In SAP all the entities who are involved in a business transaction are represented as partners. Ex :A carrier can be created as a partner on the sales order. This document describes the partner determination on the sales order. Partner function specifies the kind of the role the partner is playing in the document.
A partner can play many roles in a business transaction. Example is sold to party customer can act as a payer , bill to party and ship to party. To enable this the roles played by this partner (partner functions) should be assigned to the account group. In this case the account group for sold to party which is 0001 in the standard system is assigned to partner function BP, PY and SH.
Partner source specifies what is the source for the partner in the business transaction. The source for the ship to customer is sold to party. In a scenario where a carrier should be determined based on the ship to location, the source for the carrier is ship to party.
An user exit is also available to determine the partner. With this user exit, partner can be determined based on multiple criteria. To enable the user exit, origin field on the partner determination procedure should contain X,Y or Z. In the below screen shot, partner type ZP has Y in the origin field i.e. this partner is determined through the user exit. The following is the sample code for partner determination user exit.
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