SAP field names: reading them like recipe card ingredient names

Hi, this is Rabbit! 🐰

You hand a recipe card to a new kitchen hire, and after staring at it a while, they ask: “Chef, what on earth is ‘AUFNR’?” It’s the exact same expression someone new to SAP makes staring at field names on screen. ‘AUFNR’, ‘MATNR’, ‘WERKS’ — these short, alien-looking words. What do they actually mean?

The truth is, they only look unfamiliar because they’re German abbreviations. Once you know the rules behind field names, an unfamiliar screen stops feeling so intimidating. Today, centered on the AUFK table — closely related to SAP PP master data: understanding the 4 essentials — I’ll break down SAP field names using the analogy of recipe card ingredient names.

Why field names are like recipe card ingredient names

Picture a restaurant’s recipe card. It needs exact ingredients and amounts — “kimchi 300g,” “pork 150g” — for anyone to follow it and make the dish. If it just said “ingredient 1,” “ingredient 2,” you couldn’t complete the dish at all.

SAP field names work the same way. In SAP, “creating a production order” is like filling out a complete recipe card. Field names like AUFNR (order number) and MATNR (material number) are the “ingredient names” printed on that card. They’re fixed symbols that tell the system exactly, “put the order number here.”

Reading the AUFK table’s recipe card

Today’s main dish is the “production order” recipe card — the AUFK table. It’s the core table holding a production order’s header information. Let’s look at what “ingredients” it contains.

Figure 1. AUFK table’s key fields — read as recipe card ingredient names

Rather than listing fields at random, grouping ones with similar character makes the pattern easier to see. And writing out the original German alongside each one makes it instantly clear why those three letters ended up there.

① Identification info — the ingredients that tell you “what” this order is

Field	German origin	Meaning	Restaurant analogy
AUFNR	Auftrag + Nummer	Order number	Order slip number
AUART	Auftrag + Art	Order type	Cuisine type (Korean, Chinese, Western)
AUTYP	Auftrag + Typ	Order category	Order form category

② Time and responsibility info — the ingredients that tell you “when, and whose responsibility”

Field	German origin	Meaning	Restaurant analogy
WERKS	Werk	Plant (factory)	The kitchen doing the cooking
GSTRP	Geplant + Start + Termin	Basic start date	Scheduled cooking start time
GLTRP	Geplant + Liefer + Termin	Basic finish date	Scheduled completion time
KOSTV	Kosten + Verantwortlich	Responsible cost center	The team responsible for the cost

③ History and status info — the ingredients that tell you “how the recipe card has been managed”

Field	German origin	Meaning	Restaurant analogy
ERNAM	Erfasst von	Created by	The chef who first wrote the recipe
ERDAT	Erfasst am	Created on	The date the recipe was first written
AENAM	Geändert von	Changed by	The chef who last edited the recipe
AEDAT	Geändert am	Last changed on	The date the recipe was last edited
LOEKZ	Löschkennzeichen	Deletion flag	The “discontinued” mark on a menu

Table 1. AUFK table’s key fields — grouped by identification, time/responsibility, and history/status

Look closely at the middle column — the German origin. AUFNR isn’t something you just memorize; it’s simply the front part of Auftrag (order) + Nummer (number) stitched together. GSTRP is the same kind of combination: Geplant (planned) + Start + Termin (schedule). Break the original word down once, and the next time you run into a similarly patterned field, you can guess the meaning without memorizing it.

Why German abbreviations, of all things

This is a question a lot of people wonder about: “Why are SAP field names German abbreviations instead of English?” The answer is simple. Because SAP is a German company.

SAP started in Germany in 1972. Back then, it was common for computers to have less than 1MB of storage, and developers had to conserve every bit of space they could. Taking the first letters of German words and abbreviating them was highly efficient in that environment. Auftrag (order) became AUF, Material became MAT, and so on. That tradition has carried through to today’s SAP field names.

💡 Key point: Just looking at the first three letters of a field name often gets you close to its meaning, since patterns like AUF (order), MAT (material), and WERK (plant) repeat throughout.

Rabbit’s Takeaway

Trying to memorize field names one by one is a losing game. Instead, build the habit of asking, “what ingredient is this?” See AUFNR, and read it as “the order-number ingredient.” See WERKS, and read it as “the kitchen-location ingredient.”

Once this way of reading clicks, even a table you’ve never seen before stops feeling like alien code. A chef who can read a recipe card picks up a new dish quickly — and a practitioner who knows the rules behind field names reads an unfamiliar screen just as fast. 😎

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