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Overview
The Maintain Business Partners screen is available across several modules, such as Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Purchase Order, and Material Sales.
NOTE: When the 'Enable De-duplication Searching Function' checkbox is checked in the System Options pop-up window of the Opportunity Management module, the [Table Mode] button will not be available when the user is creating new records on the Maintain Business Partners screen. For more information, see
Business Partner Record Type – Base Type
In CMiC’s Enterprise system, a business partner is defined as any organization or entity with which a company does any type of business. This could be a vendor, a subcontractor, a customer, a municipal/state/federal government agency, or even a potential customer that the company sales department is pursuing.
This record type contains fields that are relevant to all types of business or government agencies, and some data fields that are only relevant to vendors, customers, and subcontractors.
Business partner records are created at the system level, so they are shared by all companies set up in Enterprise.
Vendor & Customer Record Types – Extensions of Base Type
To store additional data that is only relevant to a vendor or customer business partner type, vendor and customer records are created from and tied to business partner records. In this way, business partner records can be extended with a vendor or customer record, or both.
Vendor record types are relevant to tasks in the Accounts Payable module and customer record types are relevant to tasks in the Accounts Receivable module. Vendor and customer records are based on business partner records. Therefore, to create a customer or vendor record, its base business partner record must first be created.
Availability of Record to Companies – System & Company Levels
When created, a business partner record is available at the system level, meaning that one record is available to all the companies defined in Enterprise. However, when a vendor or customer record is created, using either the [Vendor] or [Customer] button on the Business Partner tab, it is only available to the specified company.
When a vendor or customer record is created for multiple companies, using the Company tab, each company gets its own vendor or customer record. Therefore, the information on these records is specific to the companies for which they were created.
Sharing Business Partners in CMiC Enterprise
The Accounts Receivable, Purchase Order, Material Sales, and Opportunity Management modules also allow for the creation of business partners. These are referred to as organizations in the Opportunity Management module.
To integrate these modules for the purpose of consolidating and sharing information, they all create business partners in the same table, at the system level. It should be noted that all these modules use the same rules for numbering for newly-created business partner codes, and hence use the same code numbers. This should be considered when determining the coding format to identify business partners.
In the Opportunity Management module, however, a variation of the Business Partner record is used. The variant is referred to as an Organization record and has additional fields that are relevant to opportunity management tasks. Also, when an Organization record is created, the user has the option of checking its ‘Organization (Only)’ box. If the box is checked, the Organization record is only available in the Opportunity Management module; if unchecked, it is available throughout Enterprise as a business partner record.