Trading Partner issue in ECC

[Former Member]

I have just activated the trading partner in ECC vendor/customer master on 1.09.08, thus all posting before this date was posted without trading partner information.

In BCS, I plan to load balance as at 31.8.08 using flexible upload as opening balance with all the "correct" trading partner information breakdown and subsequently, period movement will be extracted from ECC.

However, I notice that in ECC, when we make payment to open item created before 1.9.08 (document without trading partner), system will not populate the trading partner information, instead the trading partner information in original line (i.e. blank) will be posted.

I think this will create a problem, as I alrady uploaded the inter company balance with correct breakdown, but now period movement will be posted without trading partner, thus my balance in BCS will not be correct.

Anyone face the same issue before? Appreciate you can share with me how to overcome this issue, thanks.

Regards.

[dan_sullivan · Accepted solution]

This is not an uncommon problem. A few ways to address this are: correction posting in ECC, or correction posting in BCS.

In ECC a posting to move amounts from blank/null trading partner to actual trading partner is one solution. However this is not always possible when the accounts are reconciliation accounts.

In the case of reconciliation accounts it may be better to post the correction in BCS at posting level 10.

Another way to address this is to change the breakdown for these accounts to require trading partner and if blank default is used. Then the correcting entries are from default trading partner to the true trading partner in BCS.

[Former Member]

Hi Dan,

Thanks for your reply. As I am working on a very big group (around 100 subsi and associate company). Thus I am trying to find a way to minimise these correction in BCS.

As for your suggestion to change the default to actual trading partner, can you please elaborate further as there might be lot of trading partner breakdown in one reconciliation account, is there any field that I need to activate to get the system to put in the correct trading partner?

Thanks for helping.

[Former Member]

Dan designated the proper directions.

Unfortunately, there is no way to determine in BCS the proper trading partner by default value.

Certainly, some ABAP program in ECC may do it. But, as you understand, that's not the easy way.

[Former Member]

another way to look at the problem is to have a reconciling item tracking all those blank VBUNDs in another tool like Excel or Access until they all clear. doesn't sound pretty, but may be more expedient than trying to code in ABAP (and test, and move to production, and have it in the project plan, etc...). you may also ask your development team if a simple BDC session in ECC can take care of mass change of documents with blank VBUND if you can provide the values to populate the field.