Technical Articles
Employee to Business Partner Synchronization during S/4HANA system conversion
Updated on Nov 9, 2021 – Relevant to SAP S/4HANA 2020 and higher
SAP SuccessFactors, the next generation HCM suite in the public cloud, is the go-forward HCM solution for both cloud and on-premise editions of SAP S/4HANA. However, some SAP ERP customers who are converting to SAP S/4HANA on-premise may not be able to move their existing SAP ERP HCM to SAP SuccessFactors in the near future and would like to continue to use SAP ERP HCM until they are ready to move to SAP SuccessFactors. Those customers can run their HCM in either a separate instance or a single instance with S/4HANA. The integration between SAP ERP HCM and S/4HANA on-premise will be available via ALE if HCM is running on a separate instance. If HCM is running inside of S/4HANA on-premise, then the integration is automatically provided as part of the Compatibility Mode.
In SAP S/4HANA, Business Partner (BP) is the leading object, and customer and vendor master data will be assigned as roles to Business Partner. This is one of the major changes in S/4HANA, and therefore, it requires considerable effort to prepare the SAP ERP system for conversion to S/4HANA. Implementing Customer Vendor Integration (CVI) and synchronizing customer and vendor data with Business Partner (BP) in the SAP ERP system is a prerequisite for system conversion to S/4HANA. You may refer to my blog BP and CVI in SAP S/4HANA System Conversion for a step by step guide for CVI Implementation and Synchronization.
If an existing SAP ERP customer who is using SAP ERP HCM is planning to convert their ERP system to S/4HANA, they are required to synchronize their employee data as well to Business Partner once they are in S/4HANA. There are two parts to this, one is to synchronize the employee vendors to BP in the SAP ERP System before system conversion and the second one is to synchronize the employee records to BP in S/4HANA after system conversion. I will explain both in this blog.
CVI Synchronization
CVI Synchronization – Employee Vendors
First of all, if employee vendors exist in the SAP ERP system, the employee vendors will have to be converted to BPs of category “Person” during CVI synchronization. To accomplish this, implement SAP Note 2539457 (CVI & employee vendors in incorrect BP category) and ensure that BAdI implementation HCM_CVI_MAP_BP_CATEGORY (BAdI CVI_MAP_TITLE) is active. This BAdI implementation identifies employee vendors (LFB1-PERNR has an entry) and enables the synchronization of those vendors to BPs of category “Person” while executing the CVI synchronization report MDS_LOAD_COCKPIT. If this note is not applied, the standard program will create BPs of category “Organization” which is not desired for employee vendors while executing the CVI synchronization report MDS_LOAD_COCKPIT.
Activities in S/4HANA
Once the system is converted from SAP ERP to SAP S/4HANA, carry out the following activities. For more details, please check the installation guide here.
- Activate Business Function /SHCM/EE_BP_1
- Set the following switches in the table T77S0 as below.
- HRALX HRAC to ‘X’
- HRALX PBPON to ‘ON’
- Check if the following BP roles exist in the system. You may check this in Customizing, SPRO -> Cross-Application Components SAP Business Partner -> Business Partner -> Basic Settings -> Business Partner Roles -> Define BP Roles
- BUP003 Employee
- BBP005 Service Agent
- BBP010 Freelancer
- FLVN00 Supplier (Fin Accounting)
- FLVN01 Supplier
- BUP010 Employment
- Check if the following BP Address Types are maintained in the system. You may check this in Customizing, SPRO -> Cross-Application Components SAP Business Partner -> Business Partner -> Basic Settings -> Address Determination -> Define Address Types
- HCM001 Employee Private Address
- HCM003 Address of Main Employment
- Check if the following Identification Types are available in the system. You may check this in Customizing, SPRO -> Cross-Application Components SAP Business Partner -> Business Partner -> Basic Settings -> Identification Numbers -> Define Identification Types
- HCM001 Employee ID
- HCM028 Internal Personnel Number
- HCM030 Employee ID (Service Performer)
- HCM031 Employee ID (Freelancer)
- HCM032 Personnel Number (Main Employment)
- HCM033 Personnel Number (Employment)
- The following switches in the table T77S0 are used to assign number range for the BPs with employee role
- HRALX PNUMB
- HRALX PSUBG
- The following switches in the table T77S0 are used to assign number range for the BPs with employment role
- HRALX ENUMB
- HRALX ESUBG
- Run the report /SHCM/RH_SYNC_BUPA_EMPL_SINGLE. You can use this report only if the initial synchronization of BP has to be executed in parallel jobs due to large volume of employees or during testing cycles. This report will create two BPs, one with employee role and another with employment role, for every employee record for which no BP exists in the system. For the BPs created during CVI Synchronization for employee vendors with vendor role, this report will add the employment role BUP010. In addition to that this sync report will create another BP with employee role for the same employee. That is, if you are using the new employee business partner data model by activating the business function /SHCM/EE_BP_1, you will have two BPs for every employee record in SAP S/4HANA (assuming the employee has only one employment). A log is written for the failed synchronization, and the error log can be reviewed in transaction SLG1 for object SHCM_EE_INTEGRATION, Sub-object: BUPA_SYNC.
