Topic overview
Comarch ERP Enterprise shows all persons and organizations as partners and they are edited only once, regardless of whether they appear in the business processes as customer, supplier or in another role. A partner’s data is saved only in one location. In Comarch ERP Enterprise, you can use a partner in different ways in different business processes at the same time. A field of application is a multi-level organizational structure from the central concern to the smallest department. Additionally, you can also create group structures in Comarch ERP Enterprise.
Partners belong to the master data of a company. The term partner indicates people and organizations that are important for carrying out internal or external company operations. A partner can accept various roles. A role means that a partner takes a specific position in the processes and has a specific task.
Items always receive only one unique identification regardless of the partner role and assigned data. They are used in the vouchers of the Sales or Purchasing frameworks, for instance. In addition, role-specific data is created for some partner roles, for instance supplier data for a partner in supplier role. Base data is created for every partner, such as the address.
This document describes in detail the settings you can have for a partner with Contact role. It provides an overview of the data that can be entered in Base and Relationships views.
General instructions for handling partners, for instance how to create or edit a new person as partner, have been provided in the document Procedures: Partners.
Definitions of terms
Partners – A partner is a natural person or an organization. A partner can be in a relationship (partner relationship) with its home company (i.e., the client company of the OLTP database currently being used) and also with other partners. One partner can thus appear in different partner roles and in different business processes (partner usages).
Affiliation – The affiliation differentiates between internal partners, such as an employee, and external partners that do not belong to the home company (i.e., the client company assigned to the currently used OLTP database), such as a customer or supplier.
Partner relationships – A partner relationship is the connection of one partner to another partner. A distinction is made between outgoing and incoming relationships. Outgoing relationships are created in one partner and refer to another partner. With the Where-used list function, you can search current incoming relationships to determine where a partner is also used. Partner relationships have a relationship category.
Partner name – The partner name is the partner’s name or company name. The partner has the same name in every partner role assigned.
Partner number – A partner is identified uniquely by the partner number. The partner has the same number in every partner role and partner usage. The partner number can be assigned manually or automatically from a number range.
Pseudo-partner – A pseudo-partner is similar to a partner and represents a partner that has a one-time business relationship. In orders, a pseudo-partner can be used as a customer or supplier that is not entered in the system as a partner with partner data, and without having to enter such data. The information that is displayed automatically for a partner, such as name and address, may be changed for each order involving a pseudo-partner. When the data are transferred into financial accounting, name and address are transferred together with the pseudo-partner number. A pseudo-partner can only be created in the Organization partner category. A partner number and a pro forma name are required.
Partner role – Just as different business relationships can exist between partners, different partner roles can exist for one partner in Comarch ERP Enterprise. For instance, a supplier can have the Supplier partner role. A partner can possess multiple partner roles: the partner in the supplier role can also have the Customer partner role if that party not only supplies you, but also purchases from you. Partner roles determine the type of transactions. For example, a sales order can only be generated for partners with the customer partner role. Some partner roles have distinct partner usages, so that for example a supplier in a purchase order can also be used as a delivery partner.
Partner category – A partner in the Comarch ERP Enterprise system is either of the Person or Organization category.
Partner usage – Within a partner role, a partner can be used in a voucher for different purposes. A partner qualified as a supplier can be used as a purchasing RFQ recipient, for instance.
Application description
The master data for persons and organizations are entered in the Contacts application. The primary function of Contacts is to create addresses and other master data. The contact data are used for purposes such as sales campaigns in the Relationship management. If a partner in the Contact role is assigned another role, it automatically loses the Contact role.
The application consists of an identification pane and a work pane.
You can select between various views for different partner roles in the standard toolbar. The displayed fields change according to the view you select for the role-specific data in the work pane. The identification pane is identical in all views.
The following views are available in the Contact application:
- The Base view is used to create the multi-role base data of a
- The Marketing view is used to create and edit special data for the Relationship management.
- The Relationships view is used to display all relationships of a partner. Relationships with relationship types that have not been predefined can be created and edited.
The Contacts application otherwise corresponds with the Partners application. For field descriptions, refer to the Partners documentation.
Business entities
The following business entities are relevant to the Contacts application. They are used, for example, to perform one of the following:
- assigning authorizations,
- providing activity definitions or
- importing or exporting
Partners: com.cisag.app.general.obj.Partner
Marketing partner: com.cisag.app.crm.obj.PartnerMarketingInfo
The business entities belong to following business entity grouping: com.cisag.app.general.MasterData
Authorizations
Authorizations can be assigned by means of authorization roles as well as by assigning an organization. The authorization concept is described in the technical documentation Authorizations.
Special capabilities
The Contacts application has no special features.
