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Object documentation Business Partners  Locate the document in its SAP Library structure

Definition

Business partners are legal or natural persons with whom you have a business relationship.

Example

Customers and vendors are business partners with whom you have a relationship involving the transfer of goods and services.

Use

Business partners have a number of different functions, described as partner functions, in connection with your company. You use partner functions to define the rights and responsibilities of each partner type in a business transaction. When you sell or order goods, for example, your business partners can assume partner functions such as:

Customer Partner Functions

Vendor Partner Functions

Sold-to party

Ordering address

Ship-to party

Goods supplier

Bill-to party

Invoice presented by

Payer

Alternative payee

 

Different business partners may carry out one or more partner functions. For this reason, you can assign individual business partners a number of partner functions.

You manage data on business partners in master records. Data on partner functions is stored in these master records and used in Financial Accounting and Logistics.

Integration

A business partner can be a customer and a vendor at the same time if, for example, your customer also supplies goods to you or if a vendor is also one of your customers. In this case, you must create a customer master record and a vendor master record for the business partner. You can create a link between the two master records by entering the vendor number in the customer master record and the customer number in the vendor master record.