Setup Considerations: Suppliers
You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of suppliers. It explains:
- Why to set them up.
- How they fit into the rest of Workday.
- Downstream impacts and cross-product interactions.
- Security requirements and business process configurations.
- Questions and limitations to consider before implementation.
Refer to detailed task instructions for full configuration details.
What They Are
You can set up and manage suppliers to procure goods, services, and contingent labor for your organization.
Business Benefits
Supplier functionality provides:
- A collaborative environment for your business and its suppliers.
- Customizable tools to help you efficiently manage the information flow, organization policies, and business processes.
- Analytics and reporting for high visibility into your company spend to help you make informed decisions.
- Your suppliers with the ability conduct transactions in your Workday tenant.
Use Cases
- Connect with prospective suppliers and capture essential supplier information in your Workday tenant.
- Register suppliers and create supplier accounts.
- Enable your suppliers to:
- Load their own catalogs and purchase items into Workday to generate a searchable directory of goods, services, and contingent labor catalogs within Workday.
- View and approve purchase orders and Requests for Quotes (RFQs).
- Log time and tasks.
- Log activities against project-based services Purchase Orders (POs).
- Issue invoices for you to approve and pay.
- Maintain their own contact information.
- Generate reports for spend overviews or see your outgoing funds by spend category or on individual suppliers.
- Set up Workday accounts for your suppliers so you can complete the entire requisition-to-pay cycle in your supplier portal.
Questions to Consider
Questions | Considerations |
|---|---|
What kind of security access do you want users to have to supplier transactions and reporting? | You can configure and customize segmented security to restrict worker access to suppliers on reports and transactions. Users with the appropriate segment access to suppliers can:
Example: Create a segment-based security group of IT Manager. You can then edit domain access so that only IT managers can create IT suppliers and launch transactions with IT hardware suppliers. |
How do you want to organize your suppliers in Workday? | For reporting and to make your suppliers easier to find, you can organize suppliers according to:
To restrict access to certain subsets of suppliers, use supplier groups or categories along with supplier segmented security. You can then configure supplier group profiles, display profile group tabs, and add custom reports on supplier documents. |
How do you plan to capture supplier information? | Supplier contact questionnaires enable you to gather specific information about your suppliers and their contacts.
Include Workday provided questionnaires or create custom questionnaires for specific suppliers or groupings of suppliers when you configure your portal. Use the Supplier Request process to send requests for information directly to your suppliers through the supplier portal. |
What payment terms do you want to set up for your suppliers? | You can create custom payment terms for a supplier or supplier groups that you can then apply to all their procurement documents.
You can configure:
|
How do you want to view supplier information in Workday? | You can configure a composite view of your suppliers, making it easier for users to access information from a single source that includes:
Ranking suppliers by priority makes it easier for buyers to use primary suppliers when they create requisitions for items for inventory and par replenishment. |
How do you plan to manage suppliers with multiple sites and locations? | You can order from different supplier sites on requisitions and POs, enabling you to link supplier ordering sites and remit-to connection information without creating multiple supplier records. |
Recommendations
For optimal performance, select no more than 10 reports when you configure custom reports to display on the supplier composite view profile.
Requirements
When you have contingent workers working through an agency or third-party business that pays the worker, create the agency as a supplier. You must contract the worker as a contingent worker.
To comply with federal, state, or local government requirements, add appropriate classifications to your supplier.
Limitations
No impact.
Tenant Setup
To record the correct pronunciation of supplier names and details on their settlement bank accounts, enable phonetic names on the
Edit Tenant Setup - Global
task.You can specify the attachment file types for supplier business documents in the
Edit Tenant Setup - System
task.Security
Use the
Domain Security Policies for Functional Area
report and filter by Suppliers
to find security domains.This table describes some of the security domains that you'll need:
Domain | Considerations |
|---|---|
Set Up: Supplier
| Enables you to create new suppliers. |
Set Up: Supplier Maintenance
| Enables you to create new and manage existing suppliers. |
Set Up: Supplier Security Segments
| Enables you to restrict access to supplier transactions and reports by:
|
Set Up: Supplier Contacts
| Enables you to set up and maintain supplier contact information and view related reporting. |
Set Up: Supplier Categories
| Enables you to create supplier categories to organize suppliers for searching and reporting purposes. |
Set Up: Supplier Administration
| Enables you to restrict access to tasks and reports to Supplier Administrators only. |
Set Up: Spend External Party Checks
| Enables you to set up and maintain integrations with external APIs. |
Process: Supplier Request
| Enables you to process supplier requests and view related reporting. |
Process: Supplier Request - Cancel
| Enables you to cancel supplier requests that you have created. You must have view and modify access to Set Up: Supplier Administration to cancel supplier requests created by other users. |
Business Processes
Business Processes | Considerations |
|---|---|
Catalog Load
Supplier Invoice Event | To enable supplier contacts to load catalog items onto your supplier portal, add:
|
Order-From Supplier Connection Event
| Configure to set up alternate locations for a main supplier to enable you to order from specific sites.
