Business Partner
ERP Core uses the Business Partner concept that unifies the master data under a universal entity. A related topic is also the Organizational Entity.
The Business Partner holds all relevant data of a business entity in one place and certain characteristics change its business logic behaviour. For example, we don’t need a separate entity model (table) for customers and vendors. The customer/vendor is a role (attribute) assigned to a Business Partner.
As a general rule, if a real world object or entity behaves in a way that might generate an impact on the business, it must be a Business Partner.
All business transactions are between Business Partners. All of the Accounting module’s Journal Records must have a reference to two Business Partners (directly or indirectly) in order to determine the credit and debit and the correct Account for the entries.
The implementations of the Business Partner are real world business entities. The Business Partner implementations can be categorised as:
- public entities
- internal entities
The external business entities are real world persons, business or institutions that our company interacts with and have business transactions with.
The internal business entities are subdivisions of a business entity, such as Financial Accounting Units, Sales Organizations, Distribution Channels, Warehouses, Manufacturing lines etc. Each of these entities are Organizational Entities.
Even if an entity is an external entity, it can also be divided into organizational entities. For example, if we need to know the internal organizational structure of a vendor (that is from our point of view an external entity), we can model its company’s layout. That way, our own internal subdivisions can have relationships with the external entity’s internal subdivisions. For example our assembly line can directly communicate with our vendor’s manufacturing line.
The external Business Partner‘s implementations can be:
- a Person (individual person such as: user, employee, customer, vendor, responsabile person etc.)
- a Company (customers, vendors, manufactures, service providers)
- an Authority (public authorities, registration offices, tax offices)
- or a Bank
- other custom implementations
The internal Business Partner‘s implementations can be:
- Financial Accounting Units
- Sales Organizations
- Distribution Channels
- Warehouses
- Production facilities
- other custom business entities
All the implementations have a direct reference from and to the Business Partner.
Only one external implementation is allowed for each Business Partner. The Business Partner can only be one type of external implementation. It can only be a Person, Company, public Authority or a Bank. Only internal entities (Financial Accounting Units, Sales Organizations, Distribution Channels, Warehouses, Manufacturing lines etc.) can have multiple implementations and use the same Business Partner, although it is recommended that each entity has its own Business Partner.
The relationships between Business Partners can be configured using the BP Relationships property.
The hierarchical structure is configured in the Organizational Entity and the relationships are configured using the Organizational Relationship of the Business Partner.
Organizational Relationships are relationships between internal business entities. BP Relationships can be relationships between internal and/or external Business Partners / Organizational Entities.
This allows for example, to create hierarchical relationships between our company’s manufacturing unit and the supplier’s sales organization.
