How Contact (User) and Location Work in iDempiere

The Contact (User) and Location tabs in the Business Partner window define how an organization interacts with a customer, vendor, employee, or prospect. These tabs store the essential operational details needed for communication, shipping, and billing.

How Does the Contact (User) Function in iDempiere

The Contact (User) tab stores individual people associated with the Business Partner. These contacts include sales representatives, vendor managers, customer staff or delivery coordinators. It provides a structured way to maintain communication details and assign responsibilities.

When a contact is added, iDempiere records personal details such as name, phone numbers and email addresses. This information is used across the system for emailing documents, assigning tasks, routing requests, and identifying responsible personnel during transactions.

How is the Location tab used in iDempiere

The Location tab stores physical addresses associated with a Business Partner. A single BP can have multiple locations for example, separate billing, shipping and warehouse. Each location drives tax rules, shipment routing, invoice address selection, and warehouse logistics.

When a location is created, iDempiere records the address using the configured country and region formats. Each location can be marked for specific business functions such as billing, shipping, remit-to, or headquarters. This allows flexible assignment of addresses depending on the document type.

Shipping operations also rely on these locations. When the BP is used on a Sales Order, the system chooses the default ship-to address from this tab and sends all logistics documents to that location. If multiple shipping addresses exist, users select the appropriate one during order entry.