- After completing the initial synchronization of employees with Business Partner, set up a background job for the report /SHCM/RH_SYNC_BUPA_FROM_EMPL. This report will update employee BPs based on the changes made to the employee records and keep the employee and BPs in sync. Secondly, this report will create new BPs for the future dated employees created in the system. An error log is written for the failed synchronization, and the error log can be reviewed in transaction SLG1 for object SHCM_EE_INTEGRATION, Sub-object: BUPA_SYNC.
- The new Business Partner with employment role is designed to keep employment related roles, such as vendor. The creation of vendor role is optional in the new BP data model and can be triggered using the report /SHCM/R_EMPL_HANDLE_BPROLES.
- Make sure the business process CVI_04 – Business Partner -> Vendor is active for component AP-MD (IMG Path: SPRO-> Cross-Application Components -> General Application Functions -> Postprocessing Office -> Business Processes->Activate Creation of Postprocessing Orders). This setting will enable the system to capture errors during vendor role creation for employment BPs.
Additional Info
- HRALXSYNC (report) – You cannot use this sync report for employee synchronization in SAP S/4HANA. For any other (organizational unit) object synchronization, you can use this report.
- Transaction PRAA – This transaction was used for employee vendor creation in the SAP ERP system for travel expenses. You cannot create employee vendors using this transaction, and it is no longer valid in the SAP S/4HANA system.
- Table IEMPLOYEE provides info on the link between Employee and BP in S/4HANA.
- Table /SHCM/D_BP_SYNC keeps track of the pending/failed employee records from previous/delta synchronization, which will then be picked up in the next run of the sync job.
- SAP Note 2578294 – FAQ – Employee to Business Partner synchronization in S/4HANA OnPremise
- SAP Note 2409229 – Employee Synchronization Report: FAQ
- SAP Note 2340095 – S4TWL – Conversion of Employees to Business Partners
- SAP Note 3023906 – FAQ – NEW Employee to Business Partner synchronization in S/4HANA OnPremise (NEW MODE)
- SAP Help: New Employee Business Partner Model in SAP S/4HANA
- Blog: New Employee Business Partner Data Model in SAP S/4HANA 2020 On-Premise
Thank you.
Brought to you by the SAP S/4HANA RIG and Customer Care team.
thank you! Was really helpful
Hello Chelliah,
very sound and helpful article, indeed.
One question remains for me, even after checking all kinds of SAP-Notes: What triggers the creation of the BBP005 Service Provider and BBP010 Freelancer roles?
I mean, what must be maintained in the PA30 infotypes to trigger the creation of BP's with these roles instead of the standard BUP003 role?
KR,
Steffen
Hello Steffen,
To my knowledge, the only way to trigger those roles is to implement Badi mentioned in following OSS note:
Best regards,
Jean-Marie
Hello Jean-Marie,
excellent, many thanks, this SAP-Note was initially published 9 days after my comment.
As if people heard me 😉
I will check it out immediately.
Yours,
Steffen
Dears,
thank you for very nice overview of integration.
when creating new HR no. in synchronization to new BP no. we are missing some values:
Any hints what to do ?
Regards,
Tilen
Hello Tilen,
I doubt there is a chance those fields to be mapped in standard.
I never implemented it myself but one of my colleagues advised me about badi BADI_FITV_VENDOR_SYNC where you have several methods (e.g. MODIFY_PERSON_CENTRAL_DATA). In this method, you have in terms of input all infotypes related to the personnel number and you can change almost all fields on general view of the business partner.
Information on the Badi can be found here:
As I said, I never implemented it so if you dig into this one, it would be great if you can give some feedback...
Best regards,
Jean-Marie
Hi Chelliah
I am a bit confused regarding this issue. In this blog you state that there is a risk of ending up with two Business Partners: one for Vendor and one for Employee.
Then if i read note 2542175, it is stated that is it Strongly recommended to have two seperate business partners: one for Vendor and one for Employee.
So could you explain to me what is the correct way of handling this?
Regards
Jakob Steen-Petersen
Having two BPs for employees corresponds to the new Employee BP model since 2020.
See: https://blogs.sap.com/2021/08/16/new-employee-business-partner-data-model-in-sap-s-4hana-2020-on-premise/
There is an upcoming openSAP course about this: https://open.sap.com/courses/s4h29
This model must be activated via Business Function. If you don't you'll have only one BP (BUP003 role)
Hello Chelliah
Thanks for such a informative blog. I wanted to check if there would be a feasibility to have different number ranges for BP for employees (Say active & retired employees). Any suggestions are welcome
Regards
Sridher
Hi,
Thank you for the article, it´s been really helpful. However, I am having doubts with the customizing of the field PNUMB. I see that there are also two additional fields that look similar to PNUMB, which are ENUMB and ONUMB.
I really can´t get the hang of this and am having doubts about customizing ENUMB and ONUMB fields the same way I would do for PNUMB, or if maybe it reallyisn´t necessary to customize these additional fields.
Can anyone shed some light about this issue?
Thank you in advance and best regards,
This blog helped me today, thank you !
