Skip to main content
Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2023-06-23
Steps: Create Commodity Codes

Steps: Create Commodity Codes

You can create commodity codes that group similar types of goods and services. Define your own structure or use an industry-based standard taxonomy, such as the National Institute of Governmental Purchasing Commodity Services Code (NIGP) or the United Nations Standard Products and Services Code (UNSPSC).
Also, you can associate spend categories as well as purchase and catalog items to commodity codes.
  1. Configure the
    Set Up: Commodity Code
    domain and security policy in the Procurement functional area.
  2. Access the
    Maintain Commodity Code Types
    task.
    Workday recommends that you use standard commodity code structures for data integrity and seamless integrations with third-party systems.
    Example: UNSPSC codes are 8-digit values (with an optional 2 more digits) of a 4-level hierarchy (with an optional fifth level). Segment, Family, Class, and Commodity are the 4-primary levels with two 00 decimal digits to enable 8-digit codes for each level. To create a UNSPSC-type code, you must create 4 levels with a level length of 2. Then, we automatically associate the code to the parent code, and create the parent code when it doesn't already exist.
  3. (Optional) Directly associate commodity codes to procurement items on these tasks:
    • Create Purchase Item
    • Edit Purchase Item
    • Catalog Load Request
    • Maintain External (Extrinsic) Cart Details
Workday automatically:
  • Creates the parent and child commodity code structure for you.
  • Associates commodity codes to spend categories.
You can select commodity codes on requisitions and purchase orders.
You can use the
All the Descendants of the Commodity Code
report field to track purchases by commodity code.
Example: For a UNSPSC code with a segment level, this field returns the codes for the family, class, and commodity levels. To report on all the purchases for a specific UNSPSC segment, use a report filter condition with this report field. This setup enables you to view the codes on procurement document lines associated to a segment-level code.