Imagine your business partner is a company with a branch that receives goods and a branch that's billed for these goods. In this case, you might have to maintain multiple addresses for the same business partner, a ship-to and a bill-to address.
How are multiple addresses handled in SAP S/4HANA Sales? As the standard customer master data model in Sales and Distribution can only store a single customer address per customer master record, it would be necessary that you create an additional customer master record for each additional address beyond the standard address of the initial customer master record. A legal entity with N addresses is then maintained as N parallel customer master records assigned to the same number of BP records (forming respective 1:1 relationships). This creation of additional customer master records to represent additional addresses leads to data redundancies, because the same legal entity is often represented in the system multiple times, once for each physical address.
The SAP Business Partner model allows you to maintain multiple addresses per business partner per default. It can provide multiple addresses with time-dependent validity and address-dependent data per business partner (BP) master record. In order to use this functionality you have to activate two business functions in the provided order to be able to maintain address-dependent data:
- Multiple Address Handling for Customer Master Data in Business Partner (BPCUSTOMER_MULTIPLE_ADDRESSES)
- Multiple Address Handling for Business Partners in Sales and Distribution (Q2C_MULTIPLE_BP_ADDRESSES).
For more information about activating these business functions, see the Configuration Guide in SAP Note 3067314
When multiple address handling is active, a customer as a legal entity can typically be represented by a single customer number. All addresses of a customer, along with related address-dependent and address-independent data, are then available to the consuming applications under this single customer number.
During the creation and processing of sales documents (for example, sales orders or outbound deliveries), data that was previously derived from different customer master records (representing different addresses of the same customer) can now be derived from address-dependent and address-independent fields of a single BP master record and its assigned customer master record.
As part of partner determination, the system performs address determination when a partner is added or changed in a sales and distribution (SD) document. It is based on your address determination configuration in Customizing and address settings in the business partner (BP) master record.
The address determination for partner function controls from which address usage the system starts the address determination for partner functions in sales and distribution (SD) documents.
The configuration takes effect on the partner determination procedure level and is valid for a particular partner object (for example, sales document header).
You can configure this field for partner functions of partner type, Customer (KU), except for the partner function Payer. Example partner functions include sold-to party, ship-to party, and bill-to party.
Address determination is performed when you create an SD document, or add or change a partner in the document. Based on the configuration and address validities in the BP master, the system determines addresses valid between the current system date and Dec 31, 9999 for related partner functions, and proposes the addresses in SD documents.
The addresses are determined from the target address usage, from the address overview, or from both places in the BP master. The following describes the determination sequence:
- Valid addresses determined from the address usage
- Valid addresses determined from the address overview, if no address can be determined from step 1 or the addresses determined in step 1 don't fully cover the time interval between the current system date and Dec 31, 9999
Note
To look up mappings between the address determination attribute and address usage (for example, the address determination attribute "BBP 003 send goods" is mapped to "delivery address" usage in BP master), check the Assign Transaction to Address Type activity in Customizing under Cross-Application Components → → SAP Business Partner → Business Partner → Address DeterminationThe addresses maintained on the address overview tab in the BP master serve as the source of addresses that can be determined. The tab contains two areas (address overview and address usage). You can assign an address that already exists in the address overview area (containing general addresses) to a particular usage (for example, delivery address) in the address usage area. You can also specify a validity period for each address.
You can configure address determination on two levels:
| Level of Configuration | Address Determination Attribute | Impact |
|---|---|---|
| Partner determination procedure level | Address Determination field All Addresses Allowed field | Effective for a particular partner object, for example, sales document header |
| Generic partner function level | Address Determination field | Effective for all partner objects, that is, all types of SD documents |
During address determination, the system processes the three attributes in a descending order of priority (top to bottom). If the field of a higher priority is configured, the system ignores fields of lower priorities. If all three fields are left blank/empty, the system determines addresses from the address overview (containing general addresses) in BP master, and this determination applies to all types of SD documents.
The following figure shows an example of a customer master record that holds several addresses of the company QuantumChips California at a time. The sales documents can consume multiple addresses per customer number but only one per partner function.
In this example, the multi-address handling works as follows:
In the partner determination procedure for sales orders, you can set the address determination field to "BBP003 Send goods" (mapped to the BP's delivery address) for the ship-to party.
When you create a sales order in which the BP functions as a ship-to party, the system determines addresses valid between the current system date and Dec 31, 9999 for the ship-to party, and proposes the addresses in the sales order.
During the creation of new sales documents and new outbound deliveries without order reference, the system prompts you to select the relevant address of a BP (assuming that multiple addresses have been maintained for that BP).
The header partner and item partner tabs in multiple apps for creating and changing sales documents have been enhanced with an address selection button. The button allows you to select an address (for relevant partner functions) from the list of valid addresses maintained in the BP's master data, or to change the proposed partner addresses for new or existing sales documents.
If you edit an address manually, the system saves this new address as a document-specific address of the respective partner function (at header or item level). In this case, the previous address derived from the BP master data is not lost, but saved instead as the BP reference address of the respective partner function.