Business Partner - Central Maintenance

Business Partner Design Considerations – Combining BP Roles. This article outlines the end to process flow and system design for SAP Business Partner linking different Roles.

Introduction

SAP provides default roles for majority of Business Processes. Every BP role comes with certain default maintenance functionality. Following different roles are available for Business Partner who is involved in in Sales and Purchasing

• BP 00000 – General Address Details
• BP FLVN00 – Vendor Company Code Details
• BP VLVN01 – Vendor Purchasing Details
• BP FLCU00 – Customer Company Code Details
• BP FLCU01 – Customer Sales Area Details

There are many other Business Partners come with different other functions such as Credit Management Details, Agency Details and sol.

There is way of combining these Business Partner Roles to help users maintain these details with single transaction. This functionality was in SAP previous versions was partially achieved through having Central Maintenance Transactions, for example

• XK01 – Maintain Vendor Centrally (General, Company Code and Purchasing)
• XD01 – Maintain Customer Centrally (General, Company Code and Sales)

However, there was no way to combine ONE place Vendor and Customer together. With SAP BP functionality, this can be achieved easily.

General Data

BP Role General -000000 General Data for Customer such as basic address details. This role is mandatory role for any business partner.

BP Roles - Vendor

Vendor is maintained at two levels apart from General Address Role. Company Code View and Purchasing View.

Company Code View – Company Code details are maintained for vendor to make Financial postings. This was part of SAP old transaction – FK01 and now part of FLVN000 – Business Partner Role

Purchasing View – Purchasing Details such as Order Currency and other details for performing Purchase Functions – SAP old transaction MK01 and part of SAP Business Partner – FLVN01

BP Roles - Customer

Customer is maintained at multiple levels depending on the functions performed. For sales activity Company Code and Sales Area view is maintained.

Company Code View – Company Code details are maintained for Customer to make Financial postings. This was part of SAP old transaction – FD01 and now part of FLCU00 – Business Partner Role

Sales Area View – Customer is extended to a Sales Area – Sales Organization, Division and Distribution Channel. All attributes maintained at these levels are required for performing Sales Activity. This was part of SAP old transaction – XD01 and now part of FLCU01 – Business Partner Role

BP Roles – Central Maintenance

In previous versions of SAP, it was possible to maintain Customers and Vendors centrally with SAP given transactions such as XK01 and XD01. However, there was no way to maintain the entire business partner centrally. Following Screen Shows Business Partner Centrally maintained

This provides easy and single level role for achieving this functionality

Summary

With SAP S4/Hana – Simplification at Core - SAP Business Partner provides a single source of Partner information and eliminates many different transactions. With this special configuration it is possible to combine different standard roles