SAP VD02 — Change Customer (Sales)
A customer in SAP is not one record. It is three layers stacked on top of each other, and knowing which layer you are in explains most of the confusion around customer transactions.
The general data layer holds facts true everywhere: name, address, tax numbers. The company code data layer holds accounting settings for one legal entity: reconciliation account, payment terms for dunning, dunning procedure. The sales area data layer holds selling settings for one combination of sales organisation, distribution channel and division: pricing procedure, shipping conditions, delivering plant, partner functions.
VD02 maintains the first and third of those. It is the sales view of a customer. FD02 maintains the first and second — the accounting view. XD02 maintains all three at once. They are not three different customers; they are three doors into the same record.
One thing to know before you start on a modern system. In S/4HANA the customer master has been folded into the Business Partner, and transaction BP is the supported way to maintain it. VD02 may still open, may open read-only, or may be blocked entirely depending on how your system is configured. If VD02 refuses to let you change anything, that is usually why.
When you would actually use VD02
- Changing shipping conditions, incoterms or a delivering plant for one sales area.
- Adding or changing partner functions — a different ship-to, a new bill-to.
- Updating payment terms that apply to sales orders rather than to accounting.
- Checking which sales areas a customer has actually been extended to.
What the screen looks like
Customer
Sales area
Shipping
The fields, in plain English
KNA1-KUNNRThe customer number. It identifies the record across all three layers — the same number in VD02, FD02 and XD02 is the same customer.
KNVV-VKORG / KNVV-VTWEG / KNVV-SPARTThe three organisational units that together make a **sales area**. The sales organisation is the selling entity, the distribution channel is how you sell (wholesale, retail, online), the division is the product grouping. A customer has a separate set of sales settings for each sales area you extend them to.
Watch out: A customer that works fine in one sales area will be rejected in another until someone extends them to it. This is the most common cause of a sales order refusing to accept a valid customer number.
KNVV-VSBEDA code describing how this customer wants goods sent — standard, express, collected. It feeds shipping point determination, so it indirectly decides which warehouse or dock the delivery is created from.
KNVV-INCO1The international commercial terms that say where the goods change hands and who pays freight. They default onto every order for this customer and appear on the invoice.
KNVV-ZTERMThe payment terms that default into sales documents for this sales area. Note that accounting holds its own payment terms on the company code layer, maintained in FD02.
Watch out: The two can differ, and when they do it is nearly always a mistake nobody noticed. If a customer’s invoice due dates look wrong, check both.
The roles attached to the customer: sold-to (SP), ship-to (SH), bill-to (BP), payer (PY). One customer number can carry several ship-to addresses. The sold-to is the one you type into a sales order; the others are pulled in automatically.
Watch out: If an order is invoicing the wrong entity, the payer partner function is where to look, not the customer number on the order.
Step by step
- 1Enter the customer number and the sales area you want to change.
- 2If you only need address or general data, leave the sales area blank.
- 3Work through the tabs: Sales, Shipping, Billing Document, Partner Functions.
- 4Use the Sales Areas button to see every sales area this customer already exists in.
- 5Save with Ctrl+S. The change is effective immediately for new documents.
- 6Check the effect on a document that has not yet been created — existing orders keep the values they copied at creation time.
Errors you will hit, and what they mean
Customer 100214 is not defined for sales area 1000 10 00
Why: The customer exists but has never been extended to that sales area.
Fix: Extend the record. On a classic system that is VD01 or XD01 with the reference-customer function; on S/4HANA it is done through the Business Partner sales area data.
Please use transaction BP to maintain business partners
Why: S/4HANA systems route customer maintenance through the Business Partner. The old VD-series transactions are commonly deactivated.
Fix: Use BP and select the Customer role with the relevant sales area. The data is the same; only the door has changed.
Customer 100214 is currently being processed by another user
Why: Two people cannot hold the same customer master in change mode at once.
Fix: Wait, or find out who has it. Customer master locks are held on the customer number, so it will affect anyone editing any view of that customer.
Common questions
What is the difference between VD02 and XD02?
XD02 maintains all three layers of the customer — general, company code and sales area — in one pass. VD02 maintains only general and sales area data, and never touches accounting settings. If you have no business changing a reconciliation account, VD02 is the correct transaction for you.
What is the difference between VD02 and FD02?
FD02 is the accounting view: general data plus company code data. VD02 is the sales view: general data plus sales area data. They overlap on the general layer, so a change of address in either shows up in both.
Why can I not change anything even though the screen opened?
Two usual reasons. Either you are on an S/4HANA system where customer maintenance has moved to the Business Partner and the old transaction is display-only, or a field is controlled by the account group and has been suppressed or set to display for your customer type.
Transactions that go with VD02
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