– Business may have a great deal of contact with natural and legal persons.
– Partner determination in sales and distribution enables us to display the partners involves in business transactions, their functions and relationships in R/3.
– When we create / process sales document system determines partner automatically.
– The functions that a partner fulfils in a business process are shown in R/3 system as a partner documents. As we maintain PARTNER RELATIONSHIP in customer master they are automatically proposed into sales documents (Header).
Partner Control: Since in Sales and Distribution processing in the R/3 system the right partner is automatically setup with the required functions in document.
Process Flow for Partner Determination:
1. Define partner functions for different tasks.
2. Combine these partner functions together into PARTNER PROCEDURE and assign these to the document types.
3. Assign business partner functions on the debit side to customer group.
Partner Functions: By assigning a partner function to a partner we can determine which functions partner fulfils in the business processes.
A partner can have more than one function.
Ex: Sold – to – Party, Ship – to – Party, Bill – to – Party, Payer, Forwarding agent, Contract person, etc.
Among these, Sold – to – Party to Payer are mandatory partner functions.
Partner functions are classified using partner types.
Partner types enable general scheduling of partner function as in creditors, customer, personal and contact person.
Partner Type – Customer: Sold – to – party, Ship – to – party, Bill – to – party, and Payer.
Partner Type – Contact Person: Contact persons are natural persons to whom we must contact at the customer for business processing. We can create contact person in customer master record.
Partner Type – Vendor: Forwarding agent
Partner Type – Personal: Employee responsible, Sales person
Partner Determination Procedure: In the partner procedure we can determine whether partner functions can / should occur in a partner object (customer master, sales document, item category, etc)
– We can determine partner functions for the objects.
– By assigning procedure we determine for which account group, which sales document type, for which item categories this procedure is valid.
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In partner determination procedure we can determine each partner function:
– Whether the partner function is an obligatory partner function – Whether the partner function may be changed in the documents.
Partner determination is used in the sales and distribution processing in two ways:
1. Creating customer master 2. Creating sales documents
Authorized Partner for Release Orders: When we create a release order for a contract, we enter the contract number and the name of the partner who requesting goods. Then system checks if the business partner is authorized to release contract.
Then system checks the:
Partner in the contract (Rule „A‟).
If partner has partner functions (AG) (AA) Sold – to – party for releasing orders in the contract. Then system accepts Sold – to – party for releasing order.
Partner in the hierarchy (Rule „B‟)
After authorization check, the system also checks if more than one Ship – to – party is defined in the contract. If system contains “WE” (Ship – to – party) and several “AWS” (Ship – to – party to release orders), then the system lists the possible Ship – to – party in a dialog bin. We can define authorized Sold – to – parties (AA) and addition Ship – to – parties (AW) in the customer master record. When we create contract for customer these partners are proposed for selection.
Pre – requisite:
Activate partner determination check in VOV8 of contract document type.
Partner determination procedure “KAB” (Partner in contract) contains the partner function AA / AW. We must assign this procedure to the sales document types (contracts) for which the partner authorization check is relevant. Make this assignment in IMG.
Define and assign partner determination procedure.
Copy control: We can determine only releasing partner should copy from contract to release order, and other partners are copied from customer master of the Sold – to – party.
Customer Master
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Define Account Groups Transaction code: OBD2
Path:
IMG
Financial accounting
Accounts receivable and accounts payable
Customer accounts
Master data
Preparation for creating customer master data
Define account groups with screen layout (customer)
Go to new entries
Specify your account group and description
Save and Exit
NOTE: Select one time customer account if he belongs to one time account customer.
Specify Output Determination Procedure: We can specify the output determination procedure in the customer master from where system automatically proposes output type in the sales document.
Define Number Ranges Transaction code: XDN1
Path:
IMG
Financial accounting
Accounts receivable and accounts payable
Customer accounts
Master data
Preparation for creating customer master data
Creating number ranges for customer accounts
Click on change intervals icon
Click on insert intervals icon
Define number range
Save and Exit
Assign Number Ranges to Customer Account Groups Transaction code: OBAR Path:
IMG
Financial accounting
Accounts receivable and accounts payable
Customer accounts
Master data
Preparation for creating customer master data
Assign number ranges to customer account groups
Choose our account group from position button
Specify number range key that we defined previous
Save and Exit
Define Partner Functions Path:
IMG
Sales and distribution
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Basic functions
Partner determination
Setup partner determination
Setup partner determination for customer master
Click on partner functions control button
Go to new entries
Define your partner functions [OR]
Choose existed partner functions like below:
Partner Function Name Partner Type Unique in Customer Master
SP Sold – to – party KU
Click on partner determination procedure under control button
Go to new entries
Define your own partner determination procedure
Save and Exit
Assign Partner Functions in the Partner Determination Procedure
Select our partner determination procedure
Click on partner functions in procedure
Go to new entries
Specify partner functions like below:
Partner Determination
Specify [ ] blank in the [C] original table (as partner functions from “KNVP” or AG mandatory partner type
“KU”).
Save and Exit
Partner Determination Procedure Assignment
Click on partner determination procedure under dialog structure
Choose our account group from position button that we defined in OBD2
Assign partner determination procedure that we created in the previous step
Save and Exit
Assign Partner Functions to Account Group
Click on account groups – function assignment under dialog structure
Check our account group has been assigned to our partner determination procedure by system automatically OR Assign partner functions to our account group
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Partner Function Name Account Group
SP Sold – to – party 0001
SH Ship – to – party 0001
BP Bill – to – party 0001
PY Payer 0001
Save and Exit
Go to XD01 to create customer master Save Exit
Go to XD02 Extras Administrative data Check our partner procedure existed or not
Partner Determination Procedure for Sales Document Header
SAP uses condition technique to determine partner functions for sales document header and item. We can determine partner functions to sales document header directly or we can propose partner functions from customer master.
NOTE: Partner functions in the sales document header directly proposed into sales document header from customer master.
Go to VA01 and raise the sales order with our newly created customer.
Go to go to Header Partner check our partner functions are proposed or not
Go to go to Item Partner check partner functions in shipping tab & billing tab
Save and Exit
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