Partner Functions in Customer Master Record

January 19, 2010 by CRM
Filed under: Sale and Distribution

Partner functions are terms that describe the people and organizations with whom you do business, and who are therefore involved in transactions. For example, when you create an Activity, based on Customizing settings, it automatically includes the partner functions activity partner, contact person, and person responsible.

Partner functions are always assigned to partner function categories, which are hard-coded in the system. The SAP system includes commonly used partner functions, but you can also define your own.

You store the partner functions for the customer master in the customer master sales area data (tab page Partner functions). When processing a sales order, they are copied as default values into the documents.

The following obligatory functions are necessary for sales order processing: Sold-to party, ship-to party, bill-to party, and payer. In the course of processing a sales order, they can differ from each other or can be identical.

Sold-to party: places the order.
Ship-to party: receives goods or services.
Bill-to party: receives the invoice for goods or services.
Payer: is responsible for paying the invoice.

Other partner functions, such as contact person or forwarding agent, are not necessary for sales order processing.

Partner functions are used mainly in transaction processing, and relationship categories mainly in master data. The correspondence between them (and the assignment of access sequences) allows the system to use business partner master data as a source for partner determination. Partner functions that do not correspond to relationship categories can be determined from other sources, such as the organizational model, or entered manually.

Partner functions in CRM often differ from those in SAP R/3; but you can specify how functions in CRM and R/3 correspond to each other.

For more information in the SAP Library, see Master Data > Business Partners > Basic Functions in Business Partner > Data Sets > Data Set: Partner Functions and Data Set: Excluded Partner Functions.

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