As a long-term SAP user, you want to gain an overview of the master data used in the purchase to pay process. Therefore, you need to understand the new business partner from the perspective of a vendor.
The business partner category determines which fields are available for data entry. Assignment of the business partner category is static and cannot be changed once the business partner has been created.
Business Partner and Assigned Roles
The Business Partner (BP) is created and the roles necessary for the usage of the BP are assigned. The different roles are created on certain organizational levels. The FI Vendor role, which is necessary to use the BP in financial accounting (FI) based purchase postings, is assigned to the company code, which means that the data in this role can be maintained in each company code different. Note that vendor is also called supplier.
You can assign a different vendor number and customer number to your BP inside the BP maintenance transaction.