An Argentine address often does not name its province at all. The post code, the CPA (Código Postal Argentino), starts with a letter that identifies it, and that letter is the same as the province's ISO 3166-2 code. Below the house number sits the floor and the departamento, written as Piso 4 Dpto. A or simply 4° A, and in Buenos Aires one name stands for two different provinces.
This article describes the Argentine address format, how CDQ represents it in the CDQ address model, how the floor and the unit are delivered, and which reference data CDQ maintains for Argentina. It is the reference for anyone mapping Argentine business partner data into CDQ, or consuming curated Argentine addresses from CDQ.
In this article, you will understand:
- How an Argentine address is structured, and which of its parts the post office actually uses
- How the CPA is built, why its first letter is the province, and how it differs from the older four-digit code
- Why
Buenos Aireson its own is ambiguous - How each Argentine level maps to a concept in the CDQ address model, and which SAP field it reaches
- Which reference data CDQ maintains for Argentina, and what the published values look like
- Where the current CDQ coverage for Argentina is incomplete
Available in:
- CDQ Wiki: business partner metadata for Argentina: browse the published Argentine metadata
An Argentine address has a familiar shape: a street and a number, a post code and a locality. What is specific to Argentina is where integrations go wrong:
| Specific to Argentina | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| The post code, the CPA, has eight characters and starts with the province letter | C1425ABC is a post code and a province at once, and the letter is the ISO 3166-2 code without its AR- prefix |
| The four-digit post code is still in use | the CPA kept the old code in its middle, so 1425 and C1425ABC describe the same place at two levels of precision, and master data holds both |
| The province is usually not written on the envelope | the CPA carries it, so a source system often has no province value even though the address is complete |
| The floor and the department follow the number | Piso 4 Dpto. A, 4° A or 4 A are a floor and a unit, and they arrive inside the street or the house number |
Buenos Aires names two provinces | the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, AR-C, and the Province of Buenos Aires, AR-B, which surrounds it. They are separate first-level units |
| Tierra del Fuego has a special tax and customs regime | it is still the province AR-V, and a company there has an ordinary Argentine address |
Argentina has two administrative levels below the country, and the post office relies on neither: the CPA identifies the province and the locality.
| Level | Spanish | What it is | Used to address mail | Example |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | provincia, and the Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires | 23 provinces and the Autonomous City | no, encoded in the CPA | Córdoba |
| 2 | departamento, partido in the Province of Buenos Aires, comuna in the Autonomous City | the second level, about 500 units across the country | no | General San Martín |
| locality | localidad, ciudad | the city, town or village | yes | Villa María |
| sub-municipal | barrio | neighbourhood, notably the barrios of the Autonomous City | sometimes | Palermo |
| postal | CPA | the post code, precise to one side of a city block | yes | Y5900FNF |
The second level has three names. Most provinces are divided into departamentos, the Province of Buenos Aires into partidos, and the Autonomous City into fifteen comunas. In the city, the barrio (Palermo, Recoleta, San Telmo) is the name people use, and the comuna is an administrative grouping of barrios.
Empresa Ejemplo S.R.L.
San Martín 230
Piso 4 Dpto. A
Y5900FNF Villa María
ArgentinaThe street name and number come first. The street type is omitted for an ordinary street (calle) and written for anything else (Av., Bv., Pje.). The floor and the department have their own line, or follow the number on the same line. The last line holds the CPA and the locality, and the province is not written: Y is Córdoba.
What follows the number identifies the unit inside the building. It is free text with a common vocabulary:
| Written | Spanish | Means |
|---|---|---|
Piso 4, 4°, 4º P | piso | the floor |
PB | planta baja | the ground floor |
Dpto. A, Depto. A, Dto. A | departamento | a flat or unit, usually a letter |
Of. 311 | oficina | an office |
Local 5 | local | a shop unit at street level |
Torre 2 | torre | one tower of several on the same plot |
So San Martín 230, 4° A reads: number 230 on San Martín, fourth floor, department A.
