One of your ideas has been delivered from your suggestion.Approve Internal Changes on Supplier Profile

Audit compliance and fraud prevention are our top priorities, which make it critical to maintain the integrity of key supplier information. Monitoring changes to sensitive profile data after the fact limits your ability to be proactive in preventing fraud and improving compliance.

You can apply change control on supplier profile updates to organization details, income tax data, bank accounts, addresses, and now supplier sites. When internal users update this supplier information an internal supplier profile change request is generated that requires approval before the changes take effect. Approval requirements are defined using flexible approval routing rules. This change control capability assures that important supplier information is correctly captured, isn't fraudulent, and your supplier data management processes meet audit compliance requirements.

This feature, along with supplier profile audit capabilities, continues to enhance the supplier profile change management solution.

NOTE: These internal change controls were available in previous updates: bank accounts (Update 18A), organization details and income tax (Update 20D), addresses (Update 21D).

Creating a new site and editing an existing site is now enabled for internal change control and approval routing. Changes to core site attributes such as site name, inactive date, attachments, supplier site descriptive flexfields (Additional Information), as well as most attributes under the General, Purchasing, Receiving, and Invoicing tabs will generate a change request for approval.

Additional approval attributes have been introduced as part of this feature that would allow you to configure approval rules for supplier site specific changes. For example, the Site Purpose Changed approval attribute can be used to detect changes to any of the site purposes for an existing site: Sourcing Only, Purchasing Procurement card, Pay, Primary pay. Similarly, Hold Controls Changed approval attribute can be used to detect changes to any of these site attributes for an existing site: Hold All New Purchasing Documents, Hold Reason (Purchasing tab), Hold All Invoices, Hold Unmatched Invoices, Hold Unvalidated Invoices, and Payment Hold Reason (Invoicing tab).

Edit Site

Edit Site

A newly created site or an updated site is added to the profile change request and routed for approval.  Approvers can click Details to view the specific changes.

View Site Changes on Profile Change Request

View Site Changes on Profile Change Request

Steps to Enable

Use the Opt In UI to enable this feature. For instructions, refer to the Optional Uptake of New Features section of this document.

Offering: Procurement

To enable the feature:

  1. In the Offerings work area, select the Procurement offering, and then click Opt In Features.
  2. On the Opt In Procurement page, click the Features icon for the Suppliers functional area.
  3. On the Edit Features page, click the Enable icon for the Approve Internal Changes on Supplier Profile feature.
  4. Select the feature choice: Sites. Click Save and Close.

To configure approval rules:

  • In the Setup and Maintenance work area, use the Manage Internal Supplier Profile Change Approvals task to configure approval rules:
    • Offering: Procurement
    • Functional area: Approval Management

Tips And Considerations

  • In general, enable profile areas for which you require supplier profile change management. Changes made to profile areas not enabled or that aren't supported for change control are applied immediately.

  • The following areas of supplier site aren't change controlled: site assignments, payment methods and payment attributes (available under Payments tab), global descriptive flexfields and B2B communication related attributes. Hence, after a new site is approved, you will need to set up these site details as needed. Similarly, when updating a site, any changes to these site details are applied right away.

  • If you enable change control on both addresses and sites, then you can create an address and the site for that address in a single change request.

  • If you're already using internal change control for other areas such as supplier bank accounts, and now plan to add sites, then assess your existing approval rules. Use the approval setup task if additional routing rules for site updates are needed.

  • When Organization details and income tax, Addresses, or Sites are enabled, and a change request from an internal user is pending approval, you can withdraw the change request and capture more changes by taking the Edit action. The earlier changes will not be lost. The workflow will be launched again when you resubmit the changes for approval.

  • Supplier profile changes can come from both internal and external supplier users. For each supplier, there can only be one pending profile change request at a given time.

  • Creating and updating supplier sites from FBDI import, SOAP web service, or REST APIs (for application integration use cases) won't raise internal profile change requests.

Key Resources

Access Requirements

Users who are assigned a configured job role that contains these privileges can access this feature:

  • Maintain Supplier (POZ_MAINTAIN_SUPPLIER_PRIV)
  • Maintain Supplier Site (POZ_MAINTAIN_SUPPLIER_SITES_PRIV)
  • Maintain Supplier Site Purchasing Information (POZ_MAINTAIN_SUPPLIER_PURCHASING_INFORMATION_PRIV)
  • Maintain Supplier Site Receiving Information (POZ_MAINTAIN_SUPPLIER_RECEIVING_INFORMATION_PRIV)
  • Maintain Supplier Site Invoicing Information (POZ_MAINTAIN_SUPPLIER_INVOICING_INFORMATION_PRIV)
  • Maintain Supplier Attachment (POZ_MAINTAIN_SUPPLIER_ATTACHMENT_PRIV)

These privileges were available prior to this update.