By assigning sales organizations and plants you create a link between company codes and sales organizations. A plant, though always linked to one company code, can be assigned to different sales organizations. Within a company code several sales organizations can be active. Business transactions can also be carried out between different company codes (for example, during inter-company sales processing).

The following figure displays possible assignments of company codes, sales organizations and plants.

Plants 1, 2 and 3 belong to company code 1. Sales organization 1 uses plants 1 and 2. Sales organization 2 uses plants 2 and 3. Sales organizations 1 and 2 can make cross-company sales for goods from plants 4 or 5.