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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2025-11-14
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. Access the
    Maintain Commodity Code Types
     task.
    Use the task to define the taxonomy (or structure) of commodity codes. You can define UNSPSC to have a Segment, Family, Class structure in that order and indicate the number of digits at each level. This enables you to use a "class" level commodity code on Procure-to-Pay transactions and derive the spend category during punchout.
    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.
    Security
    Set Up: Commodity Code
     domain and security policy in the Procurement functional area.
  3. (Optional) Directly associate commodity codes to procurement and sales items on these tasks:
    • Create Purchase Item
    • Edit Purchase Item
    • Create Sales Item
    • Edit Sales Item
    • Catalog Load Request
    • Maintain External (Extrinsic) Cart Details
  4. (Optional) Access the
    Edit Company Procurement Options
     task.
    Select a default
    Commodity Code Type
     for your company to be applied on all spend transactions.
    Security:
    Set Up: Company General
     domain in the Common Financial Management functional area.
  5. (Optional) Access the
    Configure Optional Fields
     task.
    On the
    Requisition Event
     functional area, you can restrict the usage and visibility of:
    • Commodity Code on Goods Line
    • Commodity Code on Service Lines
    Security:
    Set Up: Configure Optional Fields
     domain in the System functional area.
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, purchase orders, and supplier invoices. You can't change the commodity code on a change order when the purchase oder line has a related supplier invoice line.
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.