Working with Customer Master Records in SAP SD

Use

You create a customer master record for customers with whom your company has business contacts. This master record contains all data necessary for processing the business transactions. Maintaining the master data correctly can greatly reduce the work needed to process transactions. This is because the master data is automatically copied into the transactions.

How the Customer Master Record is Structured

Both the accounting department and the sales and distribution department have access to the customer master record. In order to avoid data redundancy, the data for both departments is stored in a common master record.

General data, company code data, and sales and distribution data is stored separately in the customer master record. Company code data depends on the company code organization. It is defined individually for each company code. Sales and distribution data depends on the organization in the sales area. It is defined individually for each sales area. General data is independent from company code and sales area. It applies to one customer in all company codes and sales areas.

The following figure displays the structure of a customer master record.

Data in the Customer Master Record

Different data is maintained in each of the three areas:

• General data is maintained for every customer. Such as address, communication, etc. This data is identifiable only via the customer number, not via the number of the company code or the sales area. Maintaining the data is possible from both the accounting view and the sales and distribution view.
• Company code data is only of interest for the accounting department. It includes, for example, information on insurance or account management. This data applies to only one company code.
• Sales and distribution data is only of interest for the sales and distribution department. It includes, for example, data on pricing or shipping. This data only applies to one sales area, and therefore is dependent on the sales structure (sales organization, distribution channel, division).