Business Partners in EDI

The business partner can be one of the following:

  • The business partner with whom the EDI message is exchanged, or
  • The parent business partner of the business partner with whom the message is exchanged

When you use the parent business partner the amount of conversion data that must be maintained is minimized. However, this situation assumes that all children business partners will use the same conversion values.

Example

You can have the following business partner relationship:

  • Parent Business Partner: PAR
    • Sold-to Business Partner: abc
    • Ship-To Business Partner: def
    • Invoice-To Business Partner: ghi

Using EDI you want to:

  • Receive EDI orders from abc
  • Send EDI shipment notices to def
  • Send EDI invoices to ghi

If the business partners abc, def, and ghi all have the same parent business partner (PAR), you can create conversions for each of the individual business partners, or you can define conversion values for only the (parent) business partner. The conversion values defined for PAR are also valid for abc, def, and ghi.