Set purchasing categories and policy rules
Organise purchases and save the settings and rules that match your agreed buying process.
Set purchasing categories and policy rules
Organise purchases and save the settings and rules that match your agreed buying process.
Before you start
Agree the purchasing process with its owner: features needed, category structure, receiving requirements, review rules and effective dates. Shared settings affect other people’s work, so keep the current values before changing them.
Review module settings
1. Open Procure → Settings under Administration. Review Features, including sourcing, catalogs, policies, budget controls and three-way matching. Enable only the features your process needs.
2. In Receiving & tolerances, review Price tolerance (%), Quantity tolerance (%), Require goods inspection, Require service confirmation and Allow over-receipt within tolerance. Use agreed values, not a demonstration’s defaults. Check Require line manager review for Pulse requests against the intended reviewer route.
3. Review affected sections, select Save settings once, leave Settings and reopen it to check the retained values. Leave Document numbering unchanged unless you are deliberately implementing an agreed numbering scheme; do not lower Next counters to reproduce an old reference.
Create a purchasing category
4. Open Procure → Categories → Categories and search existing names and codes. If a correct category exists, inspect its saved settings and skip steps 5–6 to step 7. Otherwise, select New Category and enter Category code and Category name.
5. Choose Parent category or keep Top level as intended. Set Category owner, review Active, and use Accounting code only for an agreed Finance mapping. Enter Competitive sourcing threshold only when its currency and intended application are clear.
6. Select Save category, find the exact code and reopen it. Check its name, parent, owner, mapping, threshold and active state.
Save a scoped policy rule
7. Open Procure → Policies. Choose Purchase Rules, Approval Rules, Supplier Rules or Receiving Rules, search for an existing rule, and inspect any match. If the correct rule already exists, check its saved scope and settings rather than repeating steps 8–10. Otherwise, select New rule.
8. Enter Rule code and Rule name. Set the category scope, Minimum amount, Maximum amount, Currency, Effective from and optional end date. Amount boundaries are inclusive. Review Priority and Active deliberately.
9. Complete the selected family’s requirement. For a Competition purchase rule, specify Minimum supplier quotes, Allowed sourcing methods and the exception requirements. Other families provide their own approval, supplier-qualification, contract or inspection requirements.
10. Select Save rule, search its code and reopen it to compare every setting. Before relying on it for live purchases, check an in-scope and out-of-scope request with the process owner, including boundary amounts and any overlapping rules.
Expected result
Your categories and rules are findable, correctly scoped and saved with the intended state.
Remember: A category is not a Finance account, and a saved rule is not proof that a particular purchase has passed it. Resolve unclear rule overlap or inheritance rather than assuming the app combines rules in a particular way.
Continue learning
In this series: Manage purchasing — guide 2 of 17.
Turn what you learned into the way the team works.
Mark this lesson complete once the workflow exists in your workspace—not simply when you reach the bottom.