Business partners (BP) are legal or natural persons with whom you have a business relationship. Customers and suppliers (vendors) are business partners with whom you have a relationship involving the transfer of goods and services.
The SAP Business Partner is the leading entity for creating vendor and customer master data, which also extends to the retail site maintenance. It is possible to create both the customer and vendor roles for one business partner. There are further advantages of the business partner concept, for example it provides additional features such as the business partner address data handling, which allows multiple addresses with time-dependency and usages. However, the relevant vendor and customer master data are maintained in the background when creating a new business partner.
From a technical perspective, the account group is needed for specific tasks, such as controlling partner functions for purchasing or sales documents.
To link the vendor and customer master with the business partner object, the related settings have to be maintained in customizing.
When a business partner is created, the Business Partner Category must be selected. The business partner category is the term used to classify a business partner as one of the following:
- A natural person
- A group
- An organization
A natural person is for example a private individual, like a consumer. Therefore, you can define name components like academic titles, name affixes or prefixes, and name formatting rules, as well as marital status and occupations in customizing. They can then be used when creating a BP for a natural person.
A group represents for example a shared living arrangement, a community of heirs, or a married couple. Therefore, you can define group types in customizing, such as family, married couple, and so on.
An organization represents a legal entity, or a part of a legal entity, such as a company, a department of a company, or an association. "Organization" is an umbrella term used to map every kind of situation in day-to-day business activities. Vendors and customers are created as organizations. In customizing, you can define industry systems and industries, legal forms, andlegal entities for assignment to business partners of the organization category.
The business partner category determines which specific, additional fields are available for data entry.
The commercial business partners (vendors and customers) in our system are organizations.
Note
The figure, Maintain SAP Business Partner: Vendor, shows where the three BP elements appear in the application (transaction: BP) when creating a new business partner. In the application toolbar, you select the BP Category, and underneath, you find the fields for selecting the BP role and grouping.
Business partners can be maintained with the transaction BP.
The BP transaction is the single point of entry to create, edit, and display master data for any kind of business partners including vendors, and customers. However, it is possible to use alternative business partner application transactions delivered by SAP, for example BUP1, BUP2, BUP3, or create own entries in customizing. These transactions allow you to establish the context with which you start business partner maintenance, depending on the required activity and the assigned business partner roles.
When creating a new business partner, you maintain one BP role at a time. Additional roles are then defined in change mode.
The business partner role corresponds to a business context in which a business partner can appear.
Customizing Settings for Business Partners
This is the relevant customizing area for setting up business partners in an SAP S/4HANA system.
Additionally, the account groups are relevant. They are maintained in the IMG as follows:→Logistics — General→Business Partner→Suppliers→Control→Define Account Groups and Field Selection for Customers. Additional, specific FI-related settings can be made under IMG:→Financial Accounting→Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable→Supplier Accounts→Master Data→Preparations for Creating Supplier Master Data→Define Account Groups with Screen Layout (Vendors), or …→Customer Accounts→Master Data→Preparations for Creating Customer Master Data → Define Account Groups with Screen Layout (Customers).
Furthermore, it is necessary to maintain the Customer/Vendor Integration to connect the objects accordingly.
Note: A Customer/Vendor Integration Customizing Check Report is available: Transaction Code - CVI_FS_CHECK_CUST, Report - CVI_FS_CHECK_CUSTOMIZING. The report is provided in SAP Note: 1623677 - BP_CVI: Check report for checking CVI Customizing. The report checks the customizing in both directions: Customer/Vendor to BP, and BP to Customer/Vendor.
Vendor Master Data
The data in the vendor master record is subdivided into three areas:
- General Business Partner (BP Role 000000): This includes the address, additional addresses and bank details of the creditor. The data is valid client-wide.
- CVI: FI Vendor (BP Role FLVN00) covers the Accounting data: This includes, for example, the number of the reconciliation account and the payment methods for the automatic payment transactions. Financial accounting data is entered at the company code level.
- CVI: Vendor (BP Role FLVN01) covers the Purchasing Data: This includes the purchase order currency, incoterms, and various control data of the vendor. This data is maintained for the relevant purchasing organization(s). You can also enter alternative data that is only valid for specific sites or for vendor sub-ranges.
A vendor master record may be blocked, if, for example, the quality of the products delivered by the vendor does not meet quality standards. You can block a vendor from providing a particular product in the source list.
