SAP Knowledge Base Article - Public

3514300 - Time zone Explanation - SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition

Symptom

When using SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, it's found that some applications are set to the UTC time zone, while others are set to the user-specific time zone or organization structure (example plant as physical location) specific time zone.

Environment

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition

Reproducing the Issue

Check time stamps in different applications. For example, Create Billing Documents, Manage Sales Orders or Create Sales Order – VA01

Cause

This is a standard system design and not a system error. While there are different time stamps in user-specific application displays (SAP Fiori, SAP WebDynpro, SAP Harmonized WebGui, etc.), the system uses UTC as the main operating system time zone. UTC is the official time zone used in all SAP public cloud applications, including SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, to help our customers managing global businesses across time zones. 

UTC is also the time zone used to provide upgrades and maintenance to the system independent of location and data center. UTC helps harmonize upgrade and maintenance activities for thousands of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition systems in shared environments (shared environments might include customers in different time zones).

Resolution

The operating system time zone in SAP cannot be changed from UTC, as doing so would interfere with system operations such as upgrades and maintenance.

SAP currently offers different user interface applications through the SAP Fiori Launchpad, including SAP Fiori, SAP Webdynpro, and SAP Harmonized WebGui. Some applications allow users to showcase time in their own time zone (SAP Fiori & SAP Webdynpro in most cases), while others display time in UTC (WebGui in most cases). SAP plans to transition most applications to SAP Fiori in the future, where customers will have the option to display time in their own time zone based on their settings in the "Language and Region" section (when applicable). New applications will come with this feature by default (when applicable).

In SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, applications like Production follow the specific plant time zone as per business requirements, meaning that time stamps are allocated based on the location where the production took place.

Integrations, such as EDI, are recommended to be managed in UTC time zone to standardize. Translations of time zones should be performed at the receiving application. Other specific business requirements (send EDI in user local time) may necessitate the use of cloud extensibility during implementation to address them (transform time zone in middleware).

See Also

Keywords

time zone, UTC, Cloud, SMC, System Time, S/4HANA Cloud, S4HC, SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, cloud, 3SL, 2SL , KBA , BC-SRV-TIM-TZ , Time zones , Problem

Product

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition all versions ; SAP S/4HANA Cloud all versions