Describing and Maintaining Master Data

The business partner represents a natural or legal person with whom business relationships can be conducted.

The business partner contains general data (name, addresses, bank details) and role-specific data depending on the business context. The role MKK Contract Partner is required for contract accounting and invoicing but contains no control data.

The business partner could have several contract accounts for different relationships.

The contract account represents the object to which both the invoicing documents and the contract accounting documents are posted.

The contract account contains – in the contrary to the business partner – important control data for contract accounting and invoicing processes.

The contract account can have several provider contracts.

The provider contract comprises all legally binding agreements of the business partner.

The business partner represents a person or an organization or a group for which you have to process receivables and payments.

The business partner must exist in the role MKK Contract Partner to be usable in contract accounting and invoicing.

The business partner category is a fixed value from SAP to classify a person (B2C) or an organization (B2B).

The business partner category must be selected when a business partner is created and cannot be changed afterwards.

The business partner category determines the available fields for data entry such as the legal form of an organization or the academic title of a person.

The business partner can have different addresses for different types such as delivery or correspondence address.

The business partner role corresponds to a business context in which a business partner can appear. The relevant roles for contract accounting and invoicing are shown in the next figure.

Depending on business requirements, different roles can be assigned to the business partner.

• The role 000000 General is a fixed role and contains central and therefore cross-role data such as name, addresses, and bank details.
• The role MKK Contract Partner is always required because Finance Contract Accounting (FI-CA) is the mandatory subledger for Convergent Invoicing (CI).
• The role FLCU00 Debitor is additionally required, but only if postings to the Finance Accounting Receivables (FI-AR) subledger are to be made. In this role, you have to specify the FI-AR reconciliation receivables account and the payment terms for all relevant company codes.
• The role FLCU01 Customer is additionally required, but only if you want to process and invoice sales orders in Sales Distribution (SD). In this role, you have to specify control data for sales order processing for all relevant sales areas.

The contract account manages financial data and postings for long-term relationships with a business partner.

The contract account must be assigned to a business partner in the role MKK Contract Partner, before a document can be posted.

The contract account has important control data for contract accounting and invoicing processes.

The contract account category defines the external or internal number range and controls, whether it is a normal account, a collective bill account or a one-time account.

The payment term determines the due date and the cash discount deadline.

The account determination ID is used for determining general ledger accounts together with other account determination criteria such as company code, division, main transaction and sub transaction.

The clearing category controls payment allocation and the clearing of receivables.

The tolerance group defines limits for payment differences in the incoming payment.

The interest key determines the conditions for interest calculation.

The dunning procedure determines the dunning levels and dunning activities.

The invoicing category controls together with invoicing process the invoicing functions.

The billing cycle synchronizes monthly fees with usage according to billing periods. It can be used in scheduling as well to specify the billing date and the invoicing date.

The individual discount key controls the calculation of individual discounts in the invoice.

The company code group includes all company codes that can be used to post to a contract account. The company codes of different company code groups can overlap.

Exactly one paying company code is always assigned to each company code group. A paying company code is responsible for payment transactions. You have to define house banks and payment methods for paying company codes. Several company code groups can have the same paying company code. The paying company code does not have to be in the company code group itself. You can also specify the paying company code in a business partner item. In this case, the specified code overrides the paying company code determined via the company code group of the contract account.

The standard company code is used for all postings for which no company code can be determined by other means (payment on account).

The provider contract supports the process of Consumption Item (CIT) creation in Convergent Invoicing (CI).

The provider contract comprises all legally binding agreements regarding the provision and billing of services that are entered by a customer and a company for a specified period of time.

The provider contract relates to exactly one business partner.

The header of the provider contract stores the following data:

• business partner
• validity period
• authorization group
• company code for authorization checks

The items of the provider contract store the following data:

• contract account
• product ID
• standard account assignments (company code, profit center, segment)
• additional account assignments