Finding the customer and sales area

A purchase order describes the buyer in the buyer's own terms. Great Lakes calls itself GLFS, calls its Grand Rapids depot GR04, and knows Contoso as supplier 400817. A sales order needs Contoso's terms: sold-to 17100001, ship-to 17100006, sales area 1710 / 10 / 00 and an order type. Inbound processing builds that translation from three sources: what the IDoc carries, two EDI conversion tables in Customizing, and the customer master.

The sold-to party

The sender partner in the control record (partner type KU, number 17100001) is what selects the inbound partner profile; course sap-edi-201 covered that. For the order itself, the sold-to comes from the E1EDKA1 segment with partner function AG. Contoso's map writes its own customer number there, because Great Lakes' guide fixes one buying party, so no conversion is needed. Partners that send their own codes for the sold-to need a conversion like the one for ship-tos below.

Converting external partner numbers: EDPAR

The Customizing activity Convert External to Internal Partner Numbers (Sales and Distribution > Electronic Data Interchange > EDI Messages > IDoc > Configure EDI Partners; transaction VOE4, table EDPAR) maps, per customer and partner function, the number the customer uses to the internal partner number. SAP's documentation describes the entry fields exactly that way: customer number, partner function, external partner number and internal partner number.

The ship-to in the IDoc arrives as E1EDKA1 WE with GR04; the inbound program finds the EDPAR entry for customer 17100001 and SH, and puts 17100006 into the order. The ship-to must also be a valid partner of the sold-to in the customer master for that sales area, or the order fails partner determination even after a successful conversion.

Sales area and order type: EDSDC

If the IDoc carries E1EDK14 segments with sales organization, distribution channel, division and order type, inbound processing uses them. Many partners know nothing about Contoso's organization, so SAP offers a second route: the Customizing activity Assign Customer/Supplier to Sales Organization Data (transaction VOE2, table EDSDC). SAP's documentation describes its key: the customer as defined in your customer master, plus the supplier number as transmitted by the customer in the IDoc, and its results: sales organization, distribution channel, division and sales document type.

Flexible determination is for SOAP, not IDocs

SAP S/4HANA also offers flexible determination of sales area, sales document type and internal partner numbers through decision tables. SAP documents it for the SOAP service Sales Order/Customer Return - Create, Update, Cancel (B2B), used for example with SAP Business Network, and notes that once it is active for that service the static assignment is no longer used for it. Contoso's Great Lakes flow uses IDocs, so EDPAR and EDSDC remain the relevant tools.