Using Contact Persons 

Use

When you are processing dispute cases, you may need to contact a contact person at the business partner. In correspondence, the contact person is the correspondence recipient.

Integration

You can also use the contact person defined in Accounting for a customer. In addition to the contact person data stored in the dispute case as attribute, you also store a key (FIN_CONTACT_KEY) as an attribute to the dispute case. Using this contact person key, the system can access the contact person data in Accounting during the creation of correspondence. If you change the contact person data locally in the dispute case, this key is deleted. In this case, the changed attribute values of the contact person fields from the dispute case are used to create correspondence.

The user recognizes whether the contact person key exists, and therefore the contact person data in the dispute case and in Accounting agree, from whether or not the contact person fields in the dispute case are modifiable:

·        Contact person key exists: Fields not ready for input, data synchronized with FI-AR

·        Contact person key does not exist: Fields ready for input, data changed locally in the dispute case

If the contact person key exists, the communication channel (e-mail, fax, letter) defined in FI-AR is used in the creation of correspondence. For letters (communication type LET), the following order applies:

...

       1.      Business address of contact person is used, provided one exists

       2.      Customer’s address is used, with the suffix “For the attention of <Title and name of contact person>”.

If the contact person key does not exist, the current attribute values of the contact person fields (FIN_CONTACT*) in the dispute case are used. The following order applies for the communication channel:

...

       1.      e-mail

       2.      Fax: The fax number and the country of the fax number of the fax address must exist

       3.      Letter: If both addresses are unknown or incomplete, a letter is created and sent to the customer’s address.

The correspondence is created in the language of the contact partner address.

Prerequisites

To display or change the data of a contact person directly in the dispute case, you must have entered the relevant fields (FIN_CONTACT*) as case attributes in Customizing for SAP Dispute Management under Dispute Case Processing ® Attribute Profile ® Create Attribute Profile.

Features

The dispute case processing provides the following options for the contact person:

·        Change Contact Persons

This function is active in change mode if the contact person key exists. This is the case if a contact person was retrieved from FI-AR (for example, during the creation of a dispute case or via the function Get Contact Person). The contact person fields are not ready for input until you execute the function; when the function is triggered they are modifiable. The contact person key is deleted.

·        Get Contact Persons

All contact persons for the customer appear in a dialog box. From this dialog box you can find contact persons, call up the detail data of the contact person, and create new contact persons.

If you create or change the dispute case in dispute case processing and access the dialog box Contact Person, by selecting a contact person, you can transfer the name, telephone number, fax number, country of the fax number, and e-mail address of this contact person into the dispute case. The contact person key is created. After the transfer from FI-AR, the contact person fields are no longer ready for input. You can only change the data via Change Contact Persons.

·        List Contact Persons

All contact persons at the business partner appear in a dialog box. From this dialog box you can find contact persons, call up the detail data of the contact person, and create new contact persons.

You cannot transfer the contact person data using this function. To do this, choose Get Contact Persons.

From SAP R/3 Enterprise 4.70, when you create a dispute case in accounting, in the dialog box where you enter the attributes of the dispute case, you can also enter contact person data. To do this you can use the functions Get Contact Persons and Change Contact Persons.