The Simplification Item Catalog, the Simplification List and the notes

SAP publishes simplification items in three places, and each has its use. Knowing which to open saves hours and avoids decisions based on outdated text.

The Conversion Guide is direct about the catalog: it contains all simplification items, not only those relevant to your conversion, so you must identify the relevant ones yourself, which SAP Readiness Check does automatically. Once you know which items apply, read the SAP Notes themselves, because they contain all the required information. Readiness Check links straight to the most recent version of each note.

Walkthrough: from catalog to Readiness Check

1. In SAP for Me, open the Simplification Item Catalog, choose the source (SAP ERP 6.0 EHP 8 for EP1) and the target (SAP S/4HANA 2025), and filter by application area to read items in a workshop.
2. Open SAP Readiness Check at me.sap.com/readinesscheck, or in SAP Cloud ALM if your project uses it there (SAP Note 3344480 describes the deployment options). Sam runs the data collectors in EP1 as the guided procedure describes and uploads the result.
3. In the Simplification Items check, review the items found relevant for EP1, sorted by line of business. Relevance is mainly based on table contents and used transactions.
4. Use the Effort Ranking column (Low to High, or a flag that an expert assessment is needed) and its Effort Drivers to see why an item looks expensive.
5. Open Activities Related to Simplification Items and filter by condition (mandatory, conditional, optional) and by conversion phase (before, during or after, or any time).
6. Check the related analyses: Compatibility Scope Analysis, Customer Vendor Integration Analysis and Financial Data Quality, whose finance inconsistencies are grouped from A (standard automated correction available) to D (system-specific correction required).
7. Create follow-ups for the findings in SAP Cloud ALM through the Readiness Check integration, so each item gets an owner in the project.

Anatomy of an item

In the Simplification List, each item follows the same pattern. Take S4TWL - Storage Location MRP: application component PP-MRP; business impact note 2268045; a symptom stating that the item applies to a conversion; a description of the business value and the change (planning only at plant and MRP area level); the reason; business-process-related information; required and recommended actions (pre-checks raise an error; run the migration report); and related notes for the conversion pre-check and custom code.

Notes are written for many customers at once, so they describe conditions: if you use this function, if this data exists, if this business function is active. The job of the reader is to answer each condition for Contoso. A note that says "if you use storage location MRP" is only relevant to plants that actually do. Readiness Check and the SI check answer some of those conditions from data; the rest need someone who knows how Contoso works.

Reading a note well

• Check the note version and date; items and actions change, and the SI check uses current content.
• Separate the business impact (what users do differently) from the technical impact (data, code).
• Note the phase of each action: before conversion, during, after, or any time.
• Follow the related notes for pre-checks and custom code; they often hold the practical steps.
• Record your conclusion in one sentence with the note version you read.

A word on AI help: Joule in SAP for Me can point you to tools such as Readiness Check, and generative assistants summarize notes quickly. Use them to find and skim, then read the business impact note itself before you record a decision; the log records the note version, not a summary of it.