Product Information
Multiple address handling of business partners in SAP TM with SAP S/4HANA oP2021 FPS2
Dear friends of SAP TM,
In this blog post, we present a new feature of SAP TM in SAP S/4HANA oP2021 FPS2 which adds another dimension to the handling of business partners and locations. It’s about the new capability of SAP TM to deal with multiple addresses of business partners when managing locations and in logistics integration, besides also now considering the validity of delivery addresses in transportation planning.
But let’s start with some background…business partners in SAPS/4HANA were already enabled to deal with multiple addresses for the following purpose:
Assume, a vendor frequently delivers equipment to SAP SE. Now, SAP SE has different delivery addresses, e.g. one in Walldorf and one nearby in St. Leon-Rot.
That means, the customer master of SAP SE needed to look like this:
| Customer number | Address | Legal entity |
| SAPWDF1 | Germany, Walldorf | SAP SE |
| SAPROT1 | Germany, Rot | SAP SE |
But this is not what you want as it’s actually only one legal entity.
So, you want to maintain it like this:
| Customer number | Address | Legal entity |
| SAP SE | Germany, Walldorf | SAP SE |
| SAP SE | Germany, Rot | SAP SE |
Meaning, one customer master record with different addresses.
And this is what has been introduced with the business partner. It can have several standard addresses with disjunct validities. Furthermore, it can have deviating addresses for respective partner functions, as e.g. for the delivery address.
Following this, in a first step many applications being part of an Order-to-Cash-scenario have implemented respective enhancements to adhere to this.
As an example, you can choose one of the possible addresses in sales documents. Therefore, a respective popup has been introduced:
The missing part so far was the enablement of such business partners in SAP TM.
The challenges are in detail:
- Locations have to be created and managed for each of the business partners addresses
- During logistics integration, the correct locations of the involved business partner have to be found, according to their addresses. And the validity of the addresses has to be considered in transportation planning.
With SAP S/4HANA oP2021 FPS2, we tackled those challenges!
The most important new features are explained in the following:
Location handling:
Let’s assume we have a business partner with several standard addresses and a deviating delivery address:
When we now want to create the respective locations for all or some of the addresses, we have the following options:
- Transaction BP
As explained here, a BAdI can be implemented to create and update locations of business partners automatically from transaction BP.
This BAdI has been enhanced by two example implementations to consider either only standard addresses or standard and also delivery addresses during creation/update of a business partner.
- Report /SAPAPO/CREATE_LOCATION
The report /SAPAPO/CREATE_LOCATION is intended to create locations referring to an entity, such as business partner, shipping point, plant or MRP area.
The selection screen has been extended to let the user choose which of the business partners addresses to be considered:
- During logistics integration ‘on the fly’
In this blog post, the location creation ‘on the fly’ is explained. This works now also for any delivery address used in a sales document. (see paragraph below for details on the handling of multiple business partner addresses in logistics integration)
- The locations can then be displayed and maintained in transaction /SCMTMS/LOC3
The selection screen had been enhanced some time ago, as described here. But this has furtherly been extended for multiple addresses of business partners.
If you enter a business partner with multiple addresses, a popup appears where you can choose for which address you want to see the location:
That’s technically the same popup as used in sales documents.
Furthermore, we added another elementary search help to the collective search help of the location name:
As you can see, this matches the part of the selection screen regarding finding a location by reference object. And in the search help again, you’ll have the popup to choose a business partner address.
Logistics Integration:
When it comes to the integration of sales documents with TM, we’re now able to deal with delivery addresses of customers that deviate from the standard address. As explained above, a popup during the creation of the sales document lets the user choose the delivery address. TM then searches for the corresponding location, or might be creating it ‘on the fly’, and takes it into account for freight unit building and transportation planning.
Moreover, the validity of addresses has to be considered during transportation planning.
Assume, you want to deliver goods at an address whose validity is restricted. E.g. there’s some downtime due to maintenance or whatever. In that case, transportation planning has to be adjusted in a way that delivery takes only place during times when the address is valid. But of course this has still to be in the delivery window given by the sales document.
See the following example:
Imagine, the delivery window as maintained in the sales document is from Oct 3rd to Oct 10th.
Now, we could have the following use cases:
- The delivery address is valid only before Oct 3rd or after Oct 10th -> No delivery with the requested time and address is possible, an error message is raised
- The delivery window is fully within the validity of the delivery address -> Everything fine, delivery is possible
- The validity of the delivery address ends at Oct 8th -> The delivery window is adjusted in transportation planning to end at Oct 8th
- The validity of the delivery address starts at Oct 5th -> The delivery window is adjusted in transportation planning to start at Oct 5th
One important restriction with SAP S/4HANA oP2021 FPS2 has to be kept in mind. As already mentioned, the above is only implemented for Order-to-Cash-scenarios. It’s not supported yet for any procurement scenarios, meaning multiple addresses of suppliers are not considered yet in logistics integration with TM.
Additional information can be found in the respective note 3166861.
So, those enhancements are surely a big step towards a more detailed and accurate transportation planning in scenarios when a customer has several possible delivery addresses and with considering their validities.
I appreciate any questions and comments!
Best regards,
Michael
Home Like Home 🏡🏰
Hi Michael,
A plant can have multiple storage location and when an STO is created between storage locations of two plants or same plant, S/4 TM creates one time location while in reality our storage locations are not temporary or one time location/address.
Here is scenario
Plant1 -is having corresponding BP1 and Storage location1 SL1 - (SL1 have own address)
Plant2 -is having corresponding BP2 and Storage location2 SL2 -( SL2 have own address)
We don't maintain any BP for storage locations nor any location masters data is created for them ,it's maintained in S/4 system.
Now when STO is created S/4 TM does not find any location master data for storage location and create OTL ( one time location ) .
Question- Please validate - if below will work or not.
If we maintain all the storage location address on their corresponding plant level so that during planning TM can read the multiple address and avoid creation of OTL? Is this possible with current release.
Hello Saurabh,
I think your scenario is totally different to the one described in the blog post. There, it's about BP acting as customers in an order-to-cash-scenario. So the described functionally within TM integration is only implemented for sales documents like a sales order.
Best regards,
Michael
Hi @Michael Haase
how do we update the locations which are created from the Business partners. In my current project we are wokring on a side car scenario where all the BPs are integrated from ECC to TM through DRF out. As you explained, we are runnng the /SAPAPO/CREATE_LOCATIONS to create locations in the locations master with location type 1021. But what if there is any change in the BP in ECC. the changes will be reflected on the BP in TM but how to update the already created location with respect to the update BP? is there any report.. The report /SAPAPO/UPD_LOC_SP_PL is only to update the Plants and shipping points but not the Business partners. So do you have any solution in this case?
Thank you
Hello Pavan,
What updates do you mean, address updates? That would be the only ones I could think of as use case.
As far as I know there's no possibility for automatic updates in this scenario. If the business partner is updated in transaction /NBP a BAdI can be used to propagate changes to the location. But I've once been told that this BAdI is not processed in the replication case.
I'm not familiar enough with the business partner functionality to know whether there's any alternative, sorry!
Best regards,
Michael
Hi Michael,
Thanks for the reply. Then how are the updates (change in address/blocks/description change) can be reflected in the BP locations. what is the best practice/approach you can think of to overcome this gap? (only updating the changes in the Location master manually??)
Thank you
Hi Michael Haase
How do we update the locations in Purchase Orders? In one project we are currently implementing the embedded TM inbound solution, i.e. a freight forwarder is collecting goods from suppliers. Some suppliers do have multiple pickup addresses or TM is pulling the incorrect location address.
How can we assign the correct address to the right location?
In your post you mention that this enhancement is "not supported for any procurement scenarios, meaning multiple addresses of suppliers are not considered yet in logistics integration with TM". Do you have any updates when this solution to update locations for suppliers (forwarders do collect the consignment at the correct supplier location) will be available?
Thank you.
Best Regards,
Sanjoy
Hello Sanjoy,
I have no information when this multiple address handling is available for procurement scenarios.
I also have no experiences how to cover your requirement. Two possibilities which come into my mind are to use document-specific addresses which use one time locations or to create a supplier for each address. But obviously both options aren't really useful.
May be someone else reading this has any experiences?
Best regards,
Michael
Hello Michael,
would it be possible to change the one-time location to a different pickup address for each supplier? In our specific case the address to be selected as pickup address is a EWM stock location which TM is not considering. I would presume this relates to the same issue that SAP TM Inbound does not support this solution?
Thank you for your help.
Best regards,
Sanjoy
Hello Sanjoy,
You mean creating one supplier per pickup address? Similar to the example I mention above, with the different customers per delivery address?
Assuming this, you would create the suppliers with the corresponding pickup address. And either the corresponding location is created together with the business partner (if a respective BAdI is implemented) or the location is created 'on the fly' during logistics integration with TM. But in both cases, the location is a 'regular' location of a business partner, no one time location.
As mentioned, this is not too nice but similar to the workaround used in the sales scenario, as explained above.
Best regards,
Michael