Business Partner Check Functions for SAP S/4HANA with Integrated Add-Ons

Changes under SAP S/4HANA

The traditional method of creating and maintaining customers and suppliers is eliminated in the SAP S/4HANA system, which, among other things, changes the role accounts receivable/accounts payable play. Using the business partner becomes compulsory, making it a central element of the master data. Accounts receivable and accounts payable remain, but are relegated to roles subordinate to the business partners. This means that the master data must be cleaned up and converted into business partners before SAP S/4HANA migration. This also affects functions that build upon this structure, such as the sanctions list check for business partners. For many companies, the sanctions list check is an autonomous module that isn’t integrated into the SAP ERP system. For an upcoming SAP S/4HANA migration, this represents a potential source of error, making it a smart move to convert this function prior to migration. One highly effective solution is to integrate the sanctions list check directly into the SAP ERP system with the help of an add-on. This eliminates the need to transmit data to external modules or operate additional servers. Checks and follow-up actions are then treated as normal SAP transactions, including documentation in the SAP system.

Check sanctions lists under S/4HANA

The “M.SecureTrade Sanctions List Check” solution from SAP services provider Mercoline is a tried-&-true add-on for checking sanctions lists. The latest Version 3.0 runs under SAP ERP ECC 6.0 as well as under SAP S/4HANA. An S/4 HANA-compatible version is available for user companies as part of the migration, and will necessitate only minor adjustments for new features specific to SAP S/4HANA, such as setting up jobs for business partner checks. For potential users of this Mercoline solution, converting sanctions list checks to the M.SecureTrade Sanctions List Check add-on while still using SAP ERP is risk free. In SAP S/4HANA, the add-on checks all of the business partners in all possible roles, including accounts receivable and accounts payable. The function can batch check mass data, run parallel to the process directly in company documents such as orders, assignments, deliveries, invoices, etc., and conduct maintenance of a business partner’s master data. The conversion to business partner under SAP S/4HANA ensures that in the future, these checks are conducted punctually for accounts payable or accounts receivable, as well as for all of the desired business partner roles and various accompanying processes. Various roles such as designated authority, account holder, interested party and more are automatically taken into consideration. This reliable process also checks names and addresses against identical or similar spellings according to compliance criteria. Should there be a hit on a sanctions list, a processing ban may be initiated. In addition, whitelists or blacklists can be created, and the import of current lists can be automated. Each step of the check is documented and can be accessed as verification at any time.