Some forms are easy to misread:
| Written | What it is | What to watch |
|---|---|---|
S/N | sin número, no house number | A deliberate statement that there is no number. It is not a missing value and not a number |
17 de Octubre de 1945 N° 1340 | a street name that ends in a number | The post office separates the number with N° for this reason. The year is part of the name |
Calle 7 N° 776 e/ 47 y 48 | a numbered street with its two cross streets, in La Plata | 7 is the street, 776 the number and e/ 47 y 48 the cross streets. None of the other numbers is a house number |
4 A | floor 4, department A | Without the ° it reads like a house number with a suffix |
Ruta Nacional 9 Km 694 | a property on a highway | The kilometre mark stands in for the house number, and 9 is the road |
Mza. 12 Lote 4, Bº Los Álamos | manzana and lote, and a barrio, in housing developments | The block and the plot locate a building where there is no street number |
4° A describes where inside the building the partner sits. Left in the street field, it turns San Martín into San Martín 230 4° A, which matches nothing, and two tenants of the same building become two different streets. The floor and the department belong in premises fields.
The CPA has eight characters: a letter, four digits and three letters, written without spaces. It was introduced in 1998, on top of the four-digit code in use since 1958.
| Part | Example | Identifies |
|---|---|---|
| Letter | Y | the province, using the same letter as its ISO 3166-2 code |
| Four digits | 5900 | the locality, usually the former four-digit post code |
| Three letters | FNF | one side of a city block |
| Form | Example | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Eight characters | Y5900FNF | the CPA, the current form |
| Four digits | 5900 | the former post code, still common, precise to the locality |
A four-digit post code is not wrong, it is less precise. It can be extended to a CPA only with the street and the number.
The province is missing. Because the envelope does not need it, source systems often hold none. With a CPA, the first letter supplies it; with a four-digit code, it has to come from the locality.
The floor and the department share a field with the number. 230 4 A, 230 4° A and 230 P4 D A all arrive in the house number field of source systems that have only one.
Capital Federal is still the usual name for the city. The Autonomous City has had its name since 1996, and Capital Federal, CABA, C.A.B.A. and Ciudad de Buenos Aires are all in use for it.
Numbers in street names are common. 9 de Julio, 25 de Mayo, 17 de Octubre de 1945, and the numbered streets of La Plata. A parser that takes the first number it sees as the house number will take the date or the street.
Buenos Aires can be the Autonomous City (AR-C) or the province around it (AR-B), and a company in San Isidro, in the province, is a short drive from one in Palermo, in the city. Supply the province as its own value, and for the city use Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, or rely on the CPA letter: C is the city, B the province.
The CDQ address model has two parallel hierarchies. Administrative areas represent the political containers, typed REGION and COUNTY. Localities represent the places themselves, typed CITY, DISTRICT, QUARTER or BLOCK. Streets are held as thoroughfares with the number in its own field, and the position inside the building as typed premises.
Argentina maps as follows:
| Argentine level | CDQ concept | Type | SAP field |
|---|---|---|---|
| provincia, Ciudad Autónoma | administrative area, level 1 | REGION | region |
| departamento, partido, comuna | administrative area, level 2 | COUNTY | county |
| localidad | locality, level 1 | CITY | city |
| barrio | locality, level 2 | DISTRICT | district |
| parque industrial | thoroughfare | INDUSTRIAL_ZONE | appended to district |
| street type and name | thoroughfare | STREET | street |
| number, or the kilometre mark | thoroughfare number | n/a | house number, HOUSE_NUM1 |
| piso, the floor | premise | LEVEL | floor |
| oficina, local | premise | ROOM | house number supplement, HOUSE_NUM2, and the room number, ROOM_NUMBER |
| departamento, the unit | premise | APARTMENT | house number supplement, HOUSE_NUM2, and the room number, ROOM_NUMBER, when no room is present |
| torre | premise | BUILDING | building |
| Casilla de Correo | postal delivery point | POST_OFFICE_BOX | PO box |
| CPA, or the four-digit code | post code | REGULAR | post code |
SAP reserves a second house number field, HOUSE_NUM2, for the Iberian and Latin American supplement to the house number. Argentina is one of the five countries for which CDQ fills it. What goes there is the unit: the department, the office or the shop. The floor goes to the dedicated floor field, and the torre to the building field.
