Consumer in SAP SD

Use

A consumer is a natural person for whom you create a customer master record and a master record as a central business partner. In an operative transaction, only the customer data are of any significance.

Consumer maintenance allows you to enter all the data on a single screen. If you are working with a consumer, then reference data (known as the reference customer) must be available for creating the master data and processing sales. The consumer data at company code and sales area level are copied from the reference customer.

You can create the following general information for a consumer:

• Personal data (e.g. name and gender)
• Address
• Banking details
• Payment cards

Reference Customer

You can create a maximum of one reference customer per client. You must maintain all the required sales area and company code segments when creating the reference customer (for this reason, a consumer cannot be a reference customer).

The function for creating master data uses the company code data in the reference customer as a template for creating a consumer master record. In the operative business transaction, e.g. in the sales order, the SD-specific data are required and procured dynamically.

Consumer Master Data

Structure

Central business partner data, address data and customer data are maintained for the consumer in the system. When you create the consumer, the customer data (e.g. address, bank data and payment card information) is automatically copied from central address/business data or from reference segments. The company code data is copied from the reference customer and created automatically. This allows you to use consumers in operative transactions in the same way as for customers.

Maintenance

You maintain the consumer in a single transaction. Select Logistics ® Sales and distribution ® Master data and then Business partners ® Consumers

The maintenance transactions that you use here are designed for processing central business partners and allow you to maintain the consumer data. All consumer data, other than the blocking indicator, can only be processed via these transactions. You have to process the block indicators in customer maintenance.

When you create a consumer, you may have to enter a consumer number. This number depends on the settings made for the consumer account group (0170 for external or internal number assignment). The number of the central business partner is grayed out and is supplied in the background via internal number assignment. Two screens are supplied in the standard system:

• Address
• Controlling payment transactions

You have to enter an address, otherwise the data is considered incomplete. When you have finished entering data, check your data and save.

Processing the Operative Business Transaction

Document Entry

No data is entered at sales area level for a consumer. The sales area-relevant data required during document entry is procured from the master data of the reference customer.

Partner Determination

The partner functions in the reference customer are evaluated. The functions sold-to party, payer, bill-to party and ship-to party are not copied from the reference customer, because they are already taken by the consumer.

The reference customer can be used to determine partner functions such as forwarding agent or employee responsible.

Output

You have to set output determination for consumer processing using the condition technique (i.e. the print proposal does not originate in the master data).