Unable to delete unused material number ranges predelivered by SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition

[Madhavan_R1]

Material Master – Number Range (object MATERIALNR)

• Project Implications
  • Material numbering is a crucial project decision that must be defined early in the implementation lifecycle and is rarely changed subsequently
  • Organizations with a large legacy product library are often unwilling to migrate to alternate numbering for various reasons, but often to reduce organizational change impact of the new ERP system
  • They prefer to retain existing conventions, schemes & catalogs which may include content with purely numeric values with and without leading zeros, or and non-numeric values
  • We need to have full control over the configuration of the material type number ranges to satisfy customer requirements including the option to delete any or all existing ranges
• Configuration
  • S/4 Public Cloud only includes two usable ranges, one internal (01), one external (02) - these are assigned to the provided material types
  • Additional ranges (numbers 03 to 0O) are limited in scope, not assigned to any existing material types, and cannot be deleted – their purpose is unclear

• While CBC provides a mechanism to modify an existing or create a new range, we are unable to remove any of provided number ranges
• There are a few configuration settings that increase the utility of the existing external ranges:
  • The flag "External assignment without check" helps to create materials that have a number as the first character; however, the material number cannot be comprised exclusively of numeric characters
  • Lexicographical indicator refers more to the storage of the numeric entries and implies that the external range include the numbers
• Request
  • We are unable to create a material numbering environment that is fully external and allows entries that contain both only numeric as well as non-numeric characters
  • To this end, we seek to delete the existing ranges and recreate as necessary to allow a fully “open” material master number range

What is the rationale behind the predelivered number range intervals "03" to "0O" if they are not assigned to any material types? Can SAP delete these unwanted intervals using expert configuration as there is no option for us to delete these intervals?

Thank you,

Madhavan

[HenrikeGrtecke]

Hello, thank you for your question. It has been forwarded to the experts. Kind regards, Henrike

[Madhavan_R1]

@HenrikeGrtecke - Thank you for forwarding to the experts. Just following up to see if there are any further updates. Please let me know. Thank you.

[saddala_jahnavi]

Hi Madhavan, I have updated the correct tag, This will help with engaging with the correct experts to assist with your query Best Regards, Jahnavi

[ElenaPuica]

Hi, 

The number range intervals 03–0O for object MATERIALNR are SAP-delivered standard intervals in SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud. Although they are not assigned to any material types by default, they are intentionally delivered and reserved by SAP for:

• future SAP scope items
• future best-practice content
• industry or extension scenarios activated in later releases

These intervals are part of the standard content and are therefore protected by design. In SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud, SAP-delivered configuration objects:

• cannot be deleted
• can only be modified within predefined limits

Check SAP Note:

SAP KBA 3470748 – Unable to Delete Number Ranges in SAP S/4HANA Cloud

https://me.sap.com/notes/3470748/E

In SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud:

• External material numbers cannot be purely numeric
• At least one non-numeric character is mandatory
• This rule applies even if:
• External assignment without check is enabled
• the lexicographical indicator is set

This is a hard validation rule implemented to avoid conflicts with:

• internal numbering
• sorting and comparison logic

Check SAP Note: SAP KBA 3511398 – External Number Assignment Without Check – Material Master

 https://userapps.support.sap.com/sap/support/knowledge/en/3511398?utm_source=chatgpt.com

All the best, 

Elena P. 
Senior SAP Consultant