End of support for Compatibility Scope

In the near future, SAP S/4HANA users may face one of the most serious challenges since the system’s release: the expiration of rights to use Compatibility Pack functionality. In practice, this means that for many well-known “classic" ERP solutions – although technically still available – their use in S/4HANA environments will cease to be legal, and their continued use will become both a licensing and operational risk. This threat does not affect all users of S/4HANA systems, but not all those affected are aware of it.

Compatibility Pack (CP) are SAP ERP native functionalities available within S/4HANA. Updated on December 31, 2025, Note 2269324 – Compatibility Scope Matrix for SAP S/4HANA clearly specifies that the rights to their use are strictly limited in time and expire regardless of whether the functionality is still technically present in the system. In its original version (i.e., before the aforementioned update), the indicated major expiration time horizon for the most important functionalities available within the Compatibility Pack was set for the end of 2025. After that date, using most of the items included in the Compatibility Scope was to mean working on unsupported and unlicensed software, even if a particular version of S/4HANA remains in maintenance until 2040.

The December 2025 update changes the main expiration date for Compatibility Pack usage rights to May 31, 2026 for systems in the on-premise model, and maintains unchanged December 31, 2030 as the expiration date for systems in the cloud subscription model.

At the same time, a few exceptions are highlighted in the note and accompanying materials: selected elements of the Customer Service (CS), Logistics Execution Transportation (LE-TRA) and Production Planning for Process Industries (PP-PI) areas receive extended rights of use until the end of 2030 also for systems in the on-premise model. Individual Compatibility Packs for which the target solutions have been delivered as cloud services and are licensed accordingly can also benefit from the extension.

SAP’s decision particularly acutely reveals the functional gap between the Compatibility Pack and “native" S/4HANA in older releases of the system. A good example is in the HR area: many companies that have migrated to S/4HANA 1709 or 1909 are using HCM in Compatibility Scope mode because these versions still lacked the SAP HCM for S/4HANA (H4S4) solution. H4S4 doesn’t appear until S/4HANA 2022, which means that once CP rights expire, customers with earlier versions face a major transition – a technical upgrade (necessitated by support deadlines for older S/4HANA versions) and HR migration to either H4S4 or SAP SuccessFactors.

At the same time, SAP reserves the right to technically remove or block some of the Compatibility Pack functionality in newer releases of S/4HANA, starting with version 2025. This is especially true in areas for which there are already mature native equivalents – such as replacing classic LE-WM with Stockroom Management and EWM, EC-CS with Group Reporting, or LIS with CDS and Fiori-based analytics. However, even in the current matrix, there are items for which SAP explicitly points out the lack of a planned alternative and suggests building proprietary solutions where the business cannot do without them (e.g., FI-AA Group Assets – SAP Note: 3014869 – S4TWL – Group Assets).

Compatibility Packs have been designed as a bridge between the world of SAP ERP 6.0 and S/4HANA, enabling the temporary coexistence of selected classic SAP ERP 6.0 native functions on the new platform. The updated “Way Forward" materials assigned to Note 2269324 show for each Compatibility Scope item the status (alternative exists, alternative in plans, no alternative) and indicate the target products and versions of S/4HANA in which to look for replacement functionality.

In practice, any conversion project from ERP 6.0 to S/4HANA today should start with three steps:

• Identifying which matrix items are used on a particular system – this is where Readiness Check and EarlyWatch Alert reports play a key role;
• Decision for each matrix item: migrate to a native counterpart (e.g., Group Reporting instead of EC-CS, EWM instead of LE-WM), drop functionality, or build a custom solution;
• Plan the entire transition so that the change takes place at the latest at the time of conversion – SAP is clearly signaling that the “convert first and then move away from the Compatibility Pack in a few years" scenario becomes unacceptable once the rights of use expire.

Many customers are still not fully aware of the extent to which their processes depend on the features covered by the Compatibility Pack – especially where they have been extended with numerous custom extensions. SAP consistently points to two diagnostic tools: the SAP Readiness Check and EarlyWatch Alert, with the EWA report generated through SAP for Me / SAP ONE Support Launchpad providing more detail than the classic EWA reports available from SAP Solution Manager.

The difference is significant: the report available through the service portal can identify specific IDs from the Compatibility Scope matrix and associate them with technical objects in the system, while the version from Solution Manager is often limited to general warnings and aggregates. In practice, this means that the EWA review from SAP OSS should become a mandatory part of the audit before any conversion, upgrade or licensing review – without it, the organization risks leaving some critical CP functionality invisible until it is technically disabled or challenged during the licensing audit.

From the materials provided by SAP, including the updated memo, there is a clear division between two maintenance models. For on-premise systems, the rule of thumb is that Compatibility Pack usage rights expire in late 2025/2026, with isolated exceptions until 2030, while mainstream maintenance for S/4HANA itself is guaranteed until at least 2040. For systems running on a subscription model, usage rights are by definition term-limited – for most CPs they expire along with on-premise, while for selected cloud scenarios SAP has stipulated an extension until the end of 2030, subject to license conditions.

It is crucial to understand the distinction between product maintenance and the right to use a particular functionality. The fact that a particular version of S/4HANA remains supported does not mean that one is allowed to continue using the included Compatibility Pack features after the date indicated in the note – from that point on, the user is in violation of the license, even if the module technically still works. SAP also reserves the right to gradually block CP functions in subsequent releases, and the responsibility for controlling their use rests with the organization, including in the area of extensions and interfaces using Compatiblity Scope data and objects.

Compatibility Pack expiration is not another road-map change that can be postponed, but a process with direct legal, financial and operational consequences. For organizations using S/4HANA – regardless of version and maintenance model – this means taking several actions without delay: performing an EWA and Readiness Check for Compatibility Scope usage, translating the results into a business process map, and then preparing a migration plan to native solutions or, where necessary, to SuccessFactors, EWM, Group Reporting or other SAP strategic products.

Companies that ignore the signals of Note 2269324 risk not only losing support for critical processes, but also non-compliance with the license agreement, which in extreme cases can result in serious financial claims. For informed customers, on the other hand, the expiration of the Compatibility Pack may provide the impetus to clean up the system landscape, abandon obsolete solutions and accelerate the transformation toward new S/4HANA processes – before the system, not the business, starts dictating the pace of change.

It’s obvious that in many companies, the knowledge about the use of Compatibility Pack in systems is not complete. The use of a system or its specific functionality does not necessarily go hand in hand with the knowledge that it is included in the Compatibility Pack. If you have any doubts, we invite you to contact us. All for One Poland experts are at your disposal both for assessing the possible threat and for preparing a plan and carrying out work to adapt the system to full licensing and functional compatibility.