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How To Make Trading Partner A Required Entry

The document discusses three ways to make the trading partner field required when posting to certain general ledger accounts in SAP: using field status groups, document types, or FI validation. It recommends using FI validation, which allows configuring a prerequisite, check, and message to prevent document posting if the trading partner is missing for defined account, user, and document type sets.

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2K views6 pages

How To Make Trading Partner A Required Entry

The document discusses three ways to make the trading partner field required when posting to certain general ledger accounts in SAP: using field status groups, document types, or FI validation. It recommends using FI validation, which allows configuring a prerequisite, check, and message to prevent document posting if the trading partner is missing for defined account, user, and document type sets.

Uploaded by

Furqan
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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How to make trading partner a required

entry (Part II)


Controlling 2016

Ashish Sampat

 Trading Partner: Definition


Trading Partner is a term used in trade and commerce and can be generally defined as “one of the
two or more participants in an ongoing business relationship”1

Trading Partner (Company) setup


Trading Partner has a similar meaning in the context of SAP Finance and Controlling, it
speaks about the business relationship among company codes. Trading Partner (field
VBUND) should be captured at relevant master data and transactional data – this can be a
key requirement for intercompany design. This data can then be used to consolidate
financial statements as well as reporting. Some of the transactions include elimination of
intercompany sales / purchases, intercompany accounts receivable / payable.
Trading Partner field is defined in the configuration node for “Company” (field RASSC) and is
stored in table T880
- Transaction OX15 – Define Company (updates table T880)
- Transaction OX16 – Assign Company Code to Company
Trading Partner maintenance on master data
Trading Partner is maintained on intercompany customer and vendor masters, as well as GL
accounts that are used exclusively for intercompany postings. (Whereas there usually are
dedicated vendor and customer masters for intercompany transactions, there may not
always be dedicated GL accounts for intercompany transactions.)
The following transaction codes are used for maintenance of trading partner on respective
master data elements:

 Transaction FK02 – Vendor Master (updates table LFA1, field VBUND)


 Transaction FD02 – Customer Master (updates table KNA1, field VBUND)
 Transaction FS00 – GL Account Master Data (updates table SKA1, field VBUND)

Trading Partner information flows automatically to the transactions, once trading partner is
maintained at master data level (i.e. on relevant intercompany customers, vendors and GL
accounts).
However, there may be instances where a GL account may have transactions for both
intercompany as well as third-party scenarios (example: Interest on loans and advances –
organization can receive interest on loans from external / third party entities or from
intercompany entities). It may not always be possible to define separate GL accounts for
each scenario, doing so may lead to proliferation of GL Accounts.
Since the trading partner is not maintained on GL account master data and does not
automatically flow to transaction data, trading partner will need to be explicitly entered at
the transaction processing level. As one can imagine, it is possible that trading partner may
be missed on certain transactions, thereby leading to inconsistencies and downstream
impact on consolidations. Trading partner may be missed due to lack of discipline among
users, lack of system checks or simply due to the quality of data sent by interfacing systems
– SAP or non-SAP.
Stay tuned later this week for Part II.

How can we make Trading Partner a required entry while posting financial accounting
documents for certain GL Accounts?
There are three possible alternatives to achieve this goal: Field Status Groups, Document
Types and FI Validation. We will look at each of these options below.

1) Field Status Group

Field status groups can be used to make certain fields required, optional, display, or
suppressed by using field status definition. There is a general belief among the SAP
community that field status group can be used for Trading Partner as well. However, not all
fields are available in field status group – trading partner is one such field that is not a part
of field status group.
Trading Partner (field VBUND, data element RASSC) can be enabled in Field Status Group by
adding it in table TCOBF (Coding Block: Assignment of Modif and Field Names from COBL).
With this change, field status groups can now be leveraged to influence Trading Partner
(suppressed / required / optional). However, this option is generally not recommended by
SAP. It may create inconsistencies while posting FI documents (OSS Note 1397715 “Adding
VBUND to the coding block”2)

 Transaction OBC4 – Field Status variants (GL Account level)


 Transaction OB41 – Field Status Groups (Posting Key level)

2) Document Types

Document types can be configured such that Trading Partner will be available for input.
Following fields need to be activated in Document Type setup.
- Transaction OBA7 – Document Types (underlying table T003)
o Partner Company can be input (T003-XMGES)
o Cross-company (T003-XGSUB)
This setup will open up Trading Partner at document level. However, it does not make
Trading Partner a required entry.
3) FI Validation
FI validation can be used to prevent document postings where Trading Partner is missing for
certain GL accounts. A validation in FI has three sections: Pre-requisite, Check and Message.
These sections are explained below with example.
- Transaction OB28 – Financial Accounting validation (configuration transaction)
- Transaction GS01 – Create set (master data transaction, generally not transported)
- Transaction GS02 – Change set (master data transaction, generally not transported)
Prerequisite:

For certain set of accounts (defined in set “ZGL_TRAD_PART_REQD” – figure 2)


For certain sets of users (defined in set “ZUSR_TRAD_PART_REQD” – figure 3)
For certain document types (defined in set “ZDOC_TYPE_TRAD_PART_REQD” – figure 4)
Check:

If Trading Partner is blank


Message:
Return an error with appropriate message
The implication of this validation: the user cannot move forward with this transaction until
the Trading Partner is entered.
Conclusion

 Given the shortcomings of Field Status Group and Document Type options, these
two options are generally not preferred.
 FI validations are easy to configure and maintain (they normally do not require ABAP
programming unless a user-exit or table-lookup are to be used).
 A simple validation like the one shown in this example can go a long way in ensuring
data consistency and accuracy
Figure 1: OB28 – FI Validation for missing Trading Partner for certain GL Accounts, Users and
Document Types
Validation details (figure 1)
Prerequisites:
BSEG-HKONT IN ZGL_TRAD_PART_REQD AND
BKPF-USNAM IN ZUSR_TRAD_PART_REQD AND
BKPF-BLART IN ZDOC_TYPE_TRAD_PART_REQD
Check:
BSEG-VBUND <> ''
Message:
Error Z1 032 Trading Partner is required for GL
Figure 2: GS01 / GS02 – Create / Maintain Set to define GL Accounts that should be checked
for Trading Partner

Figure 3: GS01 / GS02 – Create / Maintain Set to define Users that should be checked for
Trading Partner
Figure 4: GS01 / GS02 – Create / Maintain Set to define Document Types that should be
checked

References:
SAP Note 1397715 - FI: Adding VBUND to the coding block from https://service.sap.com

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