Authorized Partners 

Use

You can authorize several sold-to parties to release products against a contract. This means that not only the sold-to party who originally instigates the contract but any related sold-to parties may receive the products or services at the terms and conditions agreed upon in the contract.

Authorized partners are determined as follows:

·        You can create a list of individual authorized sold-to parties in the contract. When you create a sales order for one of these parties, the system finds the relevant contract(s).

·        You enter one or more group hierarchies in the contract. When you create a sales order for one of the business partners in the hierarchy, the system finds the relevant contract(s).

·        You enter a business partner who is contained in a group hierarchy. The system automatically finds the hierarchy and authorizes all other business partners below this business partner in the hierarchy to place release orders. Note that you cannot enter a hierarchy node manually.

·        Use a combination of the above

Integration

The Authorized Partners function is integrated in sales contracts. It is based on the Authorized Sold-to Party partner function and uses partner determination to calculate which sold-to parties are relevant.

Prerequisites

If you wish to use group hierarchies other than pricing hierarchies to determine authorized partners, you must have created a hierarchy category and a hierarchy:

1. To create the hierarchy category, go to Customizing for CRM under Master Data  ® Business Partner  ®  Business Partner Group Hierarchy.
2. To create the group hierarchy, go to the SAP Easy Access Menu and choose Master Data   ® Business Partners  ® Maintain Group Hierarchy.

Note that you can only create group hierarchies in the SAP GUI and not in the People-Centric user interface.

 

You must have activated the necessary settings for the sales contract and the release order in the IMG for CRM. For more information, see Transactions  ® Settings for Contracts  ®Define Settings for Authorized Partners.

Activities

When you create a contract, you enter any additional authorized sold-to parties in the Partners tab page.

When you create a sales order, the system checks whether a contract exists for the combination of product and partner you have entered in the order. When it checks the partners, it determines whether the sold-to party is one of the following (according to the settings you made in Customizing):

·        Main sold-to party

·        An authorized sold-to party

·        A business partner in a group hierarchy that has been entered as an authorized sold-to party 

Example

The main sales office of company ABC Inc. closes a contract with their supplier which is valid for all the company’s branches across the country. Each of these branches is also a sold-to party and is authorized to order products against the contract. When a business partner from branch B2 makes an order,  the system checks that this sold-to party is an authorized partner from the contract.