How To Search For Suppliers
Background
Suppliers were brought into WD from multiple sources/databases:
ADIN (Procurement)
FAMIS(FP&M)
KFS (Accounts Payable) – the non-PO suppliers
Ames Lab
Library
Bookstore
The suppliers from KFS, Library, Bookstore and Ames Lab databases were set up strictly for making payments to suppliers, so these suppliers don’t tend to have much more than a remittance address. Suppliers coming from Procurement and FPM tend to be more robust because we issue POs & SCNs to them in addition to payments so they will have things like, order addresses, contact information, supplier groups, and special classifications, in addition to a remittance address.
All the suppliers from these sources were dumped into Workday without eliminating any duplicates. Instead, they identified the duplicate suppliers by Tax ID and then tied them together as Parent and Child/Children using supplier hierarchy (see KBA: Understanding Supplier Hierarchy). In addition each source used their own rules regarding supplier names. The ADIN supplier database, for example, applied standardized abbreviations and IRS naming conventions, whereas other sources used non-standard abbreviations and/or truncation.
ISU Find Suppliers Report
It is recommended that the ISU Find Suppliers report be used to search for suppliers in Workday. The report allows for searching by supplier name or Tax ID, in addition to other fields. The search can also be limited to active suppliers.
Searching by Supplier Name
New suppliers going into Workday today have very few naming conventions applied (see KBA: Supplier Naming Conventions in Workday) and that’s because Workday allows plenty of characters for longer supplier names, but that wasn’t true in the legacy supplier systems. Standard abbreviations were used in ADIN but other sources abbreviated or truncated without any rules. The ADIN system also adopted IRS naming conventions.
Examples of standard abbreviations include:
UNIV for University
INTL for International
ASSN for Association
SRVCS for Services
Examples of IRS naming conventions:
No leading “The” allowed in supplier names
No punctuation allowed in supplier names
The word “AND” is replaced with the ampersand (&)
Searching by Tax ID
When searching by Tax ID it is important to remember that not all suppliers in Workday will have one.
Suppliers that don’t have a Tax ID include:
Foreign – most foreign suppliers don’t have US Tax IDs
Children – child suppliers in a supplier hierarchy relationship will not have a Tax ID (only Parents have Tax IDs)
“Incomplete” – some suppliers were allowed to migrate into Workday without Tax IDs
Special Exceptions – there are some suppliers that aren’t required to have a Tax ID, for example state treasurers
Searching Tips
Searching for suppliers in Workday can be challenging. The following tips should be utilized:
Less is MORE! – when searching by supplier name, the less you search for, the more returns you get. Don’t search for the entire supplier name. Choose part of the name, especially if part of the name is somewhat unique or uncommon.
Remember migrated suppliers may have abbreviations or truncation applied to their name
Be willing to do more than one search