The Business Partner window allows you to define any party with whom to transact business. This includes Customers, Vendors, and Employees. Prior to entering or importing products, you must define your Vendors. Prior to generating Orders, you must define yours Customers. This window holds all information about your Business Partner, and the values entered will be used to generate all document transactions.
Enter the Search Key and Name of the Business Partner, and any Greeting you want.
Select the Active check box to indicate that this Business Partner is Active. Select the Summary Level check box if this record will be used as a summary or 'parent' record in hierarchies for Business Partners.
The Open Balance is a system maintained field. It specifies the net balance of all unpaid AP and AR Invoices for this Business Partner.
Select a Credit Status for this Business Partner. This field is used in conjunction with the Open Balance and Credit Limit on the Customer tab. It can be one of the following values:
- No Credit Check - Manually set - No Credit Management. (Similar to No Credit Limit)
- Credit OK - Credit Management is active.
- Credit Watch - System set. Credit Management is active and Open Balance is > 90% of Credit Limit.
- Credit Hold - System set. Credit Management is active and Open Balance is over the Credit Limit. This prevents this Customer from receiving Shipments, Accessing Assets or completing Orders
- Credit Stop - Manually set. It has the same restrictions as Credit Hold and also prevents Invoices from being "Completed."
You can enter a value in several fields: Description, Tax ID, Business Partner Group, URL, Reference No, Rating, Language.
The Tax exempt check box indicates whether or not your Business Partner is exempt from tax. If a business partner is exempt from tax, the Tax Exempt Rate is used. For this, you need to set up a tax rate with a 0 reporting, so that you can track tax exempt transactions.
The Prospect/Customer check box indicates a prospective customer or an active Customer. If this check box is selected, the remaining fields display.
Enter a Potential Live Time Value, Acquisition Cost, Employees, Share, and Sales in Volume for reference purposes.
Actual Life Time Value and Date of First Sale are System maintained values.
If you want your Business Partner to be a Customer, you click on the Customer tab and enter the appropriate values.
Make sure that you select the Customer check box.
You can select values for the following fields:
- Invoice Rule, Invoice Schedule, Shipping Rule, Delivery via and Price List. These will be used as default values when you enter a Sales Order or Customer Invoice for this Business Partner.
- The Discount Schema and Flat Discount % are used to define additional discounts to be given to this Customer. For more information on Discount Schemas, refer to the PricingGeneral Chapter.
- Select a Payment Rule and Payment Term to be used as default values when you enter a Sales Order or Customer Invoice for this Business Partner.
- Select a Sales Rep and Dunning if desired.
- The Order Reference and Order Description will print on all Orders for this Customer. They can be modified on a specific Order if desired.
- Enter an Invoice Print Format if this Customer requires a different Print Format for Invoices than other Customers. This will over-ride the Print Format defined for Invoices in Print Form.
- Select the Discount Printed check box to indicate that the discount given for a product will be printed on the document. If there is no discount or if the discount does not result in a price less than the list price, the discount field will not print.
- Enter a Minimum Shelf Life % if you want to restrict the shipment of products with guarantee dates. It will ensure that the product to be shipped has percentage of remaining Shelf Life equal to or greater than the percentage entered here. For more information on Products, Guarantee Dates, and Instance Attributes, refer to the ProductGeneral Chapter.
- The Credit Limit is used to specify how much credit a Business Partner will be allowed before Orders will be restricted. A value of 0 specifies that there is no Credit Limit.
If there are any outstanding invoices, the system displays them in the Credit Used field.
To enter the Location information for your Business Partner, click on the Location tab and enter the appropriate values.
The Location/Address field is mandatory.
Select the button on the Address field to display the Address dialog.
Select the appropriate country and the Address fields will display based on the address format for that country. When all data has been entered select the OK check box to save the address and return to the Location Window.
The following fields are optional: Name, Phone, Fax, 2nd Phone, ISDN, and Sales Region.
The following check boxes can be selected depending on the purpose you want this location to be used for: Ship-to address, Pay-From address, Bill-To Address, Remit-To address.
To enter the User/Contact information for your Business Partner, click on the User/Contact tab and enter the appropriate values.
You have to enter the Name for the Contact into the corresponding field. The following fields are optional: Description, Comments, Email, Greeting, Password, Title, Birthday, Phone, Fax, 2nd Phone, Notification Type, and Position.
Select the Full BP Access check box if this User/Contact should have full access to all Documents, Requests and Assets for this Business Partner via the Web Store. If this check box is not selected, the User will only have access to those entities defined explicitly as detailed next.