SD Question : Explain what is partner and account determination.

Partner Function - Partner Determination.
 
Sold-to-Party, Ship-to-Party, Bill-to-Party and Payer are standard partner function. When you create Sold-to-Party, the balance three automatically gets created/copied. You will need to change if you find that Invoice needs to be sent to someone else (Bill to Party) / Shipping needs to be divided at sent to 10 different locations (Ship-to-Party) / While payment comes from HQ (Payer) or there could be 10 Payers which means each Ship-to-Party then might be the payer and responsible for the Quantities shipped to them. In this case you will have to Create additional Partner Functions for one Ship to Party. 
 
Account Determination means the following:
 
Whenever a sale is posted to accounting, SAP must find (or determine) the account to which the revenues and discounts are posted. Therefore, a determination procedure is used to find the respective account, called the Account Determination procedure. The condition type searches all the records that contain accounts for the conditions that match the sale in the order of the access sequence. As soon as it finds a record that matches the conditions, it returns a condition value, in this case the GL account. 

In Sales and Distribution, under Account Assignment/Costing we can configure various types of Accounts. The various types of Accounts are Revenue Account, Reconciliation Account and Cash Account. We also have Revenue Recognition Account where we determine the Revenue Recognition Methods. For example a Service Contract of 12 Months generates Revenue upfront while the Service will be provided for the entire 12 months therefore the Revenue can be recognized at the end of each month after the Service has been provided. The Balance Amount is parked in Deferred Revenue Account. 

We need do the remember that whenever there is a Transaction there is a Billing Document generated and each Billing Document may differ from each other therefore there is a need to understand various Billing Document Types. Each Billing Document Type captures certain financial information. The Billing Document Types can be Cash Sale, Invoice, Credit or Debit Memo, Pro Forma for Order etc. The financial information mentioned in these documents needs to be posted to the respective Revenue Accounts.  

Field Catalogue – You store the Parameters/Field in Field Catalogue which can be included in combination based on the Account Determination procedure. These Fields are captured while creating the Condition Table. 

The next step is to Create Condition Table with the parameters chosen from Field Catalogue. New parameters can be created in Field Catalogue. 

The above two steps are a part of Define Dependencies of Revenue Account Determination.

Maintain Access Sequence and Condition. 

• Map the Condition Table/Tables in the Access Sequence 
• Create Condition Types and include the Access Sequence in Condition Types 
• Define Account Determination Procedure 
• Assign Document Types to Account Determination Procedure

To summarize the Account Determination Procedure, we can say that the dependencies for Account Determination is finally on the following:

• Billing Document Type – Cash Sales, Credit Memo, Debit Memo, Pro forma for Order etc.
• Material Account Assignment Group – Trading Goods, Finished Goods, Services, External Fees etc.
• Customer Account Assignment Group – Domestic Revenues, Foreign Revenues, Affliliate Company Revenue etc. 

• Sales Organization
• Distribution Channel
• Chart of Accounts
• Account Assignment Group for Customer and Material
• Account Keys (Type of Account)

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