Trading partner functionality

[#1]

Hi Gurus,

Can you tell me about how the trading partner functionality in customer and vendor master is used.

How is this useful for inter company balance reconciliations

Regards,

[Former Member]

Hi,

Trading partner is any entity with which the organization does any kind of business transaction.

Business partners are used to define the rights and responsibilities of each business partner in a business transaction. You assign partner functions when you create a master record for a business partner.

Features

The following are examples of trading partner functions(as customers) that are defined in the standard system:

● Partner functions for partner type customer

○ Sold-to Party

Contains data on sales, such as the assignment to a sales office or a valid price list

○ Ship-to Party

Contains data for shipping, such as unloading point and goods receiving hours

○ Bill-to Party

Contains the address and data on document printing and electronic communication

○ Payer

Contains data on billing schedules and bank details

● Partner functions for partner type vendor

○ Ordering address

○ Invoice presented by

○ Goods supplier

○ Alternative payee

● Partner functions for other partner types, for example, personnel (HR master records)

Customer partner functions

The company or person who places an order can be the same company or person who receives the goods and the invoice and pays. Because this customer assumes all partner functions, you create one master record for the customer. You create a customer master record for the sold-to party in which you enter data required for the other partner functions.

A subsidiary office can place an order and its head office can pay the invoice. In this case, you divide partner functions among the different offices. You need a corresponding number of customer master records. In one master record you enter, for example, the address of the sold-to party for correspondence, in the other, the address of the ship-to party for delivery. You establish a link between the partner functions in the customer master record of the sold-to party by entering the customer number of the respective partner functions.

Prerequisites

When creating master records, you define the partner functions for business partners by assigning an account group. For partner types customer and vendor, you define which account group can be used for which partner function. You do this in Customizing in the following activities:

● Customer

In Customizing for Basic Functions (SD) in the activity Assign partner functions on the debit side to account groups.

● Vendor

In Customizing for Purchasing (MM) in the activity Define permissible partner roles per account group.

The partner determination procedure specifies the partner functions that are allowed or mandatory for processing a particular business transaction, such as a sales or purchase order.

Analogous is business partner from vendor point of view.

Hope this helps.

Rgds

manish

[Former Member]

Dear Manish,

Thanks for your detailed answer.

I am looking for a different functionality

In vendor and customer master in the control screen we have a field Trading partner which is used for consolidation purpose.

for elemination of intercompany transfers within a group specifically.

I am looking at information on how to use this field for intercompany reconciliation and what are the config steps to do this in ECC 6.0

Hope you can help.

[Former Member]

For consolidation functionlity you can use the trading partner data in the vendor/customer data. For that you can give the company name there for consolidation. Company codes are assigned to company. Hope you are clear.