| # Business partners You must define your customers and suppliers as business partners. For each business partner you can specify: business partner roles business partner status contacts Business partner default data If you define a new business partner, you must enter many details in the Business Partners (tccom4100s000) session. To speed up the process, you can define default business partner details in the Business Partner Defaults (tccom4101m000) session. In this way, details for the mandatory fields are immediately available and you can create transactions for the business partner. Note If you use default business partner details and at a later date, you want to check the data or you want to enter details in the non-mandatory fields, in the Business Partners (tccom4100s000) session, you can select the To be Verified check box. When you have verified the details or entered the remaining details, you can clear the check box. Business partner roles The business partner's role determines the types of transactions you can carry out with the business partner. For example, you can only ship goods to a business partner with a ship-to role. The business partner's roles enable you to address the correct office and contact, for each part of a business transaction. For example, your customer's sales office, accounts payable office, and warehouse can all be at different locations or even in different countries. Note The data of the different roles for one business partner can be interdependent. For example, you must define a business partner's sold-to role before you can define the business partner's invoice-to role. Customer roles For your customers you can define these roles: Sold-to business partner Ship-to business partner Invoice-to business partner Pay-by business partner Supplier roles For your suppliers you can define these roles: Buy-from business partner Ship-from business partner Invoice-from business partner Pay-to business partner Business partner contacts For each business partner you can define the business partner's contacts. A contact can be linked to more than one business partner role. Parent business partners You define parent business partners to indicate the link between business partners with different roles. This enables you to define distributed business partner structures. You can define a business partner without any roles to link related business partners. Business partner departments You can link some business partner roles to specific departments. The business partner's financial data is registered in the financial company to which the department is linked. Financial business partner data In Financials, you must group your customers and suppliers into financial business partner groups and set up the control accounts for each group in the Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable modules. To view the business partners' and your own payment performance, use these sessions: Pay-by Business Partner Statistics (tfcmg3500s000) Pay-to Business Partner Statistics (tfcmg3502m000) To each invoice-to business partner, you can assign a credit analyst and you can control the business partner's credit limit. Enterprise modeling data You must define departments of your own organization's departments that act as customers or suppliers to other departments as business partners and enter the business partners' enterprise modeling data. You must enter the enterprise modeling data of: Internal business partners Affiliated companies An internal business partner can be an enterprise unit that belongs to a different financial company from your own. An affiliated company can be a logistic company that belongs to the same financial company as your own. Other (external) business partners are not represented in enterprise modeling. Related topics Companies - overview To set up a group tax code Business partner status Business partner contacts Financial business-partner data Financial business-partner data The business partner's credit limit |