REFx Link BP and vendor

[Former Member]

This blog talks about the vendor and BP linkage in the REFX module The real estate contract lets you manage all contracts related to your real estate portfolio:

• Real estate contracts of the lease-in category (such as commercial, internal, residential)


• Real estate contracts of the lease-out category (such as commercial, internal, residential)


• General customer contracts (such as service contracts with the tenant)


• General vendor contracts (such as maintenance contracts with a service provider)

 

Automatic vendor creation Config

How to do the linkage- Tcode and details

Things to know before doing the linkage

Test Cases

Technical details to troubleshoot

Config settings

 

In order to see a consolidated view you would need a linkage between the vendor and BP and this is the reason why there is a functionality to do Vendor and BP linkage.There are 2 ways that this can be done

1. If you already have an existing vendor than create a link to map the existing vendor with a BP


2. If this is a new process then you can enable automatically creating a vendor after the user saves the BP with role TR0602

I am discussing in detail about process 2 here.

Automatic vendor creation Process

When the automatic vendor setting is applied. You can follow below steps to create a new vendor record which would be linked to the BP;

• Go to transaction BP


• Click on edit


• From dropdown select TR0602


• Click on Save


• A new number is generated with the vendor number picked up by the system

Save all mandatory fields in vendor like search1, Street address, email etc.

Once you are done Save changed and there would be a new tab vendor General data and vendor number created with it.



 

How to do the linkage- Tcode and details

You can also use Tcode FLBPC1 create bp from vendor where the vendor should already exist:



or use FLBPC2 to link the existing Vendor with BP.

The vendor and BP linkage gets updated in table CVI_VEND_LINK

Here I am trying to link the BP 1005777  with  Vendor  913013

The BP role for this Linkage is TR0602.



Check the relationship with BP after you run the Tcode. Check all tabs in vendor record to ensure there are no issues related to the update being sent via BP to the vendor and all views in vendor like Payment transaction accounting, Contact person, Payment transaction are working as expected.


 

Things to know before doing the linkage

Some points to note before you do the linkage;

• BP record would be overwriting the information in the vendor


• Vendor tabs like General data and Payment transactions specifically would be overridden


• If there is any other information in the vendor including attachments it stays intact as BP does not have all the fields of the vendor record.


• Remember this change would now work 2 ways any changes in vendor record would update BP and Vice versa you can control it by controlling roles on who all can modify the vendor records only those people can now make changes in the BP

 

Test Cases

Testing should be done to ensure below scenarios are covered:

• Vendor master data does not have any incorrect changes due to integration with BP. Thus anyone doing the linkage should confirm that BP has correct information in the General section and Bank account section correctly updated


• Any Vendor master changes done are reflected back to BP


• In order to make one master you can create a rule that no one should be able to edit the BP after linkage so Master record would be vendor for now and any changes in BP should flow based on vendor update.


• If there is anyone updating the BP now and does not have vendor update role should get an authorization error so no one accidentally updates the vendor by updating the BP.


• Vendor Number is in the correct sequence


• Vendor belongs to the right authorization group the default one in this case or you can specify in the config.


• CRM and SRM testing


• Authorisation group for the vendor is correctly used


• You are able to link Organisation/Person and group BP to the vendor.

 Technical details to troubleshoot

1. Transaction /SAPPO/PPO3. Check the log and you would see any entries if there are any reported error


2. Table CVI_VEND_LINk gets updated with the vendor number and BP once successfully linked

Config settings

Below are some places where you should be checking the role TR0602 is created  if not already exists. 

• Cross-Application Components


• Master Data Synchronization


• Customer/Vendor Integration


• Business Partner Settings


• Settings for Vendor Integration


• Define BP Role for Direction Vendor to BP

1. Cross-application component > Define Business partner roles and specify TR0602  in there. 





 

2. In Refx section ensure you have configured the setting in config  ‘ business role’

• Create the role in ‘Define BP role’ if it does not already exist similar to above.


• In ‘Make settings for role per …’ map with the internal grouping as seen below

 





 

3. In business partner vendor setting settings

For 'Number Assignment ...' Section Check the BP settings to assign vendor to the right authorization group



 



4. In setting ' Vendor Role ' check the role TR0602 exists



Double click on the role



It would show the setting for maintaining automatic vendor creation or manual



After I select the optional setting above ' Create Vendor ' Checkbox appears



Only if you click on that checkbox it reserves the value as internal

 



 

After saving New Vendor record gets created with the same vendor number range as defined.



 

 

4. Check Setting 'Standard values for automatic creation of vendors'

Add 0036 which is for General real estate contract.



 



 

 

With this, you should now have your vendor and BP replication working as per your business requirement. This has a lot of inconsistencies I feel in terms of being flexible to meet the business requirement

Refer below some of the other links I found useful

Hope the blog was found useful to people trying to get a better understanding of Vendor and BP processes.

 

 

Additional References

https://archive.sap.com/discussions/thread/3583027

https://archive.sap.com/discussions/thread/2137676

https://blogs.sap.com/2014/04/16/business-partner-customervendor-integration/

https://blogs.sap.com/2017/02/22/business-partner-customer-vendor-integration-s4-hana/

https://blogs.sap.com/2014/04/16/business-partner-customervendor-integration/

https://blogs.sap.com/2012/09/17/customer-vendor-integration-tool/

https://help.sap.com/doc/2425c55368511d4be10000000a174cb4/3.6/en-US/771dc753b1081d4be10000000a174cb4...

https://help.sap.com/viewer/192e92660a1e42a08756831fee30ce18/6.06.19/en-US/5c8189abfed6435b854f6e73c...

 

Update from SAP on OSS note as below in Nov 2017

With the current architecture of the CVI some checks of the customer/vendor data are performed "on-commit". Which means, if an error is detected within these checks a PPO entry will be created (Tx MDS_PPO2) and the creation of new
customers/vendors will be aborted. That means at this point not KNA1/LFA1 entry will be created, but the number taken from the number range for the new customer/vendor is lost. Next time when the data is corrected in Tx BP
a new number will be taken from the number range and the successful creation of customer/vendor will have this number. There is currently a big development project on our side to have all the checks currently running on commit being
moved before this event, so we have a regular handling of validation error messages and no numbers will be lost in error case.
Unfortunately is effort to achieve this is really high and we cannot say, when this solution will be available.
We have created attached note 2456209 to improve the user feedback in Tx BP a little bit. After implementing the note the user will get a direct feedback message when saving the customer/vendor has failed on commit. For sure this does not solve losing numbers from the customer/vendor number range, but increases the transparency for the user, what went wrong.”

 

OSS note:

2327749 - BP_CVI: No creation or change of customer/vendor master data using the business partner dialog

2516606 - BP_CVI: Taking into account the FI-specific field modification of customer and vendor in transaction BP

2456209 - BP_CVI: Unable to perform subsequent creation of customer/vendor in transaction BP

974504 - Inconsistencies in link tables of master data sync

1958471 - CVI_VEND_CT_LINK table has inconsistent entries,

2387218 - Change the link assignments

 

 

 

 

 

Regards

Vinita