Managing business partners

Overview

Companies that are listed as business partners are suppliers or manufacturers in License Management, Contract Management, and Asset Management.

You can add business partners manually or import them using a standard template.

Managing legal information for business partners

In the business partner dialog you can store the following legal data:

A country to whose company register the business partner belongs can be set in the Place of Jurisdiction drop-down field.
Use the City field to enter a city where the company is registered.
In the Commercial Register / Court field you can enter the name of the company register that has incorporated and registered the business partner.
Number is the company's registration number.
Tax-ID is the company's tax identification number.
In the Invoicing Entity (if different) lookup, you can select a different business partner if it should be referenced in all legal and financial documents.

How to import business partners

Running the Import action

Execute the Import Business Partners:

The Quick Import wizard will open.
On the first page keep the Use existing import definition checkbox selected.
Then click the Download Template File link.
Open the file and fill in the data to be imported into the system.
Upload this file.
Follow through with the other steps of the wizard.
After you click the Import button, the system will process the data. Upon completion you will see the import result message and a link to an import log file.

The Quick Import concept indicates that records can be imported from the corresponding navigation item by running the Import action. To be able to import records for any configuration item, an import definition for this configuration item must exist. An import definition sets the rules for importing data.

Common rules to consider when editing the import template file:

Culture context of the data: when entering the text, consider the language specified in the quick import settings. It is important especially if the Excel file is uploaded as it may contain country-specific data such as dates, number formats, or currencies.
Ambiguous values for matching attributes: if no or more than one matching values are found during processing of data, the value that is specified in the data source file is not saved to the system database.

Explanation of the import template

All imported data can be modified manually in the user interface.

Field Name	Explanation	Maximum Character Length
Short Name	Required: alphanumeric string for the business partner's short name for displaying in the user interface and in the reports.	50
Name	Required: alphanumeric string for logical identification of a business partner (usually the complete company name).	100
Status	Two options are possible: Active and Inactive.
Valid from	Date.
Valid until	Date.
Org.Unit	Abbreviation of the organizational unit.
Is Manufacturer	Boolean value that shows whether the business partner is a manufacturer (of goods) or not (1 = yes, 0 = no).
Is Supplier	Boolean value that shows whether the business partner is a supplier (of goods or services) or not (1 = yes, 0 = no).
Is Customer	Boolean value that shows whether the business partner is a customer or not (1 = yes, 0 = no).
Internal Account	Alphanumeric string. Identification number of the business partner in your purchasing system. This information is a key field, which means that it is used by the import process to determine whether to create a data set or whether to update the existing, matching data set.	50
External Account	Alphanumeric string. Your identification number in the business partner's system.	50
Notes	Alphanumeric string.	Unlimited
Street	Alphanumeric string.	255
City	Alphanumeric string.	100
State	Alphanumeric string.	100
ZIP Code	Alphanumeric string.	20
Country	Alphanumeric string.	50
Phone	Alphanumeric string.	50
Fax	Alphanumeric string.	50
E-Mail	Alphanumeric string.	50
Website	Alphanumeric string.	50