A successful S/4HANA go-live does not, by itself, make ECC safe to switch off. This SAP decommissioning checklist turns the remaining historical-access and operational decisions into an evidence register. Use it for a project workshop—not as a substitute for your SAP Basis runbook, records policy or accountable approval.

Prepared by ArchiveHub · September 17, 2026. Method: a practical synthesis of system-retirement controls and the SAP references below. This is an illustrative planning resource, not a customer case study or SAP-certified procedure.

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Four gates before and after shutdown

1. Define the history

Agree the system boundary, retention scope and real user journeys. Output: an owned scope and access catalogue.

2. Prove replacement access

Reconcile the information and test documents, reporting and authorization. Output: accepted test evidence.

3. Authorize retirement

Resolve dependencies and exceptions, approve the execution plan and name the decision owners. Output: a signed gate decision.

4. Confirm the outcome

Record shutdown and verify historical access afterward. Output: execution records and ongoing service ownership.

The 16-point SAP retirement evidence register

For every check, record an accountable owner, an evidence reference, the review date and a status: not started, in progress, accepted or blocked. Do not treat a tick as evidence.

  1. System boundary. List SIDs, clients, releases, modules, company codes, fiscal years and connected applications. Evidence: an approved inventory with explicit exclusions.
  2. Historical user journeys. Identify who still needs invoices, purchase orders, balances, attachments or other history, and how quickly. Evidence: business-owned search and reporting scenarios.
  3. Retention and holds. Have the responsible records, legal and business owners determine retention, legal-hold and disposition requirements. Evidence: a policy-to-data mapping, not a blanket promise to retain everything forever.
  4. Source coverage. Assess database records, relevant custom tables, existing ADK archives, document stores and business relationships. ArchiveLink or GOS content can require separate handling. Evidence: coverage and exception registers.
  5. Extraction and final change boundary. Define extraction scope, cut-off times, late changes and how the final delta is reconciled. Evidence: repeatable extraction records and a cut-off decision.
  6. Reconciliation. Compare agreed counts, key relationships, financial totals and representative records using the same filters, currency and fiscal scope. Evidence: signed results with resolved or accepted exceptions.
  7. Documents and relationships. Test that authorized users can open the required document from the correct business record and follow relevant relationships. Evidence: linked-record test results, not just a file count.
  8. Business acceptance. Have actual user roles execute the historical journeys, reports and exports. Evidence: expected versus actual results and business acceptance.
  9. Authorization and identity lifecycle. Test allowed and denied access, exports and joiner/mover/leaver processes. Evidence: role tests and named access administrators.
  10. Dependency closure. Review jobs, RFC connections, interfaces, reporting feeds, monitoring, service accounts and downstream consumers. Evidence: a dependency register with closure or replacement decisions.
  11. Operational continuity. Agree ownership, backup/recovery, support, monitoring and the applicable recovery tests for replacement access. Evidence: an accepted operating model and test records.
  12. Shutdown authorization. Confirm the evidence pack, unresolved risks, rollback boundaries and the approved execution window. Evidence: accountable sign-off; no approval by silence.
  13. Execution record. Let the SAP Basis and infrastructure owners execute the environment-specific shutdown plan. Evidence: timestamps, tickets and actual changes. The checklist itself contains no destructive commands.
  14. Post-shutdown access. Repeat critical historical journeys without depending on the retired runtime. Evidence: business-access and authorization checks after shutdown.
  15. Asset and contract closure. Update inventories and assess infrastructure, backup, hosting and contract obligations. Evidence: verified retirement and avoidable-cost records. Technical shutdown does not automatically terminate a licence or support obligation.
  16. Ongoing governance. Assign responsibility for access reviews, policy changes, holds and eventual disposition. Evidence: a service owner and review schedule that survive the project.

Worked example: an invoice request after ECC is offline

Illustrative test only: for fictional invoice TEST-INV-001 in company TEST, fiscal year 2020, ask an authorized reviewer to find its header and line items, confirm currency and totals, open the related invoice document and follow the required purchase-order or clearing relationship. Compare the result with the approved source baseline. Then repeat with a role that must not have access.

Stop the gate if the required document is missing, a relationship resolves to the wrong record, totals cannot be explained or unauthorized access succeeds. Assign an owner and retest after correction. Repeat the critical journey after shutdown; a test against a still-running source does not prove independent access.

Make the business case without invented savings

List only costs you can actually avoid: attributable hosting, operations, backup, support and contract costs, subject to their terms. Subtract the ongoing cost of the replacement historical-access service. If the net annual saving is positive, simple payback in months is one-time transition cost divided by net annual saving, multiplied by 12. State assumptions and exclusions; do not use a generic percentage as a customer outcome.

Choose the architecture before approving the gate

SAP ILM Retention Warehouse and independent historical access can support different operating models. Choose against source scope, reporting requirements, retention enforcement, skills and ongoing dependencies—not against the assumption that one option always wins. Use the ILM Retention Warehouse versus independent-access decision guide.

Sign-off decision

Record: system and scope; evidence-pack version; decision (approve, approve with explicit conditions, or defer); open exceptions; accountable approvers; execution window; rollback limits; and post-shutdown validation owner. Conditional approval must identify who can accept each remaining risk and when the condition must be resolved.

Related working resources

Primary references and scope

Discuss your SAP retirement scope