Procurement Category Hierarchy Levels used in approval conditions

This attribute is based on Procurement Category Hierarchy (Set up & Maintenance > Manage Procurement Category Hierarchy).

Procurement Category Hierarchy Level 1 - Value of 1st level below the root node of the Procurement Category Hierarchy that the item category rolls up to.

Procurement Category Hierarchy Level 2 - Value of 2nd level below the root node of the Procurement Category Hierarchy that the item category rolls up to.

So given a category hierarchy like belw :

Root Category
Office technology (level 1)
Desktop (level 2)
Printer (level 2)

Procurement Category Hierarchy Level 1 would return "Office technology".
Procurement Category Hierarchy Level 2 would return " Desktop" and "Printer"


In addition to above points -

Customer may want to define hierarchies differently. The Catalog Category Hierarchy are essentially browsing/navigation categories, meant for browsing through the catalog for the purpose of shopping. You may want to have more groups of categories so the search does not return too many items while browsing.

The Procurement Category hierarchy allows users to define approvals and accounting rules, and BI reports based on top level category.You may not want to group your categories in the same way you would do for shopping/browsing. You may want less groups so your rules would apply to a broader range; and you probably want rules only for a certain segment of your categories and not for all, etc.

For example:

Top level --> Office Supplies
Item Category 1 --> Pens and Pencils
Item Category 2 --> Notebooks
Item Category 3 --> Printer Paper

Users can create an approval rule for top level category Office Supplies. The rule will apply to all requisition lines with any of the 3 item categories above. Otherwise, the user would have to list all these categories. The same for accounting rules and BI reports.
This solution is not just for SSP. It is also for PO, Supplier Management, and Sourcing.