To create a business partner for a vendor, the roles vendor and FI vendor have to be created. This ensures that the relevant master data for the various vendor —related processes can be maintained, and that the business partner can then be used for the relevant functions. * The general role 000000 General Business Partner is the default dialog view for maintaining general data such as name, address, and language, and is available automatically. Therefore, this BP role cannot be assigned to a BP role grouping in customizing. It is not explicitly saved in table BUT100 — BP: Roles, which shows the BP roles created for a business partner, but the general data is saved in corresponding BP tables.
For the number assignment, you have to consider that both the business partner, and the vendor master (vendor: general data) require a number assignment. For the business partner, the number range (internal or external) of the BP Grouping is used. For the vendor master, the number range (internal or external) of the vendor account group is used, which is assigned to the relevant BP role. Thus, it is possible that the business partner and the vendor master numbers are different. However, you can determine in the Customer/Vendor Integration customizing, that the same number should be used for both objects. The prerequisite is that external number ranges are used, and that they overlap.
These are vendor-related entries, which you can maintain for every purchasing organization in your client. It concerns data that is important for purchasing, such as purchasing data, which for example includes control data for purchasing and invoice verification processes, as well as parameter settings for condition maintenance, and partner functions.
In addition to maintaining the data that is valid for the entire purchasing organization, you can also maintain data for a specific site and/or vendor sub-range in the purchasing data and partner functions views. This may include, for example, terms of payment or Incoterms that differ from the terms of payment or Incoterms in the purchasing organization. You can create this alternative data for the vendor at the following data retention levels:
Vendor sub-range (VSR)
Site
Vendor sub-range/site
The data retention level from which the system defaults data, for example, in a purchase order, is determined in the following sequence:
Vendor sub-range/site/purchasing organization
Vendor sub-range/purchasing organization
Site/purchasing organization level
Purchasing organization
Vendor sub-ranges are specified by vendors. Reasons for creating sub-ranges include, for example:
Different conditions
Different addresses
Different control data for requirements planning and purchase orders
In the vendor master resp. role BP Role FLNV01, the purchasing data and partner functions can be created separately for each sub-range.
The link between vendor and article is created using the purchasing info record. Maintaining the purchasing view of a Retail article master automatically creates and maintains the purchasing info record. Among other things, information is created about conditions, terms of delivery and payment agreements. Purchasing info records can provide default values when the purchase order is being created.
An article is assigned to a sub-range in the purchasing view of the article (purchasing info record). A sorting number can also be assigned, to sort the articles in a purchase order in the sequence the vendor expects.
In the vendor master purchasing data resp. BP Role FLNV01, you can choose which supply regions a vendor supplies.
Each site can be assigned to one supply region.
The system checks the supply regions of the vendor master when a purchase order is created for a site that is assigned to a supply region. If the vendor is not responsible for that particular region, the system issues a warning message.
If supply regions have been created in the vendor master, the information is taken into account in automatic supply source determination in purchasing.
Partner Functions
For certain operational functions, you can use partner functions to create a link between the vendor and other credit-side master records. The corresponding partner functions must be defined in these master records.
The partner functions created in the vendor master resp. BP Role FLVN01 can be defaulted and used in purchase orders and contracts.
Vendor Master Records:
Only one vendor master record is required if a vendor is also the order recipient, goods supplier, vendor, invoicing party and payee.
Several vendor master records are required if these functions are distributed to different locations or companies. They are linked to each other by partner functions.
You can enter a contact person for each partner function.
Partner functions allow you to assign different locations or companies to a vendor master record.
Partner functions refer to different functions that a particular vendor may have in the business relationship with you.
The related partner schemas and their assignment to the account group are defined in customizing )IMG:→Materials Management→Purchasing→Partner Determination→PartnerSettings in Supplier Master Record→Define Partner Schemas in Supplier Master Record, and: …→Assign Partner Schemas to Account Groups)
The account group is the central control element for creating vendor master records.
The account group determines:
The data fields in the master record that are either suppressed or displayed, and are either required entry or optional entry fields
The number range for the vendor master records
Further control elements, for example the partner determination procedures
There are further control settings for the vendor master which are complementary to the customizing of the account group. In customizing, you can fine tune the field selection in the vendor master (IMG:→Logistics — General→Business Partner→Suppliers→Control→Define Screen Layout Specific to Purchasing Organization, and: …→Define Transaction-Dependent Screen Layout, as well as: IMG:→Financial Accounting→Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable→Supplier Accounts→Master Data→Preparations for Creating Supplier Master Data→Define Screen Layout per Company Code (Vendors))
