Customer/Vendor Integration

Purpose

Customer/Vendor Integration for the business partner may be required if you want to use Financial Accounting (FI) and SAP Business Partner in parallel.

In Financial Accounting (FI) for company external accounting, accounts receivable and accounts payable accounting is used as part of the Accounts Receivable (AR) and Accounts Payable (AP) subledgers to manage accounting data for all customers and vendors. Financial Accounting does not rely on the SAP Business Partner to manage the business partners, but uses its own customer/vendor master records, which are integrated in all accounting transactions, such as creating business transactions on accounts and processing posting data.

Many SAP customers have been using Financial Accounting for a long time and are now increasingly using other applications, such as Loans Management (FS-CML) or SAP Treasury and Risk Management (TRM) , which use the SAP Business Partner to manage business partners. These customers require business partners that are managed as customers/vendors in Financial Accounting and as business partners in other applications, to exist synchronously.

Business partner Adams is one of your company’s customers. In the business partner he is managed under the number 4556 , and in the customer master record under number 7894 . If certain data, such as his address or bank details, changes, this data should be changed in both business partner management systems.

You can use customer and vendor integration independent of each other. There are applications that use only customer integration, and others that also require vendor integration. Customer/vendor integration is intended as a one system/one client solution.

Prerequisites

  • You have matched Customizing for the SAP Business Partner to Customizing for the customer/vendor accounts. In particular you have matched the required entry fields. You have to set all fields that are required entry fields in the customer/vendor account as required entry fields in the field selection control for your customer/vendor business partner roles.

    You can access the field selection control for the SAP Business Partner from Customizing for Cross-Application Components by choosing SAP Business Partner -> Business Partner -> Basic Settings -> Field Groupings -> Configure Field Attributes per BP Role .

    You can access the screen selection control for customer/vendor accounts from Customizing by choosing Start of the navigation path Financial Accounting (New) Next navigation step Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable. End of the navigation path

    You make settings for customer integration by choosing Start of the navigation path Customer Accounts Next navigation step Master Data Next navigation step Preparations for Creating Customer Master Data End of the navigation path

    • Define Account Groups with Screen Layout (Customers)

    • Define Screen Layout per Company Code (Customers)

    • Define Screen Layout per Activity (Customers)

      If you also require vendor integration, you make settings for vendor integration by choosing:

      Start of the navigation path Vendor Accounts Next navigation step Master Data Next navigation step Preparations for Creating Vendor Master Data End of the navigation path

    • Define Account Groups with Screen Layout (Vendors)

    • Define Screen Layout per Company Code (Vendors)

    • Define Screen Layout per Activity (Vendors)

  • To make settings for Master Data Synchronization, you have executed the IMG activities relevant for your processes in Customizing for Start of the navigation path Cross-Application Components by choosing Master Data Synchronization Next navigation step Sychronization Control. End of the navigation path

    For more information, see the documentation for the IMG activities.

  • To make settings for Customer/Vendor Integration, you have made settings for all required IMG activities in Customizing for Cross-Application Components by choosing Start of the navigation path Master Data Synchronization Next navigation step Customer/Vendor Integration. End of the navigation path

    For more information, see the documentation for the IMG activities.

Process flow

Customer/Vendor Integration is bidirectional. You can both process customer/vendor master records from business partner maintenance as well as populate data from customer/vendor processing to the business partner.

You can assign only one customer/vendor to a business partner and vice versa (1:1 assignment). You can assign one customer and one vendor to a business partner simultaneously in a corresponding business partner role.

Customer/Vendor Integration involves the following process phases:

  1. You process the business partner or customer/vendor.

    The system conducts an authorization check.

    If you make changes to a business partner or a customer/vendor for whom assignments already exist, then the system locks both the object in question and the object that it is linked to for other users until you save the objects.

  2. Customer/Vendor Integration takes place in the background whilst the system processes master data. When you post the business partner the system posts all required fields in the customer/vendor in accordance with the information in the business partner, and when you post the customer/vendor, the system posts all required fields in the business partner. Technically speaking when you update the business partner, the system updates the corresponding customer/vendor at the same time and vice versa. You store a number of the assignments required for this in Customizing.

    The customer/vendor master record is linked to the business partner in accordance with the settings made for synchronization control and Customer/Vendor Integration in Customizing.

    You can generate a customer/vendor during business partner processing only if you have selected a customer business partner role category for which this is possible. If a customer/vendor master record is assigned to the business partner, then the system updates the customer/vendor data in the business partner at the same time, irrespective of role.

    Note the following limitation when processing in the direction from customer/vendor master record to business partner:

    If you change a master record in customer/vendor processing, then the system deletes the first name in the assigned business partner of the category Person . The system then writes both the first and last name of the customer to the last name field for the business partner.

For more information about synchronization directions with corresponding processing scenarios, see Synchronization Directions with Processing Scenarios .

Result

When processing the business partner you have also updated the relevant data for the customer/vendor master record and vice versa.

You can remove an existing link between a business partner and a customer/vendor only as part of the archiving process.