In Unimarket, Organization Units (Org Units) are used to mirror your institution's departmental or hierarchical structure. While they do not dictate how your financial system (ERP) classifies spend, they are essential for managing user permissions, visibility, and reporting within the platform.
Org Units vs. ERP Accounting
It is important to distinguish between administrative grouping and financial coding:
ERP Classification: Spend in your finance system is determined solely by the GL (FOAPAL) accounting string entered during checkout.
Unimarket Allocation: Org Units are used internally to group users so their spend can be reviewed and managed, by the correct department heads.
Key Features Managed by Org Units
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| View (Order) Sharing (optional) | Allows users to see all non-sensitive POs within their Org Unit. Higher-level managers can see orders for all "child" units, under their parent unit. |
| Receiving Sharing (optional) | Allows any user in the Org Unit to perform the "receiving" action on a PO, rather than just the original buyer. |
| Dashboards & Reporting | Spend data in the Procurement Dashboard and Order Exports can be filtered, by Org Unit. For additional information, refer to help article Order Exports. |
| Account Code Restriction | Administrators can limit which GL codes a user sees based on their Org Unit. Ensuring departments only use their designated budgets. |
| Contracts | Org Units can "own" a contract for visibility or be designated as "Purchasing Org Units". To limit who can buy against a specific contract. |
| Shopping Lists | Users can create and share lists of frequently ordered items with others in the same Org Unit. |
User Management Rules
Assignment: Every user must be assigned to at least one Org Unit to track their spend.
Hierarchy Constraint: Users can only be assigned to Child Org Units. The "Top Tier" or root Org Units cannot have individual users assigned directly to them.
Multiple Units: If a user belongs to multiple Org Units, they will be prompted to select the correct one during the checkout process.
Approvals Note: While you can route approvals by Org Unit, Unimarket generally does not recommend this method. As it is less flexible than routing by Account Code.