How You Use the Procurement Category Hierarchy in Approval Rules, Account Generation, and Reporting

You can use a procurement category hierarchy to set up transaction approval rules, account generation, and reporting.

How You Use the Procurement Category Hierarchy in Approval Rules

You can set up approval rule conditions using up to the top 10 levels of categories in a procurement category hierarchy.

For example, this graphic shows four levels of categories for IT level spend.

If you have approval policies that apply to all hardware categories, you need only one rule condition applied to the highest hardware category level in the hierarchy. For example, you might set up an approval rule where if the procurement category hierarchy equals level 2 hardware, then route a requisition to the information technology approval group for approvals. This way, you don't need separate approval policies for the lower levels (notebooks and standard laptops). In this example, any changes you make to the categories below hardware wouldn't affect the approval policy rule because everything rolls up to hardware.

You can use procurement category hierarchies for approvals of requisitions, purchasing documents, and negotiation approval tasks.

How You Use the Procurement Category Hierarchy in Account Generation

You can also use a procurement category hierarchy for deriving accounts. You can use the top 10 levels of categories for account mapping sets. Using the same example hierarchy, you might set the input source to be based on hierarchy level 2 hardware, and set the mapping to hardware to derive an account. In that case, any categories or items that roll up to level 2 hardware can then use the mapped account.

You can use a predefined, delivered mapping set to derive natural account segments based on the requisitioning business unit and procurement category hierarchy level 1.

How You Use the Procurement Category Hierarchy in Reporting

You can also use the category dimension to create business intelligence reports, based on the top 10 levels of a procurement category hierarchy. The category dimension is available in the reporting subject areas for requisitions, purchasing documents, and negotiations.