Calculating Extended Maintenance: Understanding the +2% Rule and Base Reduction

Extended Maintenance adds two percentage points to the maintenance base. That sounds manageable. Whether it actually is depends entirely on what is in that base and whether it was systematically cleaned up before the cutover date.

This article explains how the base is calculated, which line items can be removed from it, and what the numerical differences between scenarios actually mean in practice.

What the Maintenance Base Is and What It Includes

The maintenance base is the amount to which SAP applies the annual support rate. For Enterprise Support, that rate is 22 percent of the maintenance base. Starting January 1, 2028, on-premise customers running SAP Business Suite 7 (EhP 6-8) will be subject to an Extended Maintenance surcharge of two percentage points, bringing the total to 24 percent.

The maintenance base typically includes:

Core Applications: the foundational modules of SAP ERP (FI, CO, MM, SD, PP, and others)
Add-ons: separately licensed products such as Business Objects, Treasury, Revenue Accounting, or industry-specific solutions
Runtime database: for customers holding an SAP database license (HANA, AnyDB variants)

One important distinction: the base reflects license entitlements, not actual usage. You pay for what is in your license, regardless of whether you use it. That is the starting point for any optimization.

+2% on Which Base: How the Surcharge Plays Out

A straightforward example with round numbers:

Line Item	Amount
Core Applications Maintenance Base	EUR 800,000
Add-ons Maintenance Base	EUR 200,000
Total Maintenance Base	EUR 1,000,000
Enterprise Support (22%)	EUR 220,000/year
Extended Maintenance surcharge (+2%)	EUR 20,000/year
Total from 2028 onward	EUR 240,000/year

That EUR 20,000 is the delta. Three years of Extended Maintenance amounts to EUR 60,000 in additional spend, before any optimization is applied.

A governance moment sits right before the cutover date: organizations that clean up their maintenance base before the end of 2027 pay the surcharge on a smaller number. Those that wait pay it on the full, historically accumulated base.

All-or-Nothing: What Cherry-Picking Costs You

Extended Maintenance applies to the entire BS7 landscape, not to individual systems. A company running multiple ERP systems, multiple Business Objects installations, and a standalone Solution Manager cannot exclude individual systems from Extended Maintenance while keeping others in it.

Two consequences follow from this.

First: systems that are already scheduled for decommissioning but are still carried in the maintenance base drive up the surcharge unnecessarily. A thorough inventory before the cutover date is not an administrative exercise, it is a direct cost calculation.

Second: organizations hoping to apply for Extended Maintenance on business-critical systems only, while leaving others out, will find a contractual condition that does not allow it. The entire BS7 landscape is taken into account.

The Optimization Calculation: Relinquishing Unused Usage Rights

The maintenance base does not have to equal today's full contract value. By deliberately relinquishing usage rights that are no longer needed, you can reduce it before the Extended Maintenance cutover date.

The example from SAP documentation and DSAG guidance illustrates how dramatic that reduction can be:

Step	Amount
Maintenance Base (original)	EUR 1,000,000
Deduction: irrelevant products (e.g., Business Objects)	-EUR 200,000
Deduction: ECC engines re-licensed under S/4HANA	-EUR 500,000
Deduction: user reduction (example: 3,000 to 300 BW users)	-EUR 270,000
Remaining Maintenance Base	EUR 30,000
Extended Maintenance on reduced base (2%)	EUR 600/year

This is not a theoretical extreme case. It illustrates the potential that exists within a grown SAP license landscape when it is systematically reviewed before a maintenance decision.

Three categories of line items can typically be reduced:

Inactive product lines: Business Objects licenses that have not been used in years are still carried in the maintenance base. Formally relinquishing them reduces the base.

ECC engines under S/4HANA: If individual modules have already been converted toward S/4HANA or are covered by a cloud contract, the corresponding ECC line items can be removed from the BS7 base.

User volumes: Named users or concurrent users licensed well above actual demand can be adjusted to reflect real needs during a conversion.

Each of these categories requires a contractual agreement with SAP. The window for these adjustments closes before January 1, 2028.

