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Customer Hierarchy

Customer hierarchies represent complex customer structures in the system and are used for the organizational structures of buying groups or chains of retail outlets, for example.

A customer hierarchy consists of individual hierarchy nodes which are allocated hierarchically to each other on different levels to produce lower-level and higher-level nodes. The structure of the customer hierarchy can be kept flexible and and adapt to change at any time by means of the option to move hierarchy nodes dynamically.

The customer hierarchy function in the R/3 system is carried out using the partner concept. The individual nodes are defined as partners and linked to a higher level partner.

During sales order and billing processing, customer hierarchies are used in pricing to take into account every aspect relevant to pricing and rebates for customers with a complex group and association structure in particular.

For example, if a sales order is edited for a customer who is allocated to a customer hierarchy relevant for pricing, the relevant hierarchy path, which displays the chain of hierarchy nodes to which the initial hierarchy node is related, is determined automatically. If condition records exist for a higher-level node, pricing is carried out with reference to the conditions available there.

The hierarchy nodes of a customer hierarchy are created as customer master records with account group (0012 ). The structure of the hierarchy results from allocating the hierarchy node master records. It is also possible to create customers with different account groups as hierarchy nodes (for example, 0001 for the sold-to party).

If you want to make your own settings for customer hierarchies, you must edit the following points: