Setting Up a Supply Company

Feature Overview

A Supply Company is the fulfilment side of an Intercompany pair. It receives sales orders from one or more Sales Company partners via the IC inbox, turns them into internal sales orders, ships the goods, and automatically sends shipment confirmations and invoices back to the originating company. The Supply Company never initiates transactions — it reacts to what arrives in its inbox, which means correct inbox configuration is the most important setup decision a Supply Company administrator makes.

The Assisted Setup wizard (Intercompany Setup Guide) automates the creation of the master data that the Supply Company needs to process incoming transactions. For a Supply Company, the wizard creates an intercompany vendor record (representing the Sales Company partner), a Purchasing Code marked as a drop-shipment intercompany purchasing code, an IC Partner record linked to that vendor, and optionally item-vendor catalogue entries that associate every item in the company with the new IC vendor. It also initialises the IC Setup record, sets the IC Company Type to Supply Company, sets the Default Buy-From Vendor No. to the new IC vendor, enables Auto Transfer Outbox Transactions and Auto Accept Outbox Export Confirmation, and sets Dimension Handling to 1-1 mapping. If the Chart of Accounts is identical to the partner company, the wizard can additionally map all G/L accounts to IC G/L accounts in a single step.

After the wizard completes, the IC Setup page controls the ongoing behaviour of the Supply Company. The most operationally significant setting lives on the IC Partner Card for each Sales Company partner, under Auto import inbox. Three options are available. No Handling means incoming transactions land in the IC Inbox and stay there until someone manually processes them — suited to low-volume or highly controlled environments. Handle with Job Queue marks each arriving transaction for background processing: the app creates a non-recurring Job Queue entry in the SCBIC category that wakes up immediately, works through all pending transactions in a loop, and reschedules itself with exponential back-off if a transaction fails, retrying up to five times. Handle with Web Service instructs the app to process the transaction synchronously at the moment the Sales Company's web service call delivers it; if processing fails or the document has more than 80 lines, the app automatically falls back to the Job Queue to avoid blocking the calling company. The Job Queue approach is the recommended default for production environments because it decouples processing from the delivery call and handles transient locking errors gracefully.

Key Facts

Getting Started

Follow these steps in the company that will act as the Supply Company.

1. Open the Assisted Setup wizard.
Search for Intercompany Setup Guide and open it. The wizard's welcome screen explains that setup must be completed in at least two companies. Click Next to begin.

2. Select the company type.
On the Intercompany type step, set Select Intercompany type to Inventory. (In the wizard's terminology, the Supply Company is referred to as Inventory, reflecting that it holds the physical stock.) Click Next.

3. Enter IC Partner Codes.
On the Intercompany Partner Information step, enter the Intercompany Partner Code for this company (e.g. SUPPLY01) — this is the code your partner will use to send transactions to you. Then enter the Intercompany Partner Code for the partner Sales Company (e.g. SALES01). If an IC Partner record already exists for that code, the wizard will ask whether to modify the existing record or delete and recreate it. Click Next.

4. Configure the Intercompany Customer.
On the Configure an Intercompany Customer step, enter or select the Intercompany Customer no. that will represent the Sales Company on incoming sales orders (e.g. IC00010). Set the Customer Posting Group, Gen. Business Posting Group, and Customer Location Code. The wizard creates this customer with Combine Shipments enabled. Click Next.

5. Choose G/L Account mapping.
If the Chart of Accounts in this company and the partner company are identical, set Create IC G/L Account Entries? to Yes to let the wizard map all G/L accounts to IC G/L accounts automatically. Otherwise leave it as No. Click Next.

6. Optionally map Partner Locations.
For a Supply Company, the wizard skips the Partner Locations step (that step is only relevant for the Supply Company when it is the Inventory company receiving location visibility from a partner — the wizard bypasses it automatically for this company type variant). If the step appears, select the locations the partner should be able to see and click Next.

7. Review the summary and click Create.
On the final Done step, click Create. The wizard creates all master data and marks the assisted setup as complete. The Configure the connection between companies dialog then opens, listing three manual post-steps: create a Microsoft Entra App registration (for OAuth 2.0), update the IC Partner card with web service connection details via the Connect Externally Setup button, and create a Microsoft Entra Application User with the required permissions.

8. Verify the created master data.
Confirm that the following records were created:

• An IC vendor record with the correct posting groups and location code, and a Standard Purchasing Code pointing to the IC Purchasing Code.
• A Purchasing Code with Drop Shipment enabled and the Intercompany flag set.
• An IC Partner record linked to the new IC customer, with web service inbox type enabled.

9. Review the IC Setup fields.
Open Intercompany Setup and verify the Abakion-added fields under each section:

• General: IC Company Type should be Supply Company; Dimension Handling should reflect the agreed mapping mode.
• Purchase: Default Buy-From Vendor No. should point to the IC vendor; Receipt posting date controls which date is used when posting purchase receipts.
• Automatics: confirm Auto Transfer Outbox Transactions and Auto Accept Outbox Export Confirmation are both enabled unless your process requires manual review.

