Lesson 2 of 6
The business partner
8 min
In SAP ECC, a customer and a supplier were two separate master records, created with separate transactions (XD01 for a customer, XK01 for a vendor, plus FD01 and FK01 for the accounting-only views). If the same company both bought from you and sold to you, you created two records with duplicated names and addresses that could drift apart.
SAP S/4HANA replaces that with one object: the business partner (BP). A business partner is a person, organization or group that the company does business with. Its general data, such as name, address, tax numbers and bank details, is held once. What the partner does for you is expressed through roles.
Roles: one partner, several jobs
| BP role | What it adds | Typical data |
|---|---|---|
| 000000 Business Partner (General) | The base record every partner has | Name, address, communication, tax numbers, bank details |
| FLCU00 Customer (Financial Accounting) | Customer data per company code | Reconciliation account, payment terms, dunning data for company code 1710 |
| FLCU01 Customer | Customer data per sales area | Sales area 1710 / 10 / 00: order currency, shipping conditions, incoterms, partner functions |
| FLVN00 Supplier (Financial Accounting) | Supplier data per company code | Reconciliation account, payment terms, payment methods |
| FLVN01 Supplier | Supplier data per purchasing organization | Purchasing org 1710: order currency, incoterms, GR-based invoice verification |
The standard roles you will meet most often. Your project may add more.
So if Contoso Motor Co. buys steel from Midwest Steel Supply and also sells it scrap, Midwest Steel is one business partner with both supplier roles and customer roles. Change its address once and both sides see it.
Customer-vendor integration (CVI)
Behind the scenes, much of SAP still reads the classic customer and supplier tables. A mechanism called customer-vendor integration (CVI) keeps them in step: when you create or change a business partner with a customer or supplier role, CVI creates or updates the matching customer or supplier record automatically. That is why you will still see a "customer number" and a "supplier number". Depending on the number range setup, they may be the same as the BP number or different.
| Topic | SAP ECC | SAP S/4HANA |
|---|---|---|
| Object | Separate customer and vendor masters | One business partner with customer and supplier roles |
| Main transaction | XD01 / XK01 / FD01 / FK01 and their change and display variants | BP (Maintain Business Partner); the old customer and vendor transactions redirect to BP |
| Fiori apps | Not applicable | Manage Business Partner Master Data, Manage Customer Master Data, Manage Supplier Master Data |
| Shared data | Duplicated, can drift apart | Held once on the business partner |
| Synchronization | None needed | CVI keeps customer and supplier records aligned with the BP |
What you see on screen
In SAP GUI, transaction BP opens a single screen. You choose to create a person or an organization, then pick a role in the Display in BP role field. Each role shows different tabs. Company code data appears only after you click the Company Code button and enter 1710; sales data appears after you click Sales and Distribution and enter the sales area. In the Fiori launchpad, the customer and supplier apps present the same data in a simpler object page layout. Some specialist fields only appear in the full BP transaction, so key users often keep both available.
In SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition the same business partner model applies, but you work only in the Fiori apps and some extension options differ. The concept, roles and org-level thinking carry over unchanged.
What would you do?
A Contoso tester tries to create a sales order in sales area 1710 / 10 / 00 for business partner 17100045 and gets an error that the customer is not defined for that sales area. The master data team says "the BP exists, we created it yesterday". What do you check first?
- SAP S/4HANA uses the business partner as the single object for customers and suppliers.
- Roles such as FLCU00, FLCU01, FLVN00 and FLVN01 add customer and supplier data at company code, sales area or purchasing organization level.
- CVI keeps the classic customer and supplier records synchronized with the business partner.
- Transaction BP replaces XD01 and XK01; Fiori offers customer and supplier master data apps.
- A partner is only usable where its role and org-level data exist.
Check your understanding · not graded
Lesson check
1. In SAP S/4HANA, how is a company that is both a customer and a supplier represented?
2. Which role holds customer data such as shipping conditions for a sales area?
3. What does customer-vendor integration (CVI) do?
4. What happens if a user starts XD01 in SAP S/4HANA?