Multiple Ship-To Address for one Customer in SAP s4/hana

[naviknit]

Hi Experts,

Requirement - One Customer can have multiple Ship to address (Let's say 10). We can handle this situatuon by creating 10 BP ( One for each ship to address) and assing these BP to SH partner in Sold To BP.

This is creating lot of data management issues becaase for each customer we will end up creating several BPs ( One for Sold to & 10 for SH).

Is there a better way to handle this situation in S4 / Hana ?

[Lakshmipathi]

Added the related tags for better reach

[Dominik_Tylczynski]

Hello naviknit

naviknitThat is the correct way to model the business situation - create as many BP with ship-to role as many ship-to addresses you have. That is valid for ship-to addresses that you have regular business with. For occasional , one time shipments you can use a CPD (customer per document) / on-time customer - SAP Help: One-Time Customers and One-Time Vendors

Best regards

Dominik Tylczynski

[naviknit]

Thank You Dominik for your quick feedback!

I also found this article talking about handling multiple address without creating muliple BPs.

https://help.sap.com/docs/SAP_S4HANA_ONPREMISE/7b24a64d9d0941bda1afa753263d9e39/9494ae375ef74a2a9623...

are there any Pros & Cons if we use classic approach of multiple BPs vs this new feature ?

[Ryan-Crosby]

naviknit you would want to read through the help thoroughly to understand the restrictions and overall usage. Noticeably absent, is how to deal with multiple address selection in the EDI world if you are using IDocs to generate orders, and the best practice is to go through a BP consolidation effort before using this new feature (not generally a small undertaking).

[naviknit]

Thank You Ryan. We are moving from Oracle to SAP and thus whole exercise is being done to evaludate if we can use this new feature.

Was looking for some suggestions or learning if anyone has imlemented or used this feature before.

[Dominik_Tylczynski]

naviknit Multiple addresses functionality seems really interesting. However it is new and I would approach it with caution.

To start with consider the notes:

2528520 - Sales Documents Do Not Support Multiple Addresses For A Business Partner

3081750 - SAP S/4HANA: Restriction Note for "Multiple Address Handling in SD Documents Using SAP Bus...

Therefore I would test it thoroughly first before embarking on its full scale implementation.

Second, I don't think you could significantly reduce master data maintenance. With multiple addresses you simply need to maintain several addresses for a BP instead of multiple BPs. Sure it might be simpler and faster, but the question is by how much.

Third, assuming everything works as expected, consider your reporting requirements. In the traditional approach with multiple ship-to BPs, sales orders are created with unique ship-to BP number. With multiple addresses, the ship-to BP number will be the same, just the address number will change. Therefore it might be difficult if not impossible to report your sales figures by ship-to numbers as the number will be the same. Are your reports ready to report by ship-to address number?

Fourth, expect the unexpected. It is a new functionality and most likely still buggy. Factor that into your planning.

If I were you, I would stick with multiple BPs for ship-to parties.

[Ryan-Crosby]

naviknit I would second the recommendation by 3a9e4ce873a94034b33dc62b0ce600ee. I peeked at the restrictions document from OSS note 3081750 that was shared, and the content in the first two pages alone would have me running swiftly in the other direction.

[naviknit]

Hi Ryna & Dominick,

Thank you for your insight on this. All the valuable feedback you have provided has helped has to understand high level Pros & Cons and this is a great help!! Thank you once again !

[shwetha_hs]

Hello,

Few of the advantages of Business Partner as the leading object in S/4HANA are that it can hold multiple addresses, possibility to maintain different time validities to them and the capability to assign addresses to different address usages.

So for this requirement, you can add multiple addresses to ONE BP, assign addresses to the address usages SHIP TO and SOLD TO etc.

Regards,

Shwetha

[Chempian1]

What steps are required in filling the Customer Migration Template for migrating Ship-To party alongwith Main Customer? And where we can maintain the relationship of those Ship- To in the Customer Master Template? Thanks in advance.