Organizational assignments
To ensure that a person can use the Contacts application, the user must be assigned to at least one organization.
Special features
The organization-related features for Contacts application have been described in the chapter Multi-site and single-site with content-based authorizations. There are no special features in a pure single-site environment.
Authorizations for business partners
The Contacts application, Base view is enabled for the following types of business partners:
- Customers
- Suppliers
- Sales representatives
Multi-site and single-site with content-based authorizations
Overview
For basic information on multi-site environment, refer to Introduction: Multi-site. This document describes the features in the Partners application. A partner can consist of several entities. They are partly identified across the company, that is, without organization reference and partly with organization reference. Without organization reference:
- Partner base with exception of fields Contact and Sales representative
- Bank details in the Financials view
- The Sales tax ID and Fiscal code fields in Financials view
- Employee data
With organization reference:
- Financials data with exception of bank details Sales tax ID and Tax number
- Customer data
- Supplier data
- Marketing data
- The Contact and Sales representative fields in Base view
The data without organization reference are same across the company in all organizations. Data with organization reference can be different for each organization. In case of customer, supplier and marketing data, it is possible to accept the data from parent organizations without accepting data processing.
Partners in a multi-site environment from the user’s perspective
Assigning new role
Assigning a new role is possible only for those users whose assigned organizations contain the organization responsible for the partner. The data of a new role such as customer and supplier or marketing data is normally created in the (active OLTP) client’s organization. The user receives the authorization to create this partner’s data for the (active OLTP) client’s organization. The role data is then accepted for the source organization (the organization last active), if possible.
Employee data is saved regardless of the organization. The organizational structure has no significance here.
Organizational structure
In addition to the standard tabs, the navigation pane contains the application of the Organizational structure tab. The contents of the tab depend on the view selected in the application pane.
If one of these views, Base, Relationships has been selected, a list with all authorized organizations of the user is displayed in the Organizational structure tab, regardless of the affiliation to the organizational structures. The display can be changed with the button on the left next to the selection field in the list header. The display can either show only the authorized or all organizations. When all organizations are displayed, the organizations for which the user is not authorized are not available for selection. If Marketing view is selected, the structure tree with sales organizations is displayed in the Organizational structure tab.
Double clicking one of the organizations will lead to the application’s active organization being selected and the data will be loaded. You can automatically switch to the view by double clicking on one of the displayed roller icons.
The role data can be accepted by a parent organization maintaining the data in Marketing view. There are two buttons in Organizational structure tab for this purpose:
- Accept data for the selected organizations
All selected organizations accept the role, if possible. - Accept data for the selected organizations and for their subordinate organizations
All selected organizations and their subordinate accept the role, if possible.
Action [Accept data for the selected organization]
[Accept data for the selected organization] is available in the Partners application. This action accepts the data for the selected organization. The data is accepted from the next higher organization in which the data can be edited. Data processing is not possible. If you are dealing with all organizations starting with the organization editing the data up to the organization accepting data, the managing organization of a business entity must be same for all organizations. This must be applicable for all business entity references that appear in role.
The business entity references that have not been entered, that is, their fields are empty, must also be handled in the partner role.
All parent organizations must edit or accept the role data themselves, so that an organization can accept role data. If a parent organization cannot accept the role and does not edit it either, the subordinate organization cannot accept the role data either.
If the processing of a business entity has been accepted for a certain organization in Organizations application, it can restrict the data or processing acceptance of the partner role for an organization.
Item utilizations and relevant business entities have been explained below.
- Role Business entity Marketing – Marketing classification 1 to 5
Action [Accept data processing for the selected organization]
[Accept data processing for the selected organization] is available in the Partners application. This action accepts data processing for the selected organization. Data processing is possible for the selected organization. If you are dealing with all organizations starting with the next high organization editing the data up to the organization above the one accepting data processing, the managing organization of a business entity must be same for all organizations. This must be applicable for all business entity references that appear in role.
The business entity references that have not been entered, that is, their fields are empty, must also be handled in the partner role.
All parent organizations must edit or accept the role data themselves, so that an organization can accept role data processing. If a parent organization cannot accept the role and does not edit it either, the subordinate organization cannot accept the role data either.
If the processing of a business entity has been accepted for a certain organization in Organizations application, it can restrict the data or processing acceptance of the partner role for an organization.
Item utilizations and relevant business entities have been explained below.
- Role Business entity Marketing – Marketing classification 1 to 5
Searches
The navigation pane searches always show data of the organization selected from the selection field for organizations in the toolbar.
In contrast, the dialog searches always show the data of the active organization within the application. The active organization is the selected organization of the organization structure in the navigation pane. The active organization is always displayed in brackets in the title pane of the application.