Processing the Customer/Vendor from the Business Partner

Use

You can use this function to process and update a customer/vendor master record for Financial Accounting (FI) from the business partner.

The choice of role in which the business partner is maintained determines whether a customer/vendor master record can be processed from the business partner and how this integration is to take place. The BP role selected must be a customer business partner role or a vendor business partner role .

The business partner role selected determines whether customer/vendor integration takes place automatically or whether it is optional.

Integration

For general information about Customer/Vendor Integration and information about the necessary prerequisites, see Master Data Synchronization and Customer/Vendor Integration .

Activities

You are in change mode on the Maintain Business Partner screen and process a business partner that has been created or changed.

Automatic customer/vendor processing

You choose a customer/vendor business partner role for your business partner, and enter the relevant data for this business partner role.

There are two possible cases:

  • A customer/vendor master record is already assigned to the business partner

    When you save the changes to the business partner, the assigned customer/vendor master record is automatically supplied with the relevant new or changed data and saved.

  • A customer/vendor master record has not yet been assigned to the business partner

    When you save the business partner being processed, the system automatically creates and saves a new customer/vendor master record from the business partner.

    You can create the customer/vendor master record with internal and external number assignment . If you create both the business partner and the customer/vendor from scratch then the following combinations are possible with regard to number assignment for the customer/vendor:

    Number assignment for processing direction BP to customer/vendor

    The customer/vendor number to be created is displayed under General Data on the Customer: General Data or Vendor: General Data tab page and also in company code-dependent data under Company Code .

Optional customer/vendor processing

You choose an optional customer/vendor business partner role for your business partner, and enter the relevant business partner data (and customer/vendor master record) for this business partner role.

There are two possible cases:

  • A customer/vendor master record is already assigned to the business partner

    When you save the changes to the business partner, the assigned customer/vendor master record is automatically supplied with the relevant new or changed data and saved.

  • A customer/vendor master record has not yet been assigned to the business partner

To create a new customer/vendor master record for the business partner, choose the Customer: General Data or Vendor: General Data tab page in General Data for the business partner and set the Create Customer or Create Vendor indicator in the FI Customer Assignment or FI Vendor Assignment section.

After you have set the indicator, the way in which the system continues processing depends on the business partner grouping selected:

Number assignment for processing direction BP to customer/vendor

If you have chosen external number assignment for the customer/vendor master record, then you can enter the customer/vendor number required in the same section under External Customer Number or External Vendor Number .

If you have set external number assignment for the customer/vendor and have not set the Same Number indicator, you can change the assignment of the customer/vendor number only up until you have chosen Save . After you have saved the assignment you can no longer reverse it and the system creates a new customer/vendor master record.

Additional Activities

Which attributes can be processed, depends on which business partner role you have chosen.

According to business partner role, you can process the following attributes in addition to General Data :

  • If you choose Company Code you can process the company code-dependent data for the customer/vendor master record at the same time, after you have entered the corresponding company code .

  • If you choose Sales and Distribution you can process the sales data for the customer master record at the same time, after you have entered the sales organization , distribution channel , and division .

  • If you choose Purchasing you can process the purchasing data for the vendor master record at the same time, after you have entered the purchasing organization .

  • If you choose Relationships you can process business partner relationships , after you have entered the business partner relationship category and an additional business partner.

  • From the visiting hours for a contact person relationship, the system can update only the weekly periodic visiting hours at the same time in the contact person for Financial Accounting .If you set the Limited Dialog for Visiting Hours of the Contact Person Relationship indicator in the IMG activity Define Maintenance Format for Goods Receiving and Visiting Hours in Customizing for the SAP Business Partner , you can determine that you can process only those visiting hours in the business partner that can be updated at the same time as part of customer/vendor integration.