Business Affiliates

The Business Affiliates model represents the legal entities that participate in business transactions with a tenant. It provides the reference data for vendors, customers, carriers, and other commercial parties.

BusinessAffiliate

A BusinessAffiliate is an entity scoped to a tenant representing a legal entity that does business with the tenant. It is the primary entity in the affiliate model.

Property	Type	Multiplicity	Description
name	String	[1..1]	The name of the business affiliate as known in the tenant. Required and unique within the tenant.
legal	CompanyInfo	[1..1]	Legal information about the business affiliate
contact	Contact	[1..1]	Main contact for the business affiliate
address	Address	[1..1]	Main address for the business affiliate
contacts	Map of String to Contact	[0..*]	Additional contacts, each indexed by a string tag
addresses	Map of String to Address	[0..*]	Additional addresses, each indexed by a string tag

Invariants

• name is required and unique within the tenant.
• legal.name must equal name. If both are provided in an input and they differ, the operation fails.
• contacts and addresses enforce uniqueness by tag — updates with the same tag replace the previous value.

BusinessRole

A BusinessRole entity represents the role that a specific BusinessAffiliate plays in supply chain transactions. A single BusinessAffiliate may play multiple roles (e.g., the same company might be both a vendor and a carrier).

Property	Type	Description
parentEId	EntityId	The BusinessAffiliate that holds this role
role	BusinessRoleType	The standard role type

Invariants

• parentEId is required and must reference an existing BusinessAffiliate.
• role is required and must be a valid BusinessRoleType.

BusinessRoleType

An enumeration of the roles companies play in supply chain transactions:

Value	Description
VENDOR	A company that supplies goods or services to the tenant. Referenced from ItemSupply entities.
CUSTOMER	A company that purchases goods or services from the tenant.
CARRIER	A company that transports goods for the tenant.
OPERATOR	The tenant company itself or companies the tenant controls and operates on its behalf.
OTHER	Any other type of company participating in the tenant’s supply chain.

This list will expand as the system supports more commercial roles.

CompanyInfo

CompanyInfo is a value object containing legal and registration information about a company:

Property	Type	Description
name	String	The company name as known in the tenant
legalName	String	The legal name as registered in the jurisdiction
country	CountrySymbol	The country where the company is registered
taxId	String	Tax identification number
registrationId	String	Company registration number
naicsCode	NaicsCode	Industry classification code

Contact and Identity

The Contact entity and Identity value type represent persons associated with business affiliates.

Identity (value)

Real-world identification information for a person:

Property	Type	Description
salutation	String	Honorific (Mr., Ms., Dr., etc.)
firstName	String	First name
middleName	String	Middle name
lastName	String	Last name
suffix	String	Name suffix
job	String	Job title
email	Email	Primary email
phone	String	Primary phone
address	Address	Primary address
emails	Map of String to Email	Additional email addresses by tag
phones	Map of String to String	Additional phone numbers by tag
addresses	Map of String to Address	Additional addresses by tag
sites	Map of String to (site)	Additional site references by tag

Contact (entity)

An entity scoped to a tenant representing a real-world person needed in operations and business transactions.

Property	Type	Description
identity	Identity	The person’s identification information
notes	String	Optional notes about the contact

Relationship to Items

BusinessAffiliate and BusinessRole entities are referenced by ItemSupply entities through the vendorEId property. When an item’s supply source is linked to a persistent vendor record, the ItemSupply.vendorEId holds the entity identity of the BusinessRole with type VENDOR for that vendor. See Items for details.

Relationship to Purchase Orders

Purchase orders reference three BusinessRole entities: customer (buyer), supplier (vendor), and carrier. These roles are drawn from the BusinessAffiliate model. See Purchase Orders for details.

Excluded from this document: The Organization entity from the base affiliates model is a more general entity that may supersede BusinessAffiliate in future versions. It is documented in the source file but not yet in active use in the R1 implementation. The NacsCode value type and its validation rules will be documented when the NAICS code feature is fully implemented.