Participating vendors have different Industry key (LFA1-BRSCH)

The system issues an error message and will not allow you to continue with this transaction until the error is resolved.

What causes this issue?

According to the mapping, you want to merge two or more old vendor
records into one target vendor record. However, not all the old records
have identical master data settings: It was found that old vendor
records have different 'Industry key'. (This is determined by the
indicator 'Industry key', field LFA1-BRSCH).
This may lead to inconsistencies in some applications related to target
vendor data.

System Response

<ZH>Error</>
From a technical perspective, this message can be ignored. This may make
sense in the following cases:
No postings to the respective vendor records have been made.
The respective vendor records are not used any longer and are meant to
be merged into a dummy record.

How to fix this error?

Analyze the situation, and either change the mapping so that only vendor
records with identical master data settings are merged or decide to
ignore the message because one of the special cases described above
applies.
If you decide to ignore the error even though none of the special cases
described above applies, consider that <ZH>the target vendor record
will get the Industry key of the old vendor record for which priority
the indicator is set.</> Make sure to evaluate the impact of this
decision - for example regarding potential inconsistencies and required
follow-up activities - <ZH>before </>you continue with the conversion.

Procedure for System Administrators

Error message extract from SAP system. Copyright SAP SE.