What Is UNSPSC?

The UNSPSC is a four-level taxonomy for classifying products and services, provided by the United Nations Development Programme. The segment is the most general level and the commodity is the most specific. A code has eight digits: two for each level.

• Segment: the logical aggregation of families for analytical purposes.
• Family: a commonly recognized group of inter-related commodity categories.
• Class: a group of commodities sharing a common use or function.
• Commodity: the most specific level, a group of products or services.

Suppliers use the codes to classify the products and services their company sells. Buyers use them too: the United Nations Global Marketplace says its staff classify products and services with UNSPSC when they publish procurement opportunities.

The code set changes over time. GS1 Denmark advises registering both the code and the version in your ERP system, because UNSPSC evolves and new versions keep coming. The same codes work across customers provided their systems use the same version.

Cornell University's procurement office breaks down code 44121706 like this:

• 44000000, segment: Office Equipment and Accessories and Supplies
• 44120000, family: Office Supplies
• 44121700, class: Writing Instruments
• 44121706, commodity: Wooden Pencils

Each level adds two digits to the one above it, so the first two, four and six digits of a commodity code tell you its segment, family and class.

People often ask how UNSPSC relates to other codes. Each answers a different question.

• GTIN: a globally unique identifier for one individual trade item. GS1 Denmark's example: a 500 ml bottle of spring water from one manufacturer has one GTIN, and the same bottle from another manufacturer has a different GTIN, but both sit under the same UNSPSC code, 50202310, Spring or mineral water.
• NAICS: the North American Industry Classification System is the standard US federal statistical agencies use to classify business establishments. It groups establishments into industries by the similarity of the processes they use to produce goods or services.

An office products distributor sells into a large account whose procurement team asks for a UNSPSC code on every catalog item. The distributor stores 44121706 on its wooden pencils. When the buyer's procurement system rolls spend up by class, the pencils count under 44121700, Writing Instruments. Rolled up by family, they count under 44120000, Office Supplies, next to everything else the distributor sells in that family.

One way to store a UNSPSC code on Shopify is a product metafield. Shopify says metafields extend an existing platform data model, such as products, customers and orders, with your own custom data.

• Product metafield: add a metafield definition for products, then add a value to each product or variant.
• Admin filtering: single line text metafields can be activated as a filter on the Products page of the admin.
• Reports: metafields can serve as filters and dimensions in Shopify analytics and reports, so sales can be grouped by a product metafield.

Uncap's guide to punchout catalogs explains that a catalog index inside a buyer's procurement search asks more of you: aligned part numbers, and usually UNSPSC classification codes so your products sort correctly in procurement searches.

• GTIN (Global Trade Item Number)
• UPC
• SKU (stock keeping unit)
• PIM (product information management)
• cXML
• Item master

• O*NET Resource Center (US Department of Labor): UNSPSC Reference
• GS1 Denmark: UNSPSC
• United Nations Global Marketplace: UNSPSC