Overview of Classification Rules
Atamis SA supports a powerful set of Rules for classifying unmapped spend and for re-classifying or refining previously mapped spend. Depending on your SLA, Atamis may be responsible for the full classification of your spend data, but even if this is the case you can still make use of these Rules to refine your spend based on internal knowledge of what goods/services you are using your suppliers for.
The Category Structure, or Taxonomy, you use to classify your spend will have been agreed at set up, and a full list of Categories can be obtained from the Categories Tab, or by locating the Report All Categories.
When you modify a Classification Rule in Atamis SA it will:
- Reclassify your spend data in a background process which takes at least a few minutes to run
- Be applied automatically at each routine spend data load
In both cases a prioritised, or tiered, approach is applied to classify your spend data:
For all spend data classified since your ProSpend v2.5 upgrade, the Tier used to classify your spend is recorded on the Expenditure Detail page in a field called Atamiser: Tier. On this page you will also be able to access a link to the precise Rule that was used to classify the Expenditure row, and the date/time it was classified.
Rules for Tiers 3 and 4 are set in Atamis SA on a Supplier’s detail page.
Rules for Tiers 2 and 5 are accessed from the System Mapping Rules Tab. All of these rules will take a few minutes to apply to spend after changes are made.
It is not necessary to use all of these Tiers if you don’t want to. For example, spend data could quite easily be classified using just Supplier Default Rules. If you do choose to use many Rules and Tiers, you’ll find it’s possible even to prioritise Rules within a single Tier where required. A full explanation of the Tiers follows:
Tier 1: Applied only during data loads when you have already provided Atamis with the exact Category you wish to be used for a spend transaction.
Tier 2: Priority System Mapping Rules take precedence over all other Rules. These can be used, for example, to set all spend data in the whole system associated with a particular Cost Centre or GL coding to a particular Category.
Tier 3: Supplier Custom Rules are best used when a Supplier provides more than one type of goods or services. They can be used, for example, to classify a Supplier’s spend to a particular category only when the invoice line item description contains a particular word.
Tier 4: Supplier Default Rules will typically be used to classify most spend within a ProSpend system. If a transaction has not been classified using any of Tiers 1 – 3, then the Supplier Default Category is applied, i.e. the main Category of goods/services the Supplier provides.
Tier 5: Non-Prioritised System Mapping Rules are identical to Tier 2, except that they are applied only when no other rules are satisfied.
Tier 6: This is the Default Mapping Rule for the system and is generally set to ‘Unmapped’, i.e. spend which hasn’t been classified.
Supplier Mapping Rules (Tiers 3 & 4)
If you have full Atamis SA permissions, you can modify a supplier’s Default and Custom Mapping Rules to reclassify their spend. These rules, once set, are applied to all subsequent spend loaded into Atamis SA.
Suppliers can have a Default Mapping Rule (its default category) and Custom Mapping Rules. Each line item of spend is checked against the Custom Mapping Rules first. Custom Mapping Rules allow you to associate different types of expenditure to different categories based on textual information contained within the line item. If no Custom Rules are satisfied, the Default Category for the supplier is used.
When you make a change to the Default or Custom Mapping Rules, the system generates a batch process that will work through all of the expenditure transactions for the supplier and reclassify their spend. It will use a Custom Rule if the condition is satisfied, otherwise it will assign the Default Category. This may take a few minutes to process.
Depending on how your spend was originally classified, it may be possible that some expenditure transactions have been given a Category using Tier 1, i.e. at source rather than using a Rule. As soon as you modify any Rule, any such classifications will be overridden by the Default and Custom Mapping Rules.
Setting the Supplier Default Rule
To set the Default Spend Classification Category either click Edit from the Supplier Detail Page, or hover over the field and double-click the Pencil icon to use ‘in-line editing’. The Category needs to match one of the recognised ProClass categories loaded into the system. Click on the Picker icon to open the Category Lookup dialog box. In the Category Lookup, type ‘*paper’, for example, to find a category containing the word ‘paper’. Type ‘works’ to find categories beginning with the word ‘works’. It is not possible to retrieve a list of all categories using the Category Lookup. A full list of Categories can be accessed via the Categories Tab.
Modifying Supplier Custom Rules
To create or modify supplier custom rules, you will require access to the ProSpend SRM with an Enhanced User licence type (or above)
Supplier Custom Rules can be used to classify a single supplier’s spend based on a scenario such as:
WHERE ‘Detail Code Description’ CONTAINS ‘print cartridge’ MAP TO CATEGORY ‘ICT > Consumables’
To add a Custom Spend Classification Rule, click New Custom Mapping Rule from a Supplier Detail Page.
1 The Mapping Rules Sequence can just be set to 1 unless you have multiple rules and wish to prioritise the order in which they occur, in which case use 1, 2, 3, etc. The Rule with Priority of 1 will be considered first, etc.
2 Rules can be based on any of the text-based fields in the Field drop-down list, and this list can be configured by Atamis Support to use other fields including any Flexi fields you may have had configured.
3 Select Evaluator and a textual value to complete the criteria for the Custom Rule. Tip: To create a rule where a field must Contain both ‘car’ AND ‘rent, enter ‘car%rent’ in the Value. To create an ‘OR’ condition you just add multiple rules. Then select the Map to Category to specify the effect of this rule. Categories can be searched in the same manner as described in the Setting the Supplier Default Rule section.
4 Enter up to 3 criteria using Field, Evaluator and Value as described in Supplier Custom Mapping Rules above. The Field lists can be configured by Atamis Support to use other fields including any Flexi fields you may have had configured.
5 Optionally enter a date range that the Rule applies to and click Save.
Classifying Unmapped Suppliers
If you have requested the Atamis Spend Classification Service, Atamis will typically aim to classify 97% of your spend by value to a high level of accuracy. If you wish to, you can increase the proportion of spend that is classified by using the Spend Re-Classification Dashboard (accessible from a link on the Home Page).
The 20 suppliers with the highest value of ‘Unmapped’ spend in the Last 4 Quarters and in the Previous FY are displayed in the tables. Simply click on a supplier to access its detail page to set the Default/Custom Mapping Rules as explained above. If you have worked through all 20, click Refresh and, once the system has finished reclassifying spend, the next 20 suppliers will be displayed.
The Classification Analysis chart displays the proportion of spend which has been classified by each Tier of classification rules.
The Validate Spend Classification section allows you to verify the classifications used in the system. To use this, click Review Supplier Spend Categories. This will display a report showing your largest suppliers, and all Categories which their spend is currently classified to.
The Detail Codes – Unclassified Spend table shows a list of Detail Code Descriptions with the largest sum of unclassified spend. These Detail Codes are a good place to start when creating new System Mapping Rules.
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