An SAP compliance audit rarely fails on the big, dramatic things. It fails on the boring evidence gaps — a segregation-of-duties conflict nobody flagged, a privileged access review that's three months stale, a control that's documented but hasn't actually been tested. Here's what tends to matter most, and how to have it ready ahead of time.
Segregation of duties, mapped and current
Auditors will ask for your SoD matrix and, more importantly, evidence that conflicts are actively monitored rather than reviewed once a year. If the only answer is a spreadsheet last updated at the previous audit, that's a finding waiting to happen.
Privileged access reviews with a real cadence
It's not enough to say privileged access is reviewed — auditors want to see the review history, who approved what, and how quickly access changes were caught after the fact. A quarterly review that's actually followed beats an annual one that looks thorough on paper.
Change management evidence tied to actual changes
Every meaningful configuration or authorization change should trace back to an approved change request. Gaps here — changes with no linked approval, or approvals with no corresponding change — are some of the most common findings in SAP audits.
Control testing, not just control documentation
A control that's written down but never tested isn't a control an auditor will accept. Being able to show when a control was last tested, what the result was, and what happened if it failed is what separates a documented framework from a working one.
Evidence that's exportable on demand
The single biggest time cost in most audits isn't finding problems — it's assembling proof that things are fine. If pulling evidence for a control takes a scramble through logs and screenshots rather than a report you can generate in minutes, that's the process gap worth fixing first.
The teams that find audits painless aren't the ones with the fewest findings — they're the ones who already know their evidence is current, because they built it into the way they operate rather than assembling it once a year.