Account Management

We Know about Business partner from previous posts. Business partner are any party in which a company has a business interest. Now we would see what is Business Partner Role

We Know about Business partner from previous posts. Business partner are any party in which a company has a business interest. Now we would see what is Business Partner Role

Business Partner Role

Any Business partner in a business transcation has some rights and responsibilities. Those rights and responsibilites of any BP ar that a business partner can have in various business transactions. Whoever is involved in client business will be maintained in SAP CRM, we can differentiate BP with help of BP Roles. Some of the BP Roles shown below

Business Partners are used in different roles like -

Sold to party
Ship to party
Bill to party
Payer
Employee

We will look at some terms of Account management. We have already discussed BP, Number Ranges and its configuration. Lets see some more terms.

What is Customer Master Data

There are three types of customer master data
1. General Data
2. Sales Area Data
3. Company code data( Only in SAP ERP)

General data are the basic data like Name of customer, Email, Adress, Pin code, Country. Data which are general in nature.

Sales Area data are those to which are specific to sales area of that customer to be used in shipping, billing, pricing and many other functions of a business transaction. Sales area data consist of - Shipping data( how the product are to be shipped), Billing Data(how billings should be generated and processed), Organization data(what are the sales group and organization for the bp).

In company code data we have mainly financial data. It is basically used for Accounting. Example Account number, Ledger number, Accounts receivable data.

Configuration of Business Partner Roles.

To create a business partner,

Go to SPRO > SAP Reference IMG > Cross Application Product > Business Partner > Basic Settings >Business Partner Role > Define Business Partner Role.

CRM default for Sold to party is - CRM000

We can select the default role or we can have our own name for a business role defined. For defining a business partner role, follow these steps.

1. Go to SPRO > SAP Reference IMG > Cross Application Product > Business Partner > Basic Settings >Business Partner Role > Define Business Partner Role.

The window for business role defination will look like this.

Now click on the position button and find the default business role for Sold to party, i.e CRM000. Select "Copy As" option.

A new window will be open, maintain the new entry for BP Role, Title and description.

Save the entries. You new Business partner role for customer is created.

Same way, you can create a role for Employee. Just keep in mind, the default BP role for employee is BUP003.

Now, If you want to use this BP role, Go to BP using tcode- bp. Open any existing business partner and assign it this new BP role

Business Partners and Number Range

Business Partners

To put simply, Business partners are parties in which a company has a business interest. It can be a or organizations, persons, or groups of persons in which any company has a buisness interest. We can categorize business partners as -

1. Customer

2. Prospects

3. Consumer

4. Competitor

There are basically three types of Business Partners in SAP CRM

1. Accounts - Any individual or group in which a specific company has a business interest are Accounts. They are further divided into corporate account, individual account and groups.

2. Contact - A person with whom we have business relationship is a contact. It is mostly assigned as a corporate account.

3. Employee - A company employee which interacts with contacts. Who deals with consumer, customer or prospects.

How to create a business partner in SAP CRM

Things to remember : T-code(Transaction codes) for Business partners is BP.

Steps :

1. Go to t-code BP. There are three options in which you can create a BP. Choose person if you want to create a business partner for an individual -

2. Fill in the name field and other details, and click on the save button. A new business partners is created -

Now when we look closely, we will observe that there is a Business partner number on the top of the page i.e, 6000002233. This is usually a random ID given by the system. This is known as Business partner Identification Key (BP ID). This is assigned to any BP we are creating in SAP CRM. This BPID can either be assigned by the system itself or by you. When the BP ID is assigned by the system, it is known as internal number assignment and when it is assigned by you it is known as external number assignment. For more detail we have to look into a concept called number ranges.

Number Ranges

A number range is a range of numbers that we can assign to business objects or their sub objects such as BP, G/L accounts, orders, posting documents and materials etc. Each number range has one or number range intervals and a number assignment type.

1-1000

1001 -10000

10001 -20001

There are two types of number ranges.

1. Internal Number Range - If we set up any number range as internal then system will provide number in sequential order. The number will be generated by SAP automatically.

2. External Number Range - If we set up any number range as external its end user choice. In this SAP will not automatically choose a number. End user can allocate any number randomly at the time of creating a BP. He can use alphanumeric characters as well.

For understanding this concept of Number ranges, we closely look at the business partner header, we will see there is a Grouping option. That is for assigning number ranges. If we do not select any number range group from that category, the system will automatically assign a default number, which in the above case was 6000002233. Suppose we want to create another BP after this, the system will assign the next random number like 6000002234, 6000002235 and so on. But if we want to give our own number selected id for any BP, we will have to create a number range groupings.

To create a number range. follow these steps.

We have to first create a number range and then we have to group that number range so we can use it as our convenience. So first we have to define a number range.

1. Go to SPRO > SAP Reference IMG > Cross Application Product > Business Partner > Basic Settings > Number Ranges and Groupings > Define Number Range.

2. Select Change intervals -

3. We can see there is a Insert line option (With a green plus button). Click on the Insert line and add a number range as per your need. In this case I have selected a number range from 2200000001 to 23000000100 -

4. Click on the save button to save the entries for number ranges.

After creating this number range, we have to group this number range. To group this number range we have to go to Number ranges groupings.

1. Go to SPRO > SAP Reference IMG > Cross Application Product > Business Partner > Basic Settings > Number Ranges and Groupings > Define Groupings and Assign Number Ranges.

2. Click on the new entries and Select a 4 letter Grouping name starting with Z or Y. In this case I have selected ZNGP. Give a short name and a description. Select the number range which you have created or which you want to use in this grouping. I have selected 41 which I created in earlier steps.

3. Save the entries.

Your number ranges are now configured.

Now you want to use this number range in your next BP. For this, again go to t-code BP. From the drop down menu "Grouping" select the groupings you just created.

Now create any random business partner and save the entry. You will see the default value of BP ID is replaced by the number range you have choosen. In this case, BP ID of this person is 2200000001. The next BP ID will be 2200000002,2200000003 and so on.

That was all for the basics of business partner creation and number ranges.