Working with Market Codes

If you are an existing PeopleSoft Purchasing customer, the conventional category codes are considered to be user-defined and the market codes for these codes are set to User Def (user-defined) (01) in the Item Categories component after you run the upgrade script. You can maintain the same coding scheme, as well as migrate to the new industry standard coding scheme, the Universal Standard Products and Services Classifications (UNSPSC). PeopleSoft eProcurement provides you with the Import CUP File process (PV_CP_LOAD) to load UNSPSC and their corresponding MarketSite items through a batch process.

Use the UNSPSC to classify products and services at 2-digit, 4-digit, 6-digit and 8-digit levels, depending on your specific needs. Each subsequent level of detail describes a subset of all codes and descriptions preceding it in the code's hierarchy.

For example, ballpoint pens at the 8-digit level are a subset of writing instruments at the 6-digit level, which is a subset of office supplies at the 4-digit level. These descriptions are varying degrees of office equipment, accessories, and supplies at the 2-digit level. You can add ninth and tenth digits to indicate the business relationship to the supplier, such as rental/lease, wholesale, retail, or original equipment manufacturer. Each UNSPSC is unique and enables unambiguous translation of the commodity's description into any language.

This table explains the UNSPSC coding hierarchy. In this example, leased addressing machines are assigned UNSPSC number 4410210510. They are classified as office equipment, accessories and supplies – one of 55 existing segments at the top level of the UNSPSC hierarchy.

Level	UNSPSC	UNSPSC Description
Segment	44	Office equipment, accessories, and supplies.
Family	44 | 10	Office machines and their supplies and accessories.
Class	44 | 10 | 21	Mail machines.
Commodity	44 | 10 | 21 | 05	Addressing machines.
Business function identifier	44 | 10 | 21 | 05 | 10	Addressing machines, leased.

When you add a new category code using the Item Categories component, the system checks to determine whether the code consists of only numbers and has an even number of digits. If so, the system then assigns UN/SPSC (02) as the market code. If the category code does not meet these criteria, the system assigns User Def. (01) as the market code. You cannot modify the market code after you add the category code.

If the market code for the new category is set to UN/SPSC, the system looks at the code and determines whether its ancestor codes must be created and creates them accordingly. The length of the ancestor codes that are automatically generated is based on the length of the category code that you just entered. For example, when you enter the category code 4410210510 and no ancestor codes exist, the system generates the following ancestor codes:

4400000000

4410000000

4410210000

4410210500

Upon saving the Item Categories component, the system asks whether you want the item catalogs updated. If the answer is no, the catalog tree is not updated. If the answer is yes, the Update Catalog Tree page appears. If you are updating an existing code, the page displays the existing catalog information.

The relationship between CATEGORY_CD (category code) and CATEGORY_ID (a system-assigned sequential number) is one-to-one in the PS_ITM_CAT_TBL table. The relationship between an item (PS_MASTER_ITEM_TBL) and a default category (PS_ITM_CAT_TBL) is many-to-one.

Note:

You may be able to associate an item with more than one category. However, only the PeopleSoft eProcurement product supports the one item and multiple categories association feature.

For example, the following scenario is not supported in PeopleSoft Purchasing: In SetID SHARE, item 10002 is mapped to category code CYCLING (CATEGORY_ID = 00009). This means that for catalog ALL_PURCHASE_ITEMS, item 10002 belongs to the tree node CYCLING (due to dynamic range).

You might be able to create an item static range from 10001 to 10003 under another tree node, FISHING. This range violates the relationship previously described because, in this case, item 10002 is mapped to two categories, CYCLING and FISHING. Avoiding this scenario is a good practice because it may create unpredictable results when you use the Order by Catalog function.