The delivery to SAP is a fixed selection from the typed premises of the address:
| SAP field | Takes | Several present |
|---|---|---|
HOUSE_NUM1 | the thoroughfare number | n/a |
HOUSE_NUM2 | room, door and apartment, for Argentina, Spain, Portugal, Brazil and Mexico only | all of them, joined with a comma and a space, in the order room, door, apartment |
FLOOR | the level premise | the first |
ROOM_NUMBER | room, else door, else apartment | the first one present, in that order |
BUILDING | building, else factory, else warehouse | the first |
So 230, Piso 4 Dpto. A is delivered as:
| Output field | Value |
|---|---|
house number, HOUSE_NUM1 | 230 |
| floor | 4 |
house number supplement, HOUSE_NUM2 | A |
room number, ROOM_NUMBER | A, a repeat of the supplement, see below |
A unit is delivered twice: it reaches HOUSE_NUM2 and, because ROOM_NUMBER takes the first of room, door and apartment, ROOM_NUMBER as well. A customer reviewing an SAP load for duplicated content will see the unit in both fields for Argentina, and should read HOUSE_NUM2 as the authoritative one.
230 4° A answers two different questions in one field: which building on the street, and which unit inside it. Splitting them is what makes either question answerable on its own. An exact comparison on street and number stops recognising that two tenants of San Martín 230 share a building, which is what site consolidation and hierarchy detection look for.
| Rejected alternative | Why |
|---|---|
| Leave the province empty when the CPA carries it | The CPA letter is a postal convention, and a system that compares or reports by province needs the province as a value. The letter is the ISO code, so filling the province from it loses nothing. |
| Put the floor and the department together in the house number supplement | The supplement is one field, and packing two facts into it recreates the problem it exists to solve. SAP has a floor field, and it takes the floor. |
| Shorten a CPA to its four digits for consistency with older records | The four digits are the locality and the CPA is the block side. Shortening throws the precision away, and the four digits remain readable inside the CPA. |
CDQ delivers the province with its ISO 3166-2 code, for example AR-X. An SAP system does not validate against ISO: it validates the region field against its own region key table, T005S, which is part of a customer's configuration. That key exists for tax and jurisdiction purposes, which is why the level it sits at differs from one country to the next.
The region key is customer-specific configuration, so this standard does not define one. What this standard fixes is the ISO 3166-2 code. For Argentina the key your configuration holds is conventionally the two-digit province number of the national tax authority, which has no relation to the ISO letter, so the mapping is a lookup rather than a transformation. CDQ carries a default SAP key for all 24 entries.
Treat the ISO code as the value CDQ guarantees and the SAP key as a mapping you own.
San Martín 230, Piso 4 Dpto. A, Y5900FNF Villa María, Córdoba, in the CDQ address model:
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Country | AR |
Administrative area 1 (REGION) | Córdoba |
| Administrative area 1 short name | AR-X |
Administrative area 2 (COUNTY) | General San Martín |
Locality 1 (CITY) | Villa María |
Thoroughfare (STREET) | San Martín |
| Thoroughfare number | 230 |
Premise (LEVEL) | 4 |
Premise (APARTMENT) | A |
| Post code | Y5900FNF |
The examples below show the shape of each dataset, not its full contents. The complete published lists for Argentina are on the CDQ Wiki page business partner metadata for Argentina, which also covers legal forms, identifier types and the integrated data sources.
24 entries: the 23 provinces and the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires. Each carries its ISO 3166-2 code, a default SAP key, and names in Spanish, with English, German, French and Chinese where these exist.
| Code | Spanish | Also matched as |
|---|---|---|
AR-C | Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires | C, CABA, Capital Federal |
AR-B | Provincia de Buenos Aires | B, Province of Buenos Aires, BUENOS AIRES |
AR-X | Córdoba | X, CORDOBA |
AR-S | Santa Fe | S, Santa Fé |
AR-V | Tierra del Fuego, Antártida e Islas del Atlántico Sur | V, TIERRA DEL FUEGO |
A province is resolved from its name, from its ISO code with or without the AR- prefix, or from its default SAP key. Because the ISO code is the CPA letter, a province supplied as X resolves to Córdoba. Most provinces whose name carries a diacritic are also matched without it, so Cordoba resolves to Córdoba.