10. Configure Auto import inbox on the IC Partner Card.
Open the IC Partner Card for the Sales Company partner and locate the Auto import inbox field on the web service tab. Choose the appropriate option:

• No Handling — if inbox items are always processed manually.
• Handle with Job Queue — for standard automated processing; the SCBIC Job Queue category will be used.
• Handle with Web Service — for lowest-latency synchronous processing (recommended only when transaction volumes are consistently small).

11. Verify the Job Queue entry (if using Handle with Job Queue).
If you selected Handle with Job Queue, the first incoming transaction will trigger automatic creation of a Job Queue entry. You can also verify the SCBIC category exists in Job Queue Categories. No recurring entry needs to be configured manually — the app manages entry lifecycle automatically.

12. Confirm readiness before partner configuration.
Before proceeding to the IC Partner connection setup, confirm: IC Company Type is Supply Company, the IC vendor and Purchasing Code exist, the IC Partner Card references the correct customer number, and the chosen Auto import inbox mode is saved. The company is now ready for partner connection configuration.

Related Features

Setting up a Supply Company is the first of two symmetric steps — the partner Sales Company must complete an equivalent setup wizard in its own environment before any transactions can flow. Once both companies are set up, the IC Partner Card on each side must be completed with web service connection details using the Connect Externally Setup action, as described in the Partner Configuration article. The transaction that travels between the two companies — from sales order origination in the Sales Company through to shipment and invoice in the Supply Company — is detailed in the Transaction Flow article. Operational monitoring of inbox processing status, Job Queue errors, and retry counts is covered in the Monitoring article, which explains how to interpret the status and error fields that appear on IC Inbox Transaction records after the Job Queue worker has processed them.

User Stories

1. As a BC administrator setting up a new Supply Company, I want to run the Intercompany Setup Guide so that all required master data is created for me without having to configure each record individually.

2. As a BC administrator, I want to understand what master data the wizard creates for a Supply Company so that I can verify correctness after setup and know which records to check if something goes wrong.

3. As a BC administrator, I want to set the IC Company Type to Supply Company during the wizard so that the app shows and hides the right fields throughout the system and routes transactions correctly.

4. As a supply company operator who wants full control over when incoming IC transactions are processed, I want to configure Auto import inbox to No Handling so that transactions wait in the inbox until I review and accept them manually.

5. As a supply company administrator who wants reliable automated processing without blocking the Sales Company, I want to configure Auto import inbox to Handle with Job Queue so that incoming orders are picked up and processed in the background with automatic retries if something fails.

6. As a supply company administrator integrating with a high-frequency Sales Company, I want to understand Handle with Web Service so that I know it processes transactions synchronously at delivery time and automatically falls back to the Job Queue for large orders or transient errors.

7. As a BC administrator enabling Job Queue-based inbox processing, I want to confirm that the SCBIC Job Queue category and the background processor entry are created automatically when the first transaction arrives, so that I do not have to configure them by hand.

8. As a BC administrator, I want to configure Dimension Handling on the IC Setup page so that dimension values on incoming sales orders are mapped correctly to the Supply Company's own dimension structure.

9. As a BC administrator setting up a company that acts as both a supplier to one partner and a sales company to another, I want to know that the IC Company Type Sales & Supply Company is available so that I can configure the correct hybrid behaviour.

10. As an implementation consultant, I want to verify setup completeness — IC Company Type, IC vendor, Purchasing Code, and IC Partner linkage — before connecting the two companies externally, so that the partner connection step is not blocked by missing master data.

11. As a supply company operator, I want to understand that the Intercompany Setup Guide must also be completed in the Sales Company before transactions can actually flow, so that I coordinate both setups before testing.

12. As a BC administrator, I want to understand that the wizard's Done step triggers a post-wizard dialog listing three manual connection steps (Entra App, IC Partner web service fields, Entra Application User), so that I do not assume the company is fully connected after clicking Create.

13. As a supply company administrator, I want to know that Default Buy-From Vendor No. on the IC Setup page identifies the IC vendor used as the default buying source, so that incoming purchase orders are correctly linked to the right vendor.

14. As a supply company operator, I want the wizard to optionally create item-vendor entries for all existing items linked to the IC vendor so that every item in the company is immediately eligible for intercompany drop-shipment orders.

15. As a supply company administrator, I want to know that the wizard sets Auto Transfer Outbox Transactions on by default, so that shipment and invoice confirmations sent back to the Sales Company are exported from the outbox immediately without manual intervention.

Field Reference

The following fields appear on the Intercompany Setup page when the Intercompany app is active. Fields are grouped by section as they appear on screen.

General

Sales

Purchase

Automatics

Features