What is purpose of BA partner in vendor master

[TMNielsen]

Hi

We have some problems with output determination in purchase order. We have set up output in MN04/MN05 for parter type LF and the output is created with parterner type LF but with the partner number from partner type BA.

After a lot of Investigation I found that this is SAP standard behavior http://saphelp.ucc.ovgu.de/NW750/EN/c0/80b65334e6b54ce10000000a174cb4/content.htm

So if BA partner exist it will be used in the output instead of LF partner.

Also I found - via OSS note 2741050 - some customizing that says that partner types LF and BA are mandatory for all vendor master records.

Unfortunately I can find no one in our company that knows why BA partner is mandatory. also I can find no explenation what the BA partner is used for (except this partner substitution in PO output determination).

So my question is - what is BA partner used for and what will happen if we make it not mandatory and remove in from our vendors?

System: SAP ERP 6.0

Best regards

Thomas Madsen Nielsen

[bhumi_1star]

Hello,

Business Partner functionality available in S4/hana. It just meant for single entry which integrates with Customer and Vendors.

Business Partner can be Person , Organisation or Group. In System you can define Partner Role Category and again Can create different Business Partner Role . Below Screen shot is from Vendor (Purchasing Role) and again it has different Partner functions.

Now, Again Same business Partner has Customer Role also which shows as below

Bhumika

[BijayKumarBarik]

Which version your system where you have BA partner function?

I have not worked with BA partner function but BA represents ordering address and now mostly all systems OA partner function is used for ordering address.

As described on definition of partner roles in partner function on vendor- if PO layout to be send to different vendor account other than main vendor account - you can use OA partner function assigned to different vendor account!