The Falkland Islands have their own ISO 3166-1 code, FK, and an address there is an FK address, not an Argentine one. Tierra del Fuego's special tax and customs regime is a tax regime, not a territory: a company there has the province AR-V.
2 entries: the post office box, Casilla de Correo, and the industrial park, Parque Industrial. There is no Argentine street or premise vocabulary yet; see Current limitations.
Two formats are recognised. The CPA, a province letter, four digits and three letters (Y5900FNF), is recognised as a regular post code. The four-digit code (5900) is recognised as the outdated format. Spaces, dots and hyphens between the characters are tolerated. The value is carried as supplied: a four-digit code is not extended to a CPA, and a CPA is not shortened.
The province is standardised against reference data: whether it arrives as X, AR-X, Córdoba or Cordoba, the canonical name and the ISO code are written back.
Post codes are validated against the CPA and the four-digit format.
The locality and the barrio are preserved as submitted. Where an address provider is enabled, it can enrich and complete them, and for an Argentine address it is given the province as a hint when the first match is weak.
These are the gaps worth knowing about before designing an integration.
| Limitation | What it means for an integration |
|---|---|
| There is no Argentine street or premise vocabulary yet | CDQ holds no Argentine street terms, so Av., Bv., Pje. and Diag. are not recognised or standardised, and Avenida and Av. produce different delivered values. Piso, departamento, oficina, local and planta baja have no premise term for Argentina either. Only the generic English words (floor, level, apartment, room, suite, building) are premise terms that apply to Argentina. The floor and the department arriving inside the street or the house number can therefore stay there: they are never discarded, but the floor field and the house number supplement can be empty for an address that clearly has both. Where the source holds them in their own fields, they reach the right output fields. |
| The province is not derived from the CPA | A CPA whose letter identifies the province does not fill an empty province. Supply the province, or its ISO letter, as its own value. |
Buenos Aires on its own is read as the province | The plain name is the province's name, so a record in the city that says only Buenos Aires is placed in AR-B. Supply C, AR-C, CABA, Capital Federal or Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires for the city. |
| The unit is delivered twice | HOUSE_NUM2 joins room, door and apartment, and ROOM_NUMBER takes the first of them. For Argentina a department therefore appears in both. The standard expects it once, in HOUSE_NUM2. |
| The four-digit code is validated, and not extended | A four-digit code stays four digits. Extending it to a CPA needs the street and the number, and an address provider. |
Before an SAP load, check that your Argentine records carry the province, as a name, an ISO code or the CPA letter, rather than relying on the CPA alone, and that no record in the city says only Buenos Aires. Check the street and the house number for a trailing floor and department. Where your source already holds the floor and the department in their own fields, supply them that way and they will reach the right output fields, with the department in both HOUSE_NUM2 and ROOM_NUMBER.
An Argentine address writes the street and the number first, then the floor and the department. The last line carries the eight-character CPA and the locality, and the province is usually not written, because the first letter of the CPA identifies it.
The province and the departamento, partido or comuna are the administrative levels, and neither is needed by the post office. The Autonomous City of Buenos Aires is a first-level unit of its own, separate from the Province of Buenos Aires.
CDQ places the province in administrative area level 1, the departamento in level 2, the locality in locality level 1 and the barrio in locality level 2. The number goes to the house number, the floor to the floor field, the torre to the building field, and the department, office or shop to the house number supplement, which is the field SAP reserves for this in Argentina. The CPA stays one value, and the four-digit code is accepted as the outdated format.
The 24 provinces are maintained as CDQ reference data, and a province is resolved from its CPA letter as well as its name. The Argentine vocabulary is where the current coverage is weakest: there are no Argentine street or premise terms yet, so the floor and the department usually stay inside the street value, and the province is not yet filled from the CPA letter.
- Business partner metadata for Argentina
- Spain Address Standard
- Portugal Address Standard
- United States Address Standard
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