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Workday Education
Last Updated: 2026-07-10
Suppliers

Suppliers

Overview

Workday Supplier Management effectively manages your vendors while providing comprehensive supplier information to people across your organization. Supplier Management uses web-based business communication, transaction processing, and settlement options to:
  • Efficiently process purchase orders and supplier invoices.
  • Manage payables and settlement.
  • Provide cash optimization.
  • Maintain strong internal controls with insight into all aspects of enterprise spend.
A supplier is a business entity you purchase goods or services from. You can set up and maintain all your vendors in Workday Supplier Management.
There are different ways to set up suppliers depending on what they provide and how they provide goods or services. Supplier-related setup tasks vary, depending on the type of supplier.

Objectives

By the end of this chapter, you will be able to:
  • Explain Workday Supplier Management.
  • Configure the supplier setup.
  • Describe supplier categories and groups.
  • Perform supplier changes.
  • Explain supplier collaboration.

Supplier Setup

Consider the following during your setup of suppliers in Workday:
  • Categories
  • Groups
  • Supplier connections
  • 1099 suppliers
  • Hierarchy
  • Alternate names
  • Restricting suppliers to companies
  • Duplicate detection
  • Business process
  • Location customer account numbers
Supplier categories facilitate organization, searching, and reporting. For example, supplier categories might include IT Distributors, Office Supply Distributor, Food and Beverage Distributor, and so on. If you have multiple suppliers, categories are useful.
All suppliers must have only one supplier category. You use categories when selecting or searching for suppliers, and while editing posting rules.
Supplier connections consist of remit-to connections and order-from connections. Workday enables you to have one supplier with multiple remit-to and order-from connections. Remit-to connections enable you to remit invoices and payments and order from different supplier addresses, email addresses, and settlement bank accounts. The supplier remit-to connection is available for remitting supplier invoices and payments. It is also available on purchase orders to order from one supplier's multiple addresses, divisions, or ordering methods.
A 1099 supplier is any supplier issued a U.S. IRS form 1099 at the end of the year. Workday includes these suppliers and their applicable payments in your 1099 reporting. An applicable payment to a 1099 supplier from a supplier invoice includes lines with spend categories mapped to 1099 categories.
Workday supports combined state and federal 1099 reporting. You can also set up suppliers in your tenant to comply with Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) requirements.
You can define parent/child relationships between suppliers. By defining these relationships, Workday provides reporting based on parent/child relationships, e.g., rolling up child activity to report on totals for each parent. Workday also supports the application of a payment from a parent to invoices of a child, and vice versa. You can use supplier hierarchies with 1099 reporting when multiple suppliers have the same tax ID and need to report on the same form.
Supplier alternate names enable you to use a different name from the legal name of a supplier in printed and electronic transactions.
Alternate Name Usage
Description
1099 Misc Recipient
Displays on the Recipient's name box on the printed and electronic versions of the 1099 MISC form used to report U.S. taxes.
Alternate Supplier Connection
This option enables you to create multiple alternate names for a single supplier. To pay your suppliers, you can then select one alternate name for each supplier connection.
Connection Integration Name
Reference this ID for EDI or XML purchase order communication. When you select this option, Workday links an EDI/XML integration reference ID to a specific order-from connection.
Connection Purchase Order Name
This option enables you to create an alternate name for a supplier site. The name displays on printed and electronic purchase order forms.
Doing Business As
Also known as DBA Name. This option enables you to create an alternate company name different from the legal name. This name prints on checks and 1099 MISC forms above the legal company name.
EDI Integration Name
This option enables you to record a supplier ID to use with EDI exchange protocols on delivered EDI processes.
Integration Name Matching
The name that Workday records from credit card transaction load when the supplier name on the integration is different from the name stored in Workday.
To map the integration name to a supplier, select Map Supplier after loading credit card transactions. Then, Workday records the name and applies it to future loads.
Purchase Order Name
If the supplier does not have supplier connections, Workday prints this name as the supplier name on printed purchase orders.
Reference
This alternate name enables you to find a supplier quickly when you use the prefix, Supplier: [reference alternate name], in the search bar.
Remit To Addressee 1
You can use this alternate name once per supplier. This alternate name displays in the Address Line 1 field.
Remit To Addressee 2
You can use this alternate name once per supplier. This alternate name displays in the Address Line 2 field.
Remit To Advice Name
This alternate name prints on checks but does not replace the legal name of the supplier.
Remit To Payee
This alternate name prints on checks and replaces the legal name of the supplier.
You can restrict the suppliers available for selection on transactions based on the selected companies or company hierarchies you associate with the supplier.
Use the
Create Supplier
 task to restrict suppliers to a company or company hierarchy. Workday only displays suppliers associated with the selected company or company hierarchy on the Supplier prompt for transactions where you can select a supplier. Otherwise, Workday displays all suppliers.
When you create a new supplier, Workday provides criteria to detect and display potential supplier duplicates. This feature enables you to prevent duplicating supplier information while increasing the efficiency of supplier maintenance and improving the accuracy of your supplier records. Workday can evaluate suppliers for duplicates based on these fields:
  • Bank Account
  • Contact Information Email
  • Supplier Name
  • Supplier Alternate Names
  • Supplier Contact Phone
  • Supplier Contact Email
Parent or child suppliers on supplier hierarchies are excluded when you run the new
Find Supplier Duplicates
 report. This ensures that they do not register as potential duplicates.
When you set up the following business processes as subprocesses on the
Supplier Event
 business process, your approvers can evaluate potential duplicate suppliers:
  • Create Supplier
  • External Supplier Request
  • Supplier Request
You can also find suppliers that Workday flagged as duplicates in the
Find Supplier Duplicates
 report.
The supplier business processes enable you to manage suppliers, conduct supplier audits, and perform compliance reviews. The Supplier Event business process enables control and approval over suppliers before processing transactions. Also, the
Supplier Change Even
t business process formally approves changes to an existing supplier and allows monitoring of all revisions and history.
Resource
: For more information about how supplier statuses impact how you interact with suppliers in Workday, refer to the Workday Administrator Guide.
If you only have one account number with your supplier, you can maintain supplier account numbers directly on the supplier profile. However, you might need to use Location Customer Account Numbers (LCANs) if you have multiple account numbers with the same supplier. Often organizations have multiple account numbers for one given supplier to communicate the location for the supplier to ship goods. Or they might have a different supplier account number for each order-from connection.
LCANs are account numbers associated with a specific supplier that are at a more detailed level than the supplier level. You can associate these account numbers with ship-to locations, deliver-to locations (work space), or companies within Workday. In the healthcare industry, when using the lowest unit of measure (LUM) the just-in-time (JIT) ordering method. And a separate account number gets used for this versus a bulk (or large UOM) account number.
LCANs can transmit to or from suppliers through EDI transactions and included in purchase order print layouts. If LCANs are in scope for any supplier in your tenant, Workday recommends not configuring supplier account numbers on the supplier profile.
Load location customer account numbers using
Put Location Customer Account Number Detail
 or in Workday using the
Maintain Location Customer Account Numbers
 task. Changes or additions to LCANs do not run through a business process.

