FK01-Create vendor master

Business Scenario– When we are doing business with a vendor, we need to create the vendor first in SAP.

Please note- If You are using an  S/4 HANA system, a vendor is not created using this tcode- Refer to the create vendor in S/4 HANA guide.

Vendors are created for a particular company code using FK01 or centrally using XK01.

This guide is for creating a vendor using FK01.

Before we create a vendor in SAP, we would need to have certain information about the vendor.

There should be a process in the company on getting certain documents from the vendor, e.g., W9 info, etc. before we can proceed with creating the vendor in SAP.

Access through the menu path

Accounting-Financial Accounting-Accounts Payable-Master Records- Fk01 Create

Or Access it directly through the tcode- FK01

Enter the following info

1- Vendor– Enter the vendor number that you are creating, If you are using an external number range for the account group entered.

If the Account group entered uses an internal number range, i.e., the system decides the vendor number, then we need to leave the vendor number blank, and the system will provide us the next available number.

2- Company Code- Enter the company code for which you want to create the vendor

3- Account Group – Enter the Account group under which you want to create the vendor.

You can have a separate account group for a particular type of customer. E.g., Wholesale customers can have one account group; retail can have another.

You can control the way the fields appear on the vendor master based on the Account group. E.g., for wholesale customers we need a certain field to be required, or for retail customers, we don’t need certain fields, and we can hide them.

This is controlled at the Account Level.

The Account Group is also linked to the number range. The number range can be internal or external.

Reference section

This section is used if you want to create a vendor by using another as a reference.

Vendor- Enter the vendor number that you want to use as a reference to create the new vendor

Company Code-Enter the company code that this vendor belongs to

Hit Enter and enter details for this vendor.

There are many fields, so we won’t go through them all. Most are self-explanatory.

If you need to understand what a certain field does, click on f1 or contact us with your question.

If you try to save without entering the mandatory fields, you will get an error message like below.

If a certain field should be required, but you are able to save without filling this out, then that field’s setting needs to be changed.

For e.g. in the screenshot below, the tax number is a not a required field. The system will let you save without having a tax number.

Enter all the information you have for this vendor

The bank details are another important field.

If we don’t have this info, we won’t know where to send the funds.

The Recon Account should be made as a mandatory field.

Each vendor should have a recon account in its master data.

All the vendor balances across different vendors will roll up to this recon account.

At any given point, we can look at the balance of this Recon Account to know the total amount we owe to all vendors.

Every posting to the vendor account automatically updates the recon account as well.

The withholding tax code is used for tax filing. It determines what type of entity this vendor is, e.g., corporation, individual, etc.

Some other important fields are the payment terms and Payment methods

The Payment terms determine when we should be paying the vendor. E.g., if the vendor’s payment terms have a discount of 5% if we pay within 30 days, then it makes sense to pay this vendor within 30 days to get the discount.

The discount gained or lost is calculated based on the vendor payment terms.

Payment methods– This field determines how we can pay the vendor, e.g., can the vendor get paid by wires only? Or does the vendor also accept checks etc?

There are many other fields that we can enter on the vendor master. Click on the different tabs to view different screens.

Once all the info is entered, click on save

You will see a message at the bottom of the screen which gives you the new vendor number created.

Click on vendor-Display to view the newly created vendor.