In many business scenarios there can be a requirement to create a customer account group with a predefined number range and

with specific fields to be made mandatory and some other fields need to be suppressed or made optional. The business may also need specific partner functions such as freight forwarder or freight carrier to be provided for this account group. E.g. the client may need to have a customer master record for all its export customers who have a pre-assigned local freight forwarding agents. The first step is to create an account group under which the required customer master records need to be created. The Account Group are maintained in IMG under Logistics-General Business Partner Customers Control Define Account Groups and Field Selection for Customers. Depending upon the broad business requirement the Account Group which is closest to that can be chosen and a copy of that can be created for further configuration. In this example we have copied the Account Group 0001- (Sold to Party 0001) and created a Z account group (ZZJM) for our requirement

You can maintain a different number range here based upon the business recommendations. Now the field status in each tab for General Data, Company Code Data and Sales Data can be maintained based upon whether you want that field to be mandatory, optional or suppressed. For example if you want the Transportation Zone be made a mandatory field under the General Data Tab, than it can be made as shown below:

Or if the Inco terms has to be made a mandatory field in the Billing tab, it can be made as shown below:

The next step of assigning the specific partner function is done in IMG in Sales and Distribution Basic Functions Partner Determination Set up Partner Determination Set up Partner Determination for Customer Master. Create a new Z Partner Determination as shown below:

Next, go to the sub-function Partner Functions in Procedure and select the Partner function you need in this partner determination procedure. You can also specify which partner functions are mandatory and which are not modifiable when a sales order is created. In our example below we would like to have the Freight Service Agent be a mandatory function.

In the next step the partner Determination Procedure has to be assigned to the Customer Account Group.

Complete the next step for the Account Groups Function Assignment Assign all the partner function to the Account Group you just created as shown below:

When we create a customer with our Account Group we notice that the partner functions of SP,SH,PY,BP are assigned the numbers internally but the Freight Service Agent and Customs Agent need to be created separately as Vendors(LI) and assigned at the time of creation of Customer master.

The Freight Service Agent/Customs Agent need to be created seperately as Vendors and assigned.