Symptom
Information to delete employees and business partners from SAP S/4HANA Cloud, if steps are not known.
Environment
SAP S/4HANA Cloud
Resolution
These are the steps for blocking and deleting a Business Partner:
NOTE: If the employee was created by replication from SAP SuccessFactors, it is not necessary to first delete the employee in SAP SuccessFactors and replicate the deletion. You need to follow these steps if an inconsistency was found on SAP S/4HANA Cloud or ask an SAP Product Support engineer for assistance.
- Delete Workforce person data. For more information see: Data Management for HR Connectivity and Workforce Details
- Delete the business user associated with both the employee and the business partner. The business user name can be found depending on the method you used to create the employee:
- Via Import Employee app → The user name is specified in the uploaded spreadsheet.
- Via API → Check the username field in the XML file sent. For more information, see the API documentation.
- Via SuccessFactors Replication → Check the user name assigned to the employee in their SAP SuccessFactors profile.
- Otherwise --> Check public CDS views to obtain the user name. These CDS views are specified on Workforce Person Details.
You perform the deletion with the Maintain Business User app for more information see Blocking and Deleting Business Users. - Terminate the employee (this means setting the employee’s status to inactive). You can do this depending on the tool used to create the employee:
NOTE: This step is optional and depends on whether the "Business Partner End of Purpose (EoP)” check-in Human Resources is active. If in doubt, we recommend you to terminate the employee. - Via the Import Employee app → Set the End Date field (YYYYMMDD)" to a past date. For example, 20190101.
- Via the SOAP API → Create a new node, WorkAgreementJobInformation, where Work Agreement Status field= 0. The validity period starts (StartDate) when the employee becomes inactive.
- Via SAP SuccessFactors → Terminate the employment in SAP SuccessFactors and replicate the change.
For more information, see Data Management for HR Connectivity and Workforce Details - Block and delete the business partner associated with the employee. The deletion steps are explained: Blocking, Unblocking and Deletion of Business Partner, Customer and Supplier Master Data
Please be aware of these points: - The business partner is first blocked together with the customer and supplier master data. Once the business partner is blocked, you will be able to delete them.
- Ensure that your user has the mandatory roles: Data Privacy Specialist (SAP_BR_DATA_PRIVACY_SPECIALIST) or External Auditor (BR_EXTERNAL_AUDITOR).
- If a business partner is blocked but not deleted, you can request to unblock them to keep using them as before.
- Did you get an error message related to an ILM policy? Does the policy not exist for the business partner? Before blocking a business partner, you have to set up an ILM Policy. You can find a step-by-step guide in KBA 2678334
- Did you get an error message related to a retention period? When the ILM policy is set, you have to configure a retention period. If, for example, 1 day is set as the retention period, you cannot archive or delete the business partner until 1 day after the last change.
Example with ILM Policy → Retention Period = 3 days: If you make a change to a business partner (for example, change of address) on 01/01/2020, you need to wait until 01/04/2020 to block them.
Do not set the retention period to 0 days. This could cause issues.
Are you still experiencing issues during deletion or do you have more questions?
- For questions about blocking and deleting a business partner or about setting up an ILM policy → Create a support ticket or schedule an expert chat on component AP-MD-BP.
- For questions about terminating an employee and deleting employee data → Create a support ticket on component CA-WFD-INT.
See Also
Keywords
Employee master data , KBA , CA-WFD-INT , Integration issues WorkForce Domain , CA-HR-S4 , Cross-Application HCM Objects in S/4HANA , How To