Supplier Changes

Once a supplier is Approved, you can change supplier details to maintain or set up supplier information. There are four other supplier business processes that allow you to define a specific workflow for the targeted changes, which include:
  • Change Supplier Alternate Name
  • Change Supplier Contact Information
  • Change Supplier Settlement Bank Account
  • Change Supplier Classification
The most recent changes that you make to a supplier will display on the Change History tab on the supplier composite profile. You can also use the
Supplier Change History
 report to detect and report on the history of changes to supplier information. This report provides a clear audit trail for changes to key pieces of supplier information for one or multiple suppliers.
You cannot initiate a new supplier change until the current supplier change is either:
  • Canceled before approval using the Supplier Cancel Pending Supplier Changes action from the Related Actions menu.
  • Approved.

Supplier Requests

The
Supplier Request
 business process is available for authorized users to request when a supplier gets added to Workday. The supplier request requires the initiator to complete minimal information. You can request a supplier through the
Create Supplier Request
 task. The request is routed through the
Supplier Request Event
 business process for completion. Upon the request approval, a new supplier is created in Workday.

Supplier Sanction List Screening

Workday provides tools to screen suppliers against sanction lists. When you enable sanction list screening, Workday compares suppliers with the configured sanction list. When screening identifies a match with the sanction list, Workday routes the supplier for approval. You can compare supplier information with the:
  • Consolidated Screening List from the International Trade Administration (ITA), helping you to comply with federal law and to detect and mitigate potential risks to your organization.
  • List of Excluded Individuals/Entities from the Office of the Inspector General, helping you to comply with U.S. federal guidelines for healthcare providers and continue to receive federal funding.

Supplier Collaboration

You can create external sites where prospective suppliers can submit information to your company for review and approval. Setting up an external supplier site streamlines your supplier onboarding process by saving you time, reducing manual processing, and improving data integrity. Prospective suppliers can:
  • Submit their contact information.
  • Enter the goods and services that they provide.
  • Enter banking and payment information.
  • Submit answers to custom questionnaires for supplier onboarding.
  • View their application history and registration status.
  • Update their application.
Share the Workday-generated URL with your prospective supplier to give them access to the external site. After the prospective supplier submits a request, Workday initiates the
Prospective Supplier Request Event
 business process for review and approval. After approval, Workday automatically transfers the information on the external supplier site pages to the supplier profile.
The supplier portal enables suppliers to submit updates and maintain their own data. This streamlines invoice processing and payment activity, and improves supplier maintenance. Suppliers can also:
  • View and acknowledge purchase orders.
  • Log time and tasks.
  • Create invoices and invoice requests.
  • Update contact information, banking details, alternate names, and classifications.
  • View and initiate catalog loads.
  • View and respond to request for quotes (RFQs).
  • Complete price changes.
To access the supplier portal, you must configure a supplier contact for the supplier. Suppliers can have multiple supplier contacts. This contact will receive a Workday account that allows them to sign in to the tenant and perform the granted actions. In supplier domains and on supplier business processes, the supplier contact gains access to applications through the Supplier Contact As-Self security group.
You can also configure custom roles for different contact groups within suppliers to better control which contacts can update supplier information. When a supplier contact submits a change on the supplier portal, Workday routes the change to the role you configure on the supplier.
A supplier can access these applications to manage their information and transactions through the supplier portal:
  • Contact and Banking Information
  • Purchase Orders and Catalogs
  • Invoices and Payments
  • RFQs