapping Up