Setting up Business Partner S/4 HANA

There are redundant object models in the traditional ERP system. Here the vendor master and customer

Master is used. The (mandatory) target approach in S/4HANA is the Business Partner approach.

Business Partner is now capable of centrally managing master data for business partners, customers, and vendors. With current development, BP is the single point of entry to create, edit, and display master data for business partners, customers, and vendors

Business Partner – Customer-Vendor Integration S/4 HANA – Customer/Vendor Object Model Limitations

• Only one single address
• No relation between a vendor and a customer for the same real world entity (no role concept)
• No time-dependency

Business Partner – SAP Strategic Object Model

• General data are shared across different roles
• One business partner could perform multiple roles, e.g., customer and vendor (supplier)
• One business partner could have multiple addresses
• Time-dependency object attributes and relationships
• Provide harmonized architecture
• Customer/Vendor Integration (CVI) component ensure the synchronization between the Business Partner object and the customer/vendor objects

Dependencies/Pre-requisites

Business partner has been mandatory with S4 Hana Enterprise Management version i.e 1511 and 1610 & old transactions related to Vendor and customers have become obsolete.

It´s recommended but not mandatory that BuPa ID and Customer-ID / Vendor ID are the same.

The Business Partner Approach is not mandatory for the SAP Simple Finance 1503

Check and activate Business Functions

CA_SUPPLIER_SOA

CA_BP_SOA Switch ‘VENDOR_SFWS_SC1’ and switch ‘VENDOR_SFWS_SC2’ have to be active for the vendor contact person’s data to be synchronized with BP contact person’s data

The appropriate specific transaction like XD01,XD02, XD03 or VD01, VD02, VD03 / XK01, XK02, XK03 or MK01, MK02, MK03 etc. are not available in SAP S/4HANA Enterprise management Version i.e. 1511 and 1610

Currently mass maintenance for customers and vendors via transaction MASS is not available.

Before you begin the BP conversion from an SAP ERP system to an SAP S/4 HANA system, you have to answer the questions Whether the Business Partner ID and Customer-ID /Vendor ID should be the same in the S/4 HANA System?

Business Partner Master Data Setup Proces

1. Setup BP General Data

Select General Business Partner Role and Grouping, here this grouping is linked with customer/ vendor Number range and this Grouping is key in linking the Vendor/Customer & BP groups as well as number ranges which is explained below in detail.

Table BUT000 will be updated once General BP role is completed.

2. Setup FI Vendor

BP Role FLVN00 FI Vendor extension enables Invoice to be posted directly in FI.

Here vendor master table LFA1 and LFB1 will be updated.

FI document can be posted but cannot create PO as purchasing data is not yet extended so for extending purchasing data use ROLE  FLVN01

Table LFM1 will be updated once the BP Role is extended to Supplier BP Role

Once BP is extended to Purchase Organization using BP Role FLVN01 the vendor can be used PO can be created.

Setting up Customer

Table KNA1 will be updated once BP Role is extended to FI Customer and Finance can start posting directly in FI for example FB70 etc.

Extend Customer to Sales Area

BP Role FLCU01 is extended to sales area.

Table KNVV updated with Sales view details and henceforth Customer can be used in sales area.

Extend Customer to Credit Segment

Table UKMBP_CMS_SGM updated

Note- S4 Hana credit Management setting should be enabled to check the credit limits for customers

 Customizing

Business Partner Customizing

Activate the PPO Request for the synchronization object Business Partner

Cross-Application Components–> Master Data Synchronization –> Synchronization Control–> Synchronization

Active Synchronization between Customer/Vendor and BP is active

Define BP Roles

Assign BP Role to BP Role Category

Cross-Application Components–> SAP Business Partner–>Business Partner–> Basic Settings –> Business Partner Roles–>  Define BP Roles

This setting is already available in standard delivered system for standard roles.

Account Group /Number Range Mapping

I am explaining below with an example of requirement for setting up One Time Vendor and One Time Customer Account and as a summary we need to setup Vendor/Customer Account group & assign number ranges to respective Vendor/Customer account group as it was required in classic ERP environment.

Additionally BP grouping is mapped with Vendor/Customer account group

Define Account Groups Vendor

Financial Accounting (New)–> Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable–> Vendor Accounts–> Master Data–> Preparations for Creating Vendor Master Data

Assign Number Ranges to Vendor Account Groups

Similarly for Customers we need to define Account Group and assign number range to Customer account groups.

Define Number Assignment for Direction BP to Vendor/Customer

Cross-Application Components–> Master Data Synchronization–>Customer/Vendor Integration –> Business Partner Settings –> Settings for Vendor Integration –> Field Assignment for Vendor Integration–> Assign Keys

Define Number Assignment for Direction BP to Vendor

Define BP Number Range and assigning to BP Grouping

Cross-Application Components–> SAP Business Partner–> Business Partner–> Basic Settings –>Number Ranges and Groupings

Define Number Ranges-BP

Define Groupings and Assign Number Ranges

Create Number Ranges for Vendor/Customer

Financial Accounting (New)–> Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable–> Vendor Accounts–> Master Data –> Preparations for Creating Vendor Master Data

Create Number Ranges for Vendor Accounts

Similarly create Number Ranges for Customer Accounts.

This will enable to start work with new Business Partner in S4 Hana Enterprise Management Environment.

For further deep dive you can refer this CVI cookbook link from Christoph Dutz, Michael Foo and Alexander Roebel which focuses on BP conversion from ECC to S4HANA

https://support.sap.com/content/dam/SAAP/SAP_Activate/S4H.0781%20SAP%20S4HANA%20Cookbook%20Customer%20Vendor%20Integration.pdf

Thanks

Ajeet Agarwal

SAP S/4HANA RIG- APJ