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 Maintaining Business Partner Group Hierarchies

Use

You can create, maintain and search for BP group hierarchiesusing various search criteria.

Prerequisites

You have made the necessary settings for the BP group hierarchy in Customizing.

You have created master records for the business partners that you want to use in the hierarchy.

Features

You can do the following in the group hierarchy:

  • Vary the display of the hierarchy tree using the validity period

  • Create nodes with different validity periods

    Example Example

    You have created a hierarchy tree whose nodes are valid from the 1.1.2000 till the 31.12.2003, i.e. there is only one validity period.

    If you insert a node that is valid from the 1.1.2000 till the 31.12.2001, this would result in a division into three periods:

    • Period 1 from the 1.1.2000 till the 31.12.2000

    • Period 2 from the 1.1.2001 till the 31.12.2001

    • Period 3 from the 1.1.2002 till the 31.12.2003

    When you delete this node, there is once again a single validity period for all nodes, from the 1.1.2000 till the 31.12.2003. The three periods are thus once more merged to form a single period.

    End of the example.

  • Assign business partners with a validity period to a node

    Caution Caution

    This validity period can differ from the validity period of the relevant node.

    End of the caution.

  • Reassign nodes

  • Create new assignments of nodes

  • Delete assignments of hierarchy nodes and business partners, or place a time constraint on the assignments of business partners.

    Note Note

    Only the assignment of the node or sub-tree in the hierarchy is deleted, and not the node or sub-tree itself.

    End of the note.

    Recommendation Recommendation

    Assignments of BPs to nodes should not be deleted, but rather restricted to a period up to the current date. You can make use of this history in applications, for example, that use the group hierarchy.

    End of the recommendation.

  • Create the description of the hierarchy tree or of a hierarchy node in various languages

Activities

  • You use the locatorto search for hierarchies in the SAP GUI.

    Note Note

    If you want to process a business partner assigned to a hierarchy that you know about, you can use the search for partners in group hierarchies via the input help in the fast entry in the business partner dialog.

    End of the note.

  • You can assign one or more business partners to a node directly from the hit list of the locator.

    Procedure documentation 

    To do this, select the relevant business partner and move it, using Drag and Drop, into the hierarchy structure in the upper screen area of the work area, or into the list of assigned business partners in the lower screen area.

    It is possible to move the business partner into the list only if the business partner has already been assigned.

    Note Note

    A business partner can be assigned only if it is not being processed and is not already assigned to a hierarchy node in a hierarchy tree of the type “pricing”. Otherwise, an error message is issued. The relevant business partner appears marked in red in the hit list.

    End of the note.