Hi,
After creating Employee in SAP, it is not being synchronized automatically to BP. However, after running the program /SHCM/RH_SYNC_BUPA_EMPL_SINGLE it is reflecting the details in tcode BP.
Is there a TCODE for this program to synchronize details, as we cannot give access of this program to end user for processing.
Employee is hired and Employee as Vendor as created (General Data) but once i switched to Company Code Date (BP Role FLNV00), Company code and Reconciliation GL is not maintained. screen shot attached. Recon GL is already define in > Personal Management > SAP S4 Hana for Human Resource > Define Reconciliation Accounts for Employee in FI Role
Hello,
we used BADI BADI_FITV_VENDOR_SYNC (see OSS 2570947) for a extensive logic enhancement HR minimaster=>BP e.g. KNB1+LFB1 company code derived from PA0001-BUKRS including default values, additional BP roles e.g. FLCU00 and further logic.
We did not use the standard reference vendor BP functionality, because it is very restricted e.g. cannot be used for customer role and defaults. Everything can be handled by the BADI
Everything works fine so far and was verified with SAP OSS regarding feasibility before we started specification and implementation.
Best regards
Marco
Thank you Marco, Was trying to avoid any development work for this, but looks like "BADI_FITV_VENDOR_SYNC" is the only way forward.
Hello Deepraj Mukhia,
we tried everythig in standard but everytime at a certain point functionality was restricted. This was also shared with SAP OSS and confirmed. The BADI use also for default customer attributes (e.g. employee sales) was validated by SAP OSS even the BADI is designed and named VENDOR.
Advantage of the BADI is, that you can use customizing tables in the backround to control defaults e.g. by company code. We used this very extensively and it works quite well.
Best regards
Marco
Hi Syed Zain Ul Abdin Were you able to find a resolution to the above issue. I am facing a similar issue, where the company code is not getting assigned after a transfer. You can manually adapt but it is not taking the latest company code automatically. Exactly like the screen print that you have attached above.
Hello,
we used BADI BADI_FITV_VENDOR_SYNC (see OSS 2570947) for a extensive logic enhancement HR minimaster=>BP e.g. KNB1+LFB1 company code derived from PA0001-BUKRS including default values, additional BP roles e.g. FLCU00 and further logic.
We did not use the standard reference vendor BP functionality, because it is very restricted e.g. cannot be used for customer role and defaults. Everything can be handled by the BADI
Everything works fine so far and was verified with SAP OSS regarding feasibility before we started specification and implementation.
Best regards
Marco
Hello Chelliah,
thank you for the article.
The migration to a greenfield S/4HANA implementation of the employees with automatic creation of the BP (either old or new concept) is technically and from a process point of view well described in several blogs and als OSS notes, FAQ's etc.
BUT the even more tricky question is, how a real conversion - means technically ECC system will be transferred to a S/4HANA system on the same technical platform DB and application, will deal with employees, who were created only as debtors/creditors e.g. for employee sales or payment of travel expenses without any SAP HR/HCM implementation, which is also not intended to be a fully setup but only additional usage of HR-minimaster for SD/MM processes in the future, which will need the HR-minimaster still in the future, because BP cannot be used for internal emplyoees in the S/4HANA processes SD/MM e.g. for partner function assignment.
In your article you decribed the conversion of employee vendors (what about employee customers in own account group KNA1-KTOKD?) will moved to BP category "person", but here the assumption ist by identification LFB1-PERNR, that always a HR data record already exist.
But how to deal with a employee debtor/creditor KNA1-KTOKD/LFA1-KTOKK data record only without HR situation, if it is a real conversion and ECC employee data history should be kept?
Is the follwoing solution proposal feasible from a technical point of view by using OSS note 2539457?
a) Create HR minimaster stand-alone in ECC additionaly only for the conversion
b) Add the created HR PA*-PERNR to the respective KNB1/LFB1-PERNR data record by TX XD99/XK899
c) Process like described in your article
Open question:
Your article described only conversion of a single LFB1-PERNR to an BP. How to deal with a LFB1-PERNR=4711 and KNB1-PERNR=4711, which represent one single HR minimaster employee 4711. Result after BP conversion should be one single unique BP category "person" with BP roles FLVN00 and FLCU00 representing the employee.
How to achieve it and avoid duplicate BP employee data records.
Any hints and suggestions to solve this basic ECC situation, which I am experiencing in two ECC systems recently to be moved to S/4HANA, are welcome.
Best regards
Marco
Hello Chelliah,
Thanks for this article, regarding Customer role creation are they automatically created when running program /SHCM/RH_SYNC_BUPA_EMPL_SINGLE? or will it only be created when we execute the program /SHCM/RH_SYNC_BUPA_FROM_EMPL?
Hi,
As far as I remember, customer role is not assigned with the "classic" data model. Seems it's a feature covered by the so-called "New employee data model". Maybe you should check this article for more details:
https://blogs.sap.com/2023/04/07/external-workforce-and-customer-role-in-new-employee-business-partner-data-model/
Best regards,
Jean-Marie
Thanks Jean-Marie. looks like the Customer role will indeed be handled by running another report /SHCM/R_EMPL_HANDLE_BPROLES