You can use the business process to route orders from supplier connection details for approval. |
Prospective Supplier Request Event
| Controls self-registration of prospective suppliers. |
Purchase Order Event
| Enable supplier contacts to approve your purchase orders using the Supplier Collaboration step. |
Supplier Change Event
| Change supplier details to maintain or set up supplier information.
Check supplier name against the Consolidated Screening List from the International Trade Administration (ITA), using the Sanction List Screening service step. |
Supplier Contact Info Change Event
| Enable users to update supplier contacts' information using the Change Supplier Contact Information task.
Only these users can be added to this business process:
|
Supplier Event
| Controls the approvals process for suppliers.
You can set up conditional workflows based on organizational roles, cost centers, and companies. To review and update trackable asset lines, include the Review Trackable Lines for Assets action step.To configure role-based security groups for non-worker initiators, you can change the approval step for the security group from role-based to user-based in the business process definition. Check supplier name against the Consolidated Screening List from the International Trade Administration (ITA), using the Sanction List Screening service step. |
Supplier Remit-To Connection Event
| Configure to set up conditions to create supplier connections to remit invoices and payments to different supplier contact details. |
Reporting
Use these reports for information on:
- How much you're spending on goods and services.
- What you're buying.
- Who you're buying it from.
Report | Considerations |
|---|---|
Spend Analysis for Invoices
| Track how much your business spends on supplier invoices. View graphics and drill down into details of your invoice spending to see trends in your company spending. |
Spend Analysis for Procurement Card
| Apply the same level of oversight over your punchout spend as you have over your invoiced procurement spending. |
Top Suppliers by Spend
| View a list of suppliers your business most frequently uses to source its procurement needs. |
Use these reports to understand how your business currently manages spending and to gain insights into potential opportunities to save money by:
- Negotiating contracts and discounts by identifying suppliers accessed through unmanaged spending.
- Consolidating spending.
Report | Considerations |
|---|---|
Managed vs Unmanaged Invoice Spend
| Compare your managed invoiced card spending with your unmanaged invoice spend. |
Managed vs Unmanaged Procurement Card Spend
| Compare your managed procurement card spending with your unmanaged punchout spend. |
Use these reports to help you understand:
- How much you currently owe each supplier.
- The uninvoiced proportion of your spending.
- Your current and forecast future payment liabilities.
Report | Considerations |
|---|---|
Payables Aging
| View payable amounts for the different aging categories in the aging group, any pending payments, and the total amount for each supplier. |
Payables Aging Detail
| View outstanding payable amounts for each supplier by aging bracket. Details include unpaid or partially paid payments and totals across all aging brackets. |
Use these reports to:
- View changes to existing suppliers.
- Track approvals for new suppliers.
- View and detect potential duplicate suppliers.
Report | Considerations |
|---|---|
Find Supplier Events
| View all open and in-progress Supplier Requests and Supplier Events. |
Supplier Change History
| View changes to the history of these supplier information categories:
|
Find Supplier Duplicates
| Detect and view potential duplicates of supplier records.
You can also use the Supplier Duplication report data source to create custom reports for supplier duplicates. |
Integrations
You can build integration templates to support different EDI file formats:
Integration Template | Description |
|---|---|
Purchase Order EDI 850 Outbound
| Exports purchase orders in the American Standards Committee (ASC) X12 850 EDI format. |
Supplier Invoice EDI 810 Inbound
| Imports supplier invoices in the American Standards Committee (ASC) X12 810 EDI format. |
Advance Ship Notice EDI 856 Inbound
| Imports any advance ship notices in the American Standards Committee (ASC) X12 856 EDI format. |
Purchase Order Acknowledgment EDI 855 Inbound
| Imports purchase order acknowledgments in the American Standards Committee (ASC) X12 855 EDI format. |
Connections and Touchpoints
Supplier functionality interacts with these areas in Workday:
Features | Considerations |
|---|---|
Inventory | You can complete the request-to-pay cycle and:
|
Supplier Accounts | You can create and schedule purchase orders, log time for contingent workers, and generate supplier invoices. |
Supplier Contracts | You can enable the awarding of RFQs to successful suppliers and set up and process scheduled purchase orders. |
Financial Accounting | You can create receipt accruals from approved, uninvoiced receipts, supplier invoices, and bill-only purchase orders for goods and services. |
Banking and Settlement | You can verify procurement card transactions. |
Business Assets | You can track assets your company acquires through the procurement process. You can:
|
Workday offers a Touchpoints Kit with resources to help you understand configuration relationships in your tenant. Learn more about the Workday Touchpoints Kit on Workday Community.