A Business partner is a person, organization, or group in which any company has a business interest in the SAP system. Organizations can create, manage, and define their business partners. Customers or vendors are common examples of business partners. However, it is common in business for a vendor to provide you with certain goods and services while also being your customer, purchasing various products or services from you. In such cases, businesses manage two distinct data records—one for the vendor and one for the customer—but the link between the two is not reflected in the final records.
As a result, ERP solutions like SAP Business One would have multiple data objects for the same partner, resulting in redundant data. For example, if each role has two data objects, estimating the total business spending on that BP without mapping the two objects is difficult. Recent technological advancements in SAP Business One enable businesses to create symmetric links between customer master and vendor master data to reflect the relationship between the two.
In SAP Business One, customer-vendor integration converts BP-related data into customer-vendor master data and vice versa. When you create or update a BP record in SAP B1, the relevant data on the customer-vendor master tables are automatically updated.
What is the purpose of Customer Vendor Integration?
If you want to use Financial Accounting (FI) and SAP Business Partner concurrently, Customer Vendor Integration for the business partner may be required. Accounts receivable and accounts payable accounting are used in Financial Accounting (FI) for external company accounting as part of the Accounts Receivable (AR) and Accounts Payable (AP) sub-ledgers to manage accounting data for all customers and vendors. Financial Accounting does not rely on SAP Business Partner to manage business partners. Instead, it maintains its customer/vendor master records, which are integrated into all accounting transactions, such as creating business transactions on accounts and processing posting data.
Many SAP customers have long used Financial Accounting. Still, they are increasingly turning to other applications, such as Loans Management (FS-CML) or SAP Treasury and Risk Management (TRM), which use the SAP Business Partner to manage business partners. These customers require synchronous business partners managed as customers/vendors in Financial Accounting and business partners in other applications.
How to Perform Customer-Vendor Integration in SAP Business One?
SAP B1 version 9.2 introduced connecting customer master data to vendor master data, which has been widely used by businesses ever since. Let’s look at how to do this integration on SAP B1.
- Open the Business Partner Master Data window in the SAP B1 dashboard by selecting the Business Partners option.
- Then, in the same window, locate the customer who is also a vendor.
- Go to that customer’s Accounting tab and enter the vendor’s name beside the Connected Vendor field. Once finished, click Ok.
- Move to the Sales – A/B option and launch the Dunning Wizard.
- Click Next to proceed with the setup until you reach the Business Partners – Selection Criteria section.
- Click Add to open a pop-up window with BP Properties. Enter the customer code you want to add a vendor for right now.
- After adding a customer to the Dunning Wizard, go to the bottom of the window and click on Consider Connected Vendors.
- If you do not want to change anything in the Document Parameters and Recommendation Report windows, click on Next’ to continue this setup process and close the Dunning Wizard.
- Internal reconciliation is another application for this, which can be found under the Business Partners > Internal Reconciliations > Reconciliation option.
- This brings up the BP Internal Reconciliation – Selection Criteria window, where you can reconcile customer and vendor invoices.
- In the window, check the Consider Connected BPs checkbox and enter the vendor code alongside the Business Partner field.
- When you enter the connection, you will notice that it is two-sided, so that once you select a vendor, you can also see the customer’s transactions.
- Then, under the Business Partners’ > Aging section, open the Customer Receivables Aging window to obtain a customer’s aging report.
- There is also the option to think about connected vendors. Enter the customer code and select Consider Connected Vendors.
- After you submit, you can easily see all of the open transactions for that specific customer.
Final Thoughts
Regarding account reconciliation, customer and vendor integration offers a distinct advantage. As a result, it is critical to learn proper implementation from experts. TekSkilled provides training on best practices used by various industries to leverage the capabilities of SAP Business solutions for their business needs.