Customer and Party Structure

You create customers to properly record and account for sales transactions, as well as to identify other attributes of the selling relationship.

Recording a sales transaction requires that a customer, stored as a party in the trading community model, has both a customer account and customer site with a bill-to business purpose.

The key concepts related to customers and customer activities in the trading community model are:

• Party

• Customer

• Customer Account

• Site

• Relationship

• Contact

Party

A party is an entity that can enter into a business relationship with another party, such as buying and selling goods or offering services. A party can be either an organization or a person. A party exists separately from any business relationship that it enters into with another party.

Customer

A customer is a party, either an organization or a person, with whom you have a selling relationship. This selling relationship can result, for example, from the purchase of products and services or from the negotiation of terms and conditions that provide the basis for future purchases.

Customer Account

A customer account represents the attributes of the business relationship that a party can enter into with another party. The customer account has information about the terms and conditions of doing business with the party.

For example, you can create a commercial account for purchases made by a company for internal use, and a reseller account for purchases made by the same company for sales of your products to end users.

You can create multiple customer accounts for a party to maintain information about different categories of business activities. For example, to track invoices for different types of purchases, you can maintain an account for purchasing office supplies and another account for purchasing furniture.

You can also maintain multiple customer accounts for a customer that transacts business with more than one line of business in your organization.

You can share information about a party, such as profile information, creditworthiness, addresses, and contacts, across the customer accounts of the party. In addition, you can also maintain separate profiles and contacts, along with contact addresses and contact points, for each customer account.

Site

A site is a point in space described by an address. A party site is the place where a party is physically located.

A customer site is a party site used in the context of a customer account. A single customer account can have multiple sites.

A customer address is a site used for billing, shipping, or other purposes that are part of the selling relationship. An identifying address is the party site address that identifies the location of the party. Every party has only one identifying address, but a party can have multiple party sites.

Relationship

A party relationship is the role of the party in the context of another party. Examples include affiliate, subsidiary, partner, employee, or contact.

An account relationship between different customer accounts of a party allows for the sharing of billing, shipping, and payment information.

Contact

A contact is a person who communicates for or acts on behalf of a party or customer account. A contact can exist for a customer at the account or site level.

A person usually acts as a contact for an organization, but can also act as a contact for another person. For example, an administrative assistant is often the contact for an executive.