Finance and master data
The bank details come from the vendor, and get a phone call
Everything SAP needs to create the Business Partner, collected from the people who actually have it — the vendor's own company and bank details in their hands, not retyped from an email. Checked for duplicates, screened, and signed off by finance only once somebody has telephoned to verify the account on a number they found themselves.
What happens to a request
- You
Ask for the vendor
A new vendor, an existing one extended to another company code, a one-time vendor or a blocked one being reactivated — with who they are, what you would buy, what you expect to spend and why an existing vendor will not do. Scoped by company code and purchasing organisation, the way SAP scopes it.
- You
Check you have not already got them
The duplicate check and the sourcing route are both required, and until they are answered the request will not move — not onward, and not into the bin either. Turning a vendor away is also a decision somebody has to have looked at.
- Vendor
Types in their own details
Eleven things they must supply themselves: the legal entity, the registration number, the full address with its ISO country key, the two email addresses SAP wants, and the bank details. If they go quiet, the request withdraws itself after thirty days rather than sitting half finished.
- You
Validate and screen
The VAT number checked, sanctions and restricted-party screening with its findings written out, and a bribery and corruption risk rating. Anything wrong goes back to the vendor as corrections — the one thing from this stage they ever see.
- You
Approve, after the telephone call
A Finance Controller cannot give the approval until the call-back question is answered: whether the bank details were verified on an independently sourced number, and who was called, on what number, where that number came from, and when.
- You
Create it in SAP
The grouping, the reconciliation account, the order currency and the Business Partner number itself, recorded against the request — so the number in SAP and the evidence behind it are the same record.
The call-back is a field, not a policy
It cannot be skipped, and it asks four specific things rather than for a tick. It does not decide for you — "not verified" is an answer the form accepts — and that is the point: somebody has to put their name to it either way, before the approval exists.
No account number is ever retyped
The vendor puts their own bank details into the record. Nobody copies an account number out of an email, and no email is the authority for what it says — which removes the step invoice-redirection fraud is built on.
It collects what SAP asks for, in SAP's terms
Company code and purchasing organisation are axes rather than fields, so finance and master-data people can be scoped by them. The ISO country key, the two email addresses, the reconciliation account, the grouping and the Business Partner number are all on the record, which is why nobody has to translate a form into a transaction afterwards.
A vendor who goes quiet closes itself
Thirty days in the vendor's hands and the request withdraws itself. A half-finished vendor record is the one somebody picks up months later in a hurry and completes from whatever is to hand, so this area does not keep any.
Five roles, and the asker never approves
Requestor, Category Manager, Master Data Team, Compliance Officer, Finance Controller. The person who wants the vendor does not check them, the people who check them do not approve paying them, and every hand-over is on the record with a name and a time.
The half SAP cannot hold
SAP keeps the Business Partner perfectly well once it exists. What it does not keep is the half that happens first — who asked, who checked they were not already a vendor, what the screening found, and who telephoned to verify the bank details on a number they sourced themselves. That evidence normally lives across an inbox and a spreadsheet, which is exactly where it is not when somebody asks how a fraudulent account came to be paid.
Start with it