SAP Customer Master Data – What is it? & Its Use.

What is SAP Customer Master Data?

SAP Customer Master data would include all the details regarding the customers that we need to maintain in the system. Subsequently, we use them as and when required. As its name suggests, SAP Customer Master Data is the Master Data related to customer information.

Now, Master data forms the basis of sales and distribution processing. Data about the products as well as about the business partners (customers) are the basis of sales processing. This is to say, it contains information that we always use in the same way.

Further, for Sales processing with the SAP ECC system, we require to maintain the master data in the system. In SAP, if you wish to sell finished goods, services or even scrap, you need a customer to record & execute the sales.

Types of Customer Master Data in SAP

Sales & Distribution Customer
Finance or FI Customer

Let’s have a brief look at both types of Customers.

Sales & Distribution Customer

A sales & Distribution Customer is one to whom you sell your manufactured or trading goods and services.

These are the products which belong to your organisation and for which you are known in the market. You can also use this type of customer for selling scrap materials. This is a regular feature in organisations when you want to record and track the actual quantity of scrap sold. This is when this scrap has a significant accounting and financial impact.

Finance or FI Customer

Finance or FI Customer is one where you want to record sales to those customers who are not regular ones. This means, they are not part of your regular sales and you do not offer your regular manufactured/trading goods and services to them.

An example of this can be customers to whom you sell your fixed assets after they were completely depreciated. Like you have machinery which has reached the end of its technical life and now you want to scrap it.

Similarly, some companies offer their used vehicles for sale to their employees first, before offering them at the open market. In short, FI customers are those, who are not part of regular sales. We don’t need to maintain Sales & Distribution specific data for them.

Account Groups in SAP Customer Master Data

We use Account Groups in Customer Master Data for the high-level classification of Customers. It helps you to classify your Customers based on different traits, sectors or lines of business. It also helps to decide which fields are mandatory when you are creating a customer related to a certain sector. Likewise, we can decide on optional, suppressed or hidden fields as. This helps users to not get confused at the time of Customer creation.

Example– You can make the Value Added Tax- VAT field mandatory in the Account Group of a regular customer. This helps the system to not let the user bypass the said field until and unless it populates.

Under Account Groups, you can configure it in the backend. Further, you can define if a certain Account Group’s Customer number can be assigned:-

Internally or automatically by the SAP system.
Externally by the User at the time of Customer creation
At a specific number range for a specific customer
Or whether the Customer’s Account Group number range is either numeric or alphanumeric.

Classification of SAP Customer Master Data

Customer master is a centrally shared data that both Logistics and Finance modules can use. Information contained in the customer master record can be both descriptive and have functional control depending on the usage. Customer Master Data is classified into the following three views:-

General Data

General Data in the Customer Master that is relevant for both Sales & Distribution and Accounting. Here the data fields are grouped on several tab pages.

The general data includes:-

Name, Address, Telephone number other contact details
VAT, Tax, Good Receiving Hours of customers
Market standing of Customers, Correspondence, Contact Persons with their designation and contact details etc.

Company Code Data

Company Code Data is relevant for Financial Accounting purposes and processes. It is specific to a given company code. This view records data of the Customer’s Accounting Data such as:-

Reconciliation account, sort rule, payment terms
With-holding tax information, payment methods, correspondence information with the customer
Dunning, insurance etc.

Company Code data only applies to one Company Code. This data is only relevant to Financial Accounting and includes:-

Account Management
Payment Transactions
Correspondence
Insurance

If you edit a master record, you must specify the customer number and a company code to access the screens containing company code data. Further, you can only invoice a business transaction if the data on the Payer partner function is entered in the Financial Accounting view.

Sales Area Data

Sales Area Data is relevant for Sales and Distribution processes and is specific to a given Sales Area. You can maintain the Sales Area Data in Various ways, depending on the Sales Area (a combination of the Sales organisation, Distribution channel and division).

Consequently, all the Sales related information will be maintained in this area. This includes Sales, shipping Billing and Partner Functions. All the data present in the system will be applicable only to that specific sales area. You can extend the customer for any other sales area as well depending upon business requirements.

Record Customer Data

This view is to record the data of customers related to Sales and Distribution transactions such as data for the sales process, delivery process, billing process and partner function.

The data for one customer can differ for each sales area. This data is only relevant to Sales & Distribution. If you edit a Customer Master record, you must enter the Customer number and Sales Area to access screens containing Sales and Distribution data.

Likewise, you can only process Sales and Distribution transactions, such as a sales order, after entering the Sales and Distribution data for a Customer in the Customer Master Data.

Importantly, all critical fields that a business must maintain in the system are set as mandatory fields so that the users will not forget to enter all the necessary data during the sales transactions.

Sales Area data of customers is further classified into the following:-