How Procurement Teams Use Secure Custom Fields

Procurement teams are the gatekeepers of sensitive vendor information: quotes, evaluations, risk scores, rebate terms, and negotiation notes. These details are often tracked and discussed inside Jira as part of vendor selection, onboarding, and contract approval workflows.

But there’s a problem: Jira doesn’t provide field-level visibility control.

That means once someone has access to an issue, they can see everything in it; even if certain fields contain data meant only for Procurement, Legal, or Finance.

Secure Custom Fields for Jira allows procurement teams to maintain confidentiality without needing to split issues, create offline documents, or slow down collaboration.

The Challenge: Protecting confidential vendor information in shared workflows

Procurement often collaborates with engineering, legal, finance, and operations in shared Jira projects. Everyone contributes to the same issue, but not everyone should see:

• Early-stage vendor evaluations
• Internal risk assessments
• Negotiation history
• Rebate details
• Contract value estimates

These are confidential by nature. Exposing them too early, or to the wrong roles, can undermine vendor relationships, affect negotiations, or create governance risks.

Why field-level visibility matters for procurement

Procurement teams are responsible for:

• Ensuring fairness in vendor selection
• Maintaining strict controls over sensitive discussions
• Keeping pricing, assessments, and internal opinions compartmentalized
• Aligning with internal sourcing policies and external compliance requirements

Secure Custom Fields for Jira enables field-level access control inside shared issues; so, Procurement can collaborate securely without losing control of confidential information.

How Procurement Teams use Secure Custom Fields

Step 1: Identify procurement fields that should be restricted

Begin by listing fields in your procurement workflows that contain sensitive or negotiation-critical information.

Examples include:

• Vendor Quote
• Negotiated Terms
• Contract Value
• Preferred Vendor Notes
• Procurement Risk Score
• Discount or Rebate Details
• Internal Sourcing Comments

Ask yourself:

• Could early exposure of this field influence other teams unfairly?
• Who must see this field—and who shouldn’t?

Step 2: Apply role-based visibility rules

With Secure Custom Fields for Jira, you can configure field visibility based on:

• Project roles (e.g., Procurement, Finance, Engineering)
• Groups (e.g., Legal Counsel, Risk Reviewers)
• Individual users

Example visibility configuration:

This ensures engineers can evaluate solutions without seeing sensitive pricing. Legal can review contractual notes when needed. Procurement keeps control.

Step 3: Use secured custom fields to strengthen governance, fairness, and audit readiness

Procurement is often responsible for demonstrating:

• Fair supplier selection
• Internal controls over pricing
• Protection of sensitive commercial data

Secure Custom Fields for Jira helps by:

• Enforcing field-level confidentiality
• Reducing the chance of accidental exposure
• Generating traceable records of field-level access for audits

This keeps your sourcing process transparent, secure, and audit-ready.

💡 Bonus tip

Automate field visibility based on workflow stage
Procurement processes typically include:

• Initial request
• Vendor evaluation
• Quote review
• Approval
• Contract finalization

You can use Jira Automation with Secure Custom Fields for Jira to automatically adjust visibility at each stage.

Here’s a quick video walkthrough on how to set up Jira automation with secure custom fields:

Examples:

• When status = “Awaiting Approval,” reveal Contract Value to Finance
• Once “Vendor Selected,” make Preferred Vendor Notes visible to Legal
• If Procurement Risk Score = High, notify the Risk or Compliance team and limit visibility

These automations are easy to set up, and reduce human error while improving governance.

TLDR

• Procurement teams handle sensitive vendor data that shouldn’t be shared with every project stakeholder
• Secure Custom Fields for Jira helps control field-level access, maintaining vendor confidentiality throughout the sourcing lifecycle
• Teams collaborate in one Jira issue, without the risk of exposing negotiation details or internal evaluations
• Field visibility can shift automatically as workflows progress
• Result: better governance, stronger vendor trust, and simplified audits

Ready to Secure Your Procurement Workflows in Jira?

Secure Custom Fields for Jira helps procurement teams manage vendor evaluations, pricing discussions, and approvals, securely and efficiently.

Start your 30-day free trial

Request a demo