Skip to main content
Documentation
Documentation
Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2026-01-09
Steps: Set Up Machine Learning for Spend Category Recommendations

Steps: Set Up Machine Learning for Spend Category Recommendations

Have at least 1 year of requisition or purchase order data and corresponding supplier invoice data so that Workday can provide accurate spend category predictions.
You might need to take additional steps to enable this feature based on your organization's subscription service agreement. Your organization is either on the Main Service Agreement (MSA) or the Universal Main Service Agreement (UMSA). To determine your organization's subscription service agreement:
  1. Select your profile avatar on Workday Community.
  2. Select
    Profile
    .
  3. On your profile page, select your organization's name, which is beneath your name and next to your job title.
  4. View your
    Subscription Service Agreement
     value.
If the value is:
  • UMSA
    , the feature is automatically available. You can skip the
    Enable Innovation Services Feature and AI Data Contributions for MSA Customers
     step. For more information on Machine Learning data contributions, see Concept: Workday AI for Universal Main Subscription Agreement Customers.
  • MSA
    , you must enable this feature through Innovation Services using the
    Enable Innovation Services Feature and AI Data Contributions for MSA Customers
    step.
Note: UMSA customers don't have Innovation Services tasks and reports in their tenants as these are for MSA customers only. UMSA customers can ignore all information regarding Innovation Services.
You can enable machine learning to predict spend categories on requisitions and purchase orders. The machine learning model learns from approved supplier invoice records generated from these documents to determine which spend categories to recommend.
Workday doesn’t display recommendations in tenants with poor prediction accuracy. We define prediction accuracy as the percent of occurrences of the approved value among the recommended values in a chosen subset of the data. This is a proxy for the accuracy of recommendations displayed.
  1. You might need to take additional steps to enable this feature depending on your organization's subscription service agreement. For more information, see this Community article.
    On the
    Innovation Services Opt-In
     task, select the
    Spend Management Machine Learning GA Features
     service on the
    Available Services
     tab in the
    Spend Management
     category.
    If you have already opted into these Innovation Services and data selection categories, you must select the
    Opt In to Additional Data
     check box on categories where the opt-in is available. Workday can take up to 24 hours to display after this additional opt-in the
    Generate With AI
     button on tasks.
  2. Access the
    Edit Tenant Setup - Machine Learning
     task.
    Select the region in which Workday hosts data used for improvement and personalization of machine learning and analytics functionality.
    Security:
    Set Up: Tenant Setup - Machine Learning
     in the System functional area.
  3. Access the
    Maintain Machine Learning Prompt Recommendations
     task.
    On the initiation page, select the
    Procurement
     product area.
    In the
    Purchase Order
     and
    Requisitions
     grids, select the
    Enable Machine Learning Recommendations
     check box to enable spend category recommendations for those business documents.
    Workday recommends that you use a Preview tenant to test this functionality. Using a Preview tenant makes it easier to enable Spend Management machine learning features and gives you unlimited time to test, in contrast with Implementation tenants.
    Security:
    Set Up: Tenant Setup - Financials
     domain in the System functional area.
  4. (Optional) Access the
    Edit Tenant Setup - Financials
     task.
    In the
    Procurement Options
     section, select
    Enable Spend Category/Supplier Mismatch Alert for Requisitions
     to display a warning when a requester selects a supplier that wasn't previously selected for this spend category. Workday also recommends the top 3 suppliers to select.
    Security:
    Set Up: Tenant Setup - Financials
     domain in the System functional area.
  5. (Optional) Access the
    Run On-Demand Machine Learning Activation for Implementation Tenant
     task to set up testing on Implementation tenants.
    After setting up the task, it can take up to 2 weeks to view the machine learning feature functionality in your tenant. Then, you have 2 weeks to complete testing.
When you enable spend category recommendations for the first time, the spend management machine learning model takes up to 2 weeks to train using your data. After those initial 2 weeks, Workday displays spend category recommendations on the documents you selected.
If you don't see spend category recommendations 2 weeks after enabling all setup requirements, open a support case.