How does a supplier punch-in to my SAP Ariba Procurement Solutions site/realm from the SAP Business Network?

Why am i getting user profile requests from Supplier users?

How can I prevent a supplier from punching in to my SAP Ariba Procurement Solutions site?

When supplier users access your Ariba Procurement Solutions site from their SAP Business Network account, this generates a user profile (UP) request in your site. These supplier users are assigned to the AribaSupplierNetworkUser password adapter. If these UP requests require no approvals, supplier users can access your application immediately and get assigned to the applicable supplier-specific groups.

If you require approvals for UP requests, then supplier users do not automatically gain access to your application, but receive an error message stating that approvals are required on your side before access can be granted:

Cannot access the customer's site. Your buying organization must approve your access to their system before you proceed with this action. Please try again later.

The UP request generates in your site, and the approvers on the approval flow can approve or deny the request. If approved, supplier users are created and can punch-in to your site successfully on the next attempt.

Some situations when a supplier may access your Ariba Procurement Solution directly from the SAP Business Network follow:

• Managing time and expense sheets. Based on access, the supplier can create new or view previous time and expense sheets in your site.
• Creating contract invoices. This action takes the supplier into the application to create the invoice directly against the contract.
• Responding with a proposal to collaboration requests. This action takes the supplier into the application to create the proposal document and send any applicable messages to your organization.

If you do not wish to allow suppliers to access your application for the previously stated purposes, then, you should keep the Allow suppliers to access your Ariba procurement applications for collaborative invoicing, requisitioning and managing time and expense sheets option within your SAP Business Network account unchecked (Manage Profile > Default Transaction Rules):

Even if you choose to disallow supplier access for the aforementioned tasks, suppliers can still access your application to view your catalog validation rules. This is enabled, by default, and cannot be disabled. This feature is only available for buyers using Ariba On-Demand Procurement Solutions, such as Ariba Procure-to-Pay. Otherwise, the Catalog Validation Preferences option will be greyed out for suppliers, and suppliers may receive the error message, Authentication failed for Sender [AN01000000001] at Domain [NetworkID], when attempting to view catalog validation errors from the Catalogs tab.

KB0394139 - How do I allow suppliers to create contract invoices by punching in?

On how suppliers can access your site to check catalog validation rules, see KB0393023 - How do I view my customer's catalog validation preferences?

Core Procurement > Core Administration > Core Administration Supplier Management
Core Procurement > Core Administration > Core Administration User Management
SAP Business Network for Procurement & Supply Chain