SAP S/4HANA HCM – Employee as Business Partner-Implementation steps & tips

SAP S/4HANA implementations are happening across globe. Employee master data is required in various SAP S/4HANA modules other than traditional on-premise HCM Solutions.The new data model in SAP S/4HANA is based on business partner (BP) Concept.Employee is treated as business partner as per the new data model.

SAP has released various KBA’s/How to guides on implementation of Employee as business partner.

The intent of writing this blog post is to provide a ‘ready reckoner’, few tips and tricks for implementing this solution.

Implementation steps & tips:

Know your customer system :

The  prima facie for implementation of Employee as Business partner is to know the current customer HR System. The implementation considerations vary based on the type of HR system/software.

1. 1. • KBA 2340095 will give more details on process to be followed for implementing employee business partner concept in SAP S/4HANA system with an integration to SAP Successfactors or SAP ERP
      • If the Customer is on non-SAP system for HR Processes then, there should be an integration established to fetch the employee mini master information/data into SAP S/4HANA system

Basic HCM configurations that needs to be in place for creating employee :

Below is minimum HCM Configuration that’s needed

1. Enterprise Structure
2. Personnel Structure
3. Infotype Configuration (HCM Mini Master)
   • Infotype 0000 – Actions
   • Infotype 0001 – Organization assignment
   • Infotype 0002 – Personal data
   • Infotype 0006 – Address (for vendor role)
   • Infotype 0009 – Bank details (for vendor role

Activation of Integration switches specific to Employee as Business partner creation

Table T77S0 should be configured to activate the inter/intra modular integration in SAP

Here is the snap shot of switches need to be activated

Tip 1 : Activation of these switches will automatically create an employee as business partner (Employee would have been created using transaction PA40 in the same system). 

• Report “/SHCM/RH_SYNC_BUPA_EMPL_SINGLE” should be executed in following scenarios
  • Employee data is integrated from Successfactors/different SAP HCM system/third party system then, this report should be executed after employee replication
  • If any BAdi is implemented to replace/default/edit data of employee BP then, this report should be executed to view/update the changes
  • The initial conversion of employee as business partner (as part of cut over activities)
  • Regular update of employee BP(background job to be scheduled)

Concepts explained above should suffice, to create Employee as business partner with BUP003 (Employee role) & 000000 (Business partner general role)

Extended requirements on employee business partner

A) Employee business partner to be extended to a vendor role :

Employee should be created as vendor in scenarios where employee’s expenses/salaries/loans are paid using employee vendor account.

The additional configuration that needs to be done to extend the employee BP role to Vendor role are :

• Reconciliation accounts for employees in Role FI Supplier : Reconciliation account is mandatory to create the vendor account. Hence, we need to define company specific reconciliation accounts here

• Default vendor data for employees in role FI Supplier : In SAP ERP,  we had an option to default the values from reference vendor while creating employee as vendor using PRAA transaction. However, that concept won’t hold good for SAP S/4HANA. Refer KBA 2397684 to get more information on business partner synchronization replaces PRAA transaction in SAP S/4HANA. SAP has provided a table in SAP S/4HANA to configure the reference vendor. This is company specific and client dependent table. Hence, a new transaction ‘BUPASYNC_LOCAL’ is provided. Refer KBA 2601253 on how to activate this transaction

Tip 2 : Configure this table if, the customer has the requirement to have reference vendor for every company code

• Default house bank specific to the country/company code : employee BP creation program reads HR Feature TRVHB to default house bank in vendor account.  The feature needs to be configured based on the house banks provided by customer for every country and company code combination.

B) Employee BP number and Employee Vendor number should be same as employee number with a prefix of alphabet/alpha numeric value :

This is the common requirement in most of the implementations.

follow the steps mentioned here to achieve this requirement

• Create employee number ranges using PA04 transaction. For example, number range :  00000000 to 99999999
• Configure the employee business partner number range with prefix  for example, ‘9P’  in Customizing (SPRO) -> Cross application components -> SAP Business partner -> Basic settings
  • Create number range
  • Assign the number range to BP grouping

• Configure the number ranges for vendor and assign it to vendor account group in SPRO -> Financial accounting -> Accounts receivable and payable -> Vendor accounts
  • Create vendor number ranges
  • Assign the number range to account group
  • Assign account group to BP Grouping in SPRO -> Cross application components -> SAP Business partner -> Basic settings
  • Assign business partner subgroup in the table T77S0

Tip 3 :the code for employee number range, BP Grouping, vendor number range and vendor account group should be same. in our example it is ‘E3’

C) Extend Employee BP to Customer role  : 

This requirement might not be common in all implementations. If we have this requirement then, this can be fulfilled with the following configuration steps

• Configure number ranges for customer and assign it to customer account group in SPRO -> Financial accounting -> Accounts receivable and payable -> Customer accounts -> Master data
  • Create vendor number ranges
  • Assign the number range to account group

Tip 4 :Customer role will not be created automatically when employee is created or when the BUPA sync program is executed. This role will get created automatically, if the reference vendor assigned  in transaction ‘BUPASYNC_LOCAL’ has customer role

Tip 5 :The code for customer number range and account group should be same as BP and vendor number range. in our example its is ‘E3’

D) Vendor should not be created for few company codes :

if vendor should not be created for few company codes/countries, then do not configure below

• Company code to reconciliation account assignment
• House bank configuration in HCM Feature for specific company/country
• Assignment of reference vendor to company code

Tip 6 : Vendor role will get created with out ‘vendor’ number generation and assignment. Implement BAdi ‘BADI_FITV_VENDOR_SYNC’ to restrict vendor role creation

This blog post is based on my implementation experience in SAP S/4HANA projects. The steps mentioned in this blog post will help to configure employee BP and extend the employee to vendor and customer roles