S/4HANA Contract Conversion vs. Product Conversion: Impact on the Base

Organizations that want to avoid paying Extended Maintenance on the full historical base have two conversion paths available.

Contract Conversion (Scenario 3): Classic ERP term licenses that are still in productive use are formally converted. Usage rights no longer needed are relinquished. Extended Maintenance is then calculated on the reduced base.

Product Conversion (Scenario 4): Accumulated licenses are analyzed. SKUs already converted are removed from the calculation. What remains are the lowest-discounted SKUs, which serve as the calculation base. Extended Maintenance applies to this remaining base.

Both paths share a common prerequisite: reducing the base requires clear documentation of which licenses are in use and which are not. Without that visibility, a clean conversion is not possible.

This is one of the points where shelfware, meaning licenses paid for but not used, becomes visible as a direct budget item. Unused licenses that remain in the maintenance base increase the Extended Maintenance amount without delivering any value in return.

Worked Example: Three Scenarios Side by Side

To make the differences tangible, here are three comparison scenarios for an organization with an original maintenance base of EUR 1,000,000.

Scenario A: No Optimization, Extended Maintenance on Full Base

	Amount
Maintenance Base	EUR 1,000,000
Enterprise Support (22%)	EUR 220,000/year
Extended Maintenance (+2%)	EUR 20,000/year
Additional cost over 3 years of Extended	EUR 60,000

Scenario B: Moderate Cleanup (30% Base Reduction)

Unused licenses and a portion of add-ons are relinquished.

	Amount
Cleaned-up Maintenance Base	EUR 700,000
Enterprise Support (22%)	EUR 154,000/year
Extended Maintenance (+2%)	EUR 14,000/year
Additional cost over 3 years of Extended	EUR 42,000
Difference vs. Scenario A	EUR 18,000

Scenario C: Full Cleanup (as in KB example, 97% reduction)

All inactive products, ECC engines now under S/4HANA, and surplus users are relinquished.

	Amount
Cleaned-up Maintenance Base	EUR 30,000
Enterprise Support (22%)	EUR 6,600/year
Extended Maintenance (+2%)	EUR 600/year
Additional cost over 3 years of Extended	EUR 1,800
Difference vs. Scenario A	EUR 58,200

Scenario C is the extreme case, which assumes that nearly all line items can actually be relinquished. It does, however, illustrate the direction: the two-percentage-point surcharge itself is not the core governance moment. The real question is what base it is applied to.

When Extended Maintenance Is the Right Choice

Extended Maintenance is not a bridge to nowhere. It has a clear function: three additional years of time-to-migrate for organizations whose migration project requires more runway than is available before the end of 2027.

There are legitimate reasons for choosing it:

Complex system landscapes with significant custom development that needs to be assessed and adapted for S/4HANA compatibility
Dependencies on third-party solutions or add-ons for which no S/4HANA equivalent is yet available
IT capacity constraints that make running migration and day-to-day operations in parallel impractical

What Extended Maintenance does not provide: access to new features, AI services, or strategic platform development. The support scope matches Mainstream, covering legal changes, support packages, and problem resolution.

An organization choosing Extended Maintenance is buying time. The question is what gets addressed structurally during that time, and whether the maintenance base has been cleaned up enough that the time is not unnecessarily expensive.

What to Do Now

Two governance moments fall before the cutover date.

Maintenance base inventory: Which line items are actively in use? Which are not? Which add-ons run alongside newer solutions? The SAP Readiness Check provides technical data. Your own license register provides the contractual picture.

Conversion path decision: Contract Conversion or Product Conversion, with targeted relinquishment of unused usage rights before Extended Maintenance takes effect. This decision must be made before January 1, 2028, and requires lead time for alignment with SAP.

Organizations that want to understand their maintenance base structure and identify which line items can be reduced before the cutover date can work through that in a contract check. Within four weeks, you have a complete picture: maintenance base analysis, conversion scenario assessment, and an evaluation of the optimization potential.

Schedule a contract check or book an initial conversation.