With introduction of Business Partner at SAP S/4HANA and CVI (Customer-Vendor-Integration) an additional object level in addition to old/known Customer and Contact Person concept has been implemented.

Customer Master and Contact Person is using BAS (Business Address Service) for many years by using central address tables. Business Partner is using BAS as well with own address data sets. This makes whole address management complex.

With this blog post I would like to bring some light into this topic.

Below picture shows full set of objects and tables which are affected.

As you can see, there are different mater data objects involved.

1. Business Partner
2. Business Partner Relationship
3. Customer Master
4. Contact Person

I will get into more details now.

Business Partner

In this case there are 2 Business Partners needed.

1. Business Partner with role FLVN00 or FLVN01 for customer
2. Business Partner with general Role 000000 for Contact Person

Business Partner for customer needs at least a customer role. This role will trigger CVI and takes care of synchronization of Business Partner data into “old” customer master.

Business Partner for Contact Person is just a needed object to create Relationship. For this Business Partner it’s enough to enter name and country as a minimum. Country is very important. This will trigger address segment creation at BAS address tables. Contact Person Business Partner has to be Business Partner Type of Person.

Business Partner Relationship

Business Partner relationship is the connection of two Business Partners. In this case the main Business Partner and Contact Person Business Partner. For Contact Person synchronisation via CVI it is very important to use standard Relationship Type BUR001 – Contact Person Relationship.

Only this Relationship type triggers CVI for Contact Person Synchronization.

Another important point is to assign Company Address (of Customer BP) at Relationship with button

Any other data at Relationship detail screen is relationship specific and is synchronized into “old” Contact Person data (table KNVK) by CVI. At conclusion each Contact Person Relationship represents an entry at table KNVK.

Customer Master

This is the “old” known Customer Master data at table KNA1, KNVV, KNxx. This data is used in sales processes and is the one and only place where customer role specific data is stored. CVI takes care that shared data like address and bank data is synchronized between Business Partner and Customer Master data.

Contact Person

This is the “old” Contact Person data mainly at table KNVK. This data is used in processes and other master data as you are used to in ECC. CVI takes care to synchronize data between Business Partner Relationship and “old” Contact Person data.

Business Partner

Following are main tables of Business Partner.

1. BUT000        – Main General Business Partner
2. BUT020        – Business Partner Addresses
3. BUT021_FS – Business Partner Addresses for Time-Dependent Address Usages
4. …

Relationship

Following are main tables of Business Partner Relationship.

1. BUT050 – Business Partner Relationships General Data
2. BUT052 – Business Partner Relationships Addresses
3. …

CVI tables

Following are main tables of CVI.

1. CVI_CUST_LINK        – Link table for Assignment Between Customer and Business Partner
2. CVI_CUST_CT_LINK – Link table for assignment of main Business Partner, Contact Person Business Partner and Contact Person (KNVK)

Customer

Following are main tables of Customer Master Data.

1. KNA1 – General Data in Customer Master
2. KNVV – Customer Master Sales Data
3. …

Contact Person

Following are main tables of Contact Person.

1. KNVK – Customer Master Contact Partner
2. …

Business Address Service (BAS) tables

1. ADRC                 – Addresses (Main Address table)
2. ADR2, ADR3, … – Address tables for Phone, Fax, eMail, …
3. ADCP                 – Person/Address Assignment (Business Address Services)
4. ADRP                 – Persons (Data for Persons)

Technically there are 5 objects:

Main Business Partner

Contact Person Business Partner

Business Partner Relationship

Customer Master

Contact Person

If a Contact Person has a Business Address maintained an additional address segment (address number at field ADRND) is created beside Contact Person Address segment.

As you can see each of this objects has its own address segment. If you want to analyze an address issue you should focus on the object which is affected.

I hope I could bring some light into address management jungle and help you to understand address structure in SAP S/4HANA.

HINT: If you want to see Business Partner address and/or person number, enter =$key into OK-Code field. A pop-up will appear which shows the numbers.