A business unit can be a branch office, subsidiary, or business partner whose data must be maintained in the system. You can associate a user profile with one or more business units to allow a user to access data for that business unit.

A user must be assigned to at least one business unit in order to access the system; in turn, a business unit is assigned a system menu. If a user is assigned to more than one business unit, the user can choose which business unit to log in to, as well as which system menu to use.

Use roles to control the menus that your system users have access to—and the functions they can perform—according to the requirements of the department or organization. For example, a Management group might require access to all system features, while a Sales group might only require access to a subset of features that are relevant to their business activities.

For details about business units, see Setting Up Business Units.