Introduction

In preparation of a technical SAP S/4HANA conversion, a central task for Customer/Vendor integration is the definition and assignment of number ranges for Business Partners. During the process you found one or more doubts or problems about number range.

This Blog post is discuss Tips and Tricks of number range setting during Business Partner Conversion .

SAP recommend number range setting

SAP recommends that you keep the Customer/Vendor number the same when converting to Business Partner (BP). When deciding for this approach please consider following remarks:

When the same number is used for a different Customer and Vendor, you must then give one of them a different BP number. Additionally, you should allocate identical numbers to new Business Partners when assigning numbers to Customer/Vendor and Business Partners. If you assign identical numbers, this avoids confusion at the application level (when two different numbers appear for the Business Partner within a transaction). This is not possible in every case, for example, if SAP Business Partners already exist in the system prior to conversion and the number ranges overlap.

The following principles should be considered:
• If your currently used number ranges for Customers and Vendors are disjoint, the Business Partner
number range should be defined as a mirror image of the Customer/Vendor number ranges.
• If your currently used number ranges for Customers and Vendors are not disjoint, the Business Partner
number range should be defined in such a way that most numbers from Customer/Vendor can be reused.
• If Customer/Vendor numeric numbers should be taken over to Business Partner

− To allow the Customer/Vendor numeric numbers to be taken over to the Business Partner the numeric
intervals of the Business Partner number ranges must be set to external during the synchronization
phase in ECC.
− After the successful data synchronization and before the Business Partner becomes the leading object
in SAP S/4HANA, the numeric intervals of the Business Partner must be changed back to internal.
Additionally, the Customer/Vendor numeric number range must be set to external to allow identical
numbers for Customer/Vendor and Business Partner.

Detailed information could also be found in the cookbook: SAP S/4HANA Cookbook CVI(chapter 7.3.8.2.1.Overview)

How to know which BP and vendor/customer/contact person link together

T-CODE MDS_LINKS can be used to find which BP and vendor/customer link together

You can also use T-code MDS_LINKS to find ‘contact person’ number mapped to ‘Business partner’ number.

How to Set same number for BP and customer/vendor in CVI

Detailed information could be found in KBA: 2430380 – Same number for BP and customer/vendor in CVI

How to link customer and vendor to a single BP during initial load before upgrade to SAP S/4HANA

In SAP S/4HANA, a business partner can have different roles such as customer and supplier.

It is therefore possible that one legal entity is represented by a single business partner having a customer role as well as a vendor role.

It is important to remember that such a business partner uses the same general data for both the customer and the vendor role. This includes e.g. the BP’s address data, bank data, and contact persons assignments.

In SAP S/4HANA, it is not mandatory to combine customer and vendor for the same legal entity into one business partner, but it is an option.

If this option is a target for the conversion project, SAP Notes 2363892 and 2968536 enable the creation of a single business partner with both customer and vendor roles.

These SAP Notes provide the implementation CVI_MAP_LEGAL_ENTITY for BAdI CVI_CUSTOM_MAPPER. The synchronization process (MDS_LOAD_COCKPIT) merges customers and vendors into a single BP if the above Notes are applied and the prerequisites met

Prerequisites:

The Customer and Vendor must not already be linked to separate Business Partners (that is, either Customer or Vendor should have a Business Partner linked to it, or neither should be linked to a Business Partner, but not both). This solution is applicable only when there is already a link table entry for either Customer or Vendor.

1. The Customer and Vendor must be linked through the Customer number field in the Vendor table and the Vendor number field in the Customer table.
   
2. The Customer and Vendor must contain exactly the same Postal Address information.
3. The customer and vendor must have the same bank account information.
4. Tax numbers must be in sync according to SAP Note 2921774.

See also:2560047 – Linking vendor and customer to same BP

If customer and vendor only share the same number but data is different, how to handle this during initial load before upgrade to SAP S/4HANA

If customer and vendor only share the same number but data is different, the customer has to define a new BP range externally. The BP number ranges should cover the already used customer number. And for the other overlapping object(vendor), a new internal number range must be defined for the BP. After the transfer is finished a new BP/customer/vendor number range(s) must be defined (in case of identical numbers) which does not overlap to the existing number ranges.

How to define and preparing number range for contact person

CVI synchronization report MDS_LOAD_COCKPIT will assign an internal BP number to contact persons during synchronization. The internal number is from the number range identified as the internal standard grouping. Missing this configuration could cause error – R11124 “Business partner with GUID xxxx does not exist”.

See also: 2344905 – BP cannot be created from Customer due to error R11124

I hope this blog post was helpful for you. If so, click on “like” or “share”. I’m looking forward to your feedback and thoughts or clarification questions you may have in the comment section below.

Helpful links: