JinJin48

SAP Consultant | BTP · S/4HANA · US Global Rollout

July 19, 2026 · 13 min read

SAP SF Rating Scale

Rating Scale is the master data object that defines a reusable, ordered set of scoring levels — each level pairing a numeric value with a display label such as “5 = Outstanding” — used throughout SAP SuccessFactors Performance & Goals to score how well an employee met a goal or a competency. It is the first object configured within the Goal & Performance Configuration sub-block of Phase 2 (Permission & System Configuration): every Goal Plan Template and every Performance Form Template requires a Rating Scale before it can be built, since the scale is what turns a manager’s qualitative judgment into a comparable number. This article covers what a Rating Scale is, its common point-count variants, how it sits at the head of the Goal Plan Template / Performance Form Template chain in the Talent & Compensation zone of the landscape, and every field an Admin Center consultant configures for it.

Part 1: Rating Scale — Core Concepts (All Modules)#

1.1 What Is the Rating Scale?#

Rating Scale is a client-level (tenant-level) foundation object that carries no employee data of its own — it exists purely as a scoring yardstick. It has no meaning in isolation; its entire purpose is to be referenced by other Performance & Goals templates so that every manager rating a goal, a competency, or an overall review section is scoring against the same defined set of levels, letting ratings be compared, distributed, and calibrated consistently across an organization.

1.2 Rating Scale Variants (Point-Count Patterns)#

A Rating Scale’s level count is not a cosmetic choice — it directly shapes rater behavior, calibration difficulty, and how cleanly the scale’s output can drive downstream compensation decisions. Getting the point count wrong either produces meaningless clustering around the middle or an unmanageable calibration burden across a large rater population.

Design principle: a Rating Scale’s level count and label wording should never change once forms are live for an active review cycle — completed ratings reference specific level values, and altering the level count or relabeling levels mid-cycle desynchronizes in-progress and historical form data. Lock the scale design during blueprint, before the first review cycle opens.

1.3 Organizational Levels and Data Hierarchy#

Data hierarchy with a concrete example

Rating Scale sits in the tenant-level “Talent & Compensation” zone of the SuccessFactors Master Data Landscape, at the head of one of two independent client-level chains bundled into that zone (the Talent chain this article covers, and a parallel, unrelated Compensation chain owned by a sibling article):

Client (SuccessFactors Instance)
   │
   ├── Rating Scale "RS_5pt" — 5-level, 1 = Below Expectations – 5 = Outstanding
   │      │
   │      └── Goal Plan Template "GPT_2024" — FY2024, Performance/Behavior/Growth categories, of RS_5pt
   │             │
   │             └── Performance Form Template "PFT_Annual2024" — Annual Review, 4-section, of GPT_2024
   │
   └── Compensation Plan "CP_Merit2024" — Merit 2024, 3% budget  (Compensation chain, see SF-A03-11)
          │
          └── Compensation Template "CT_Merit" — Merit, 0-6% range, of CP_Merit2024
                 │
                 └── Eligibility Rule "ER_FT1Y" — Full-time, 1+ year, of CT_Merit

MANDATORY landscape verification note: the module Master.md’s ER Diagram draws Rating Scale branching into two parallel 1:N children — Goal Plan Template and Performance Form Template — as siblings, and separately nests Route Map as a 1:N child of Performance Form Template. The published SuccessFactors Master Data Landscape (sf-a01/images/04-sf-a01-master-landscape.html, Zone D) resolves both points differently: (1) it draws a single serial solid chain RS_5pt → GPT_2024 → PFT_Annual2024, consistent with the Setup Flow’s explicit dual-prerequisite reading that “Performance Form Template ← (Rating Scale, Goal Plan Template)” — Performance Form Template inherits Rating Scale through its linked Goal Plan Template while also being able to bind Rating Scale directly for sections not tied to goal scoring (see Section 1.4); and (2) it places Route Map as a standalone Zone D node with only a dashed reference chip to Permission Role (RM_Std ↗ PR_ESS) — no solid connector to Performance Form Template — matching the Setup Flow’s own prerequisite line “Route Map ← (Permission Role)” rather than the ER Diagram’s nesting. Route Map is therefore not part of this article’s own hierarchy chain; see SF-A03-10.

Design principle: because Rating Scale carries no employee data and no organizational sub-levels of its own, its position in the hierarchy is intentionally shallow (client level, single node) — the real structural complexity lives one level down, in how Goal Plan Template and Performance Form Template each bind to it (Section 2.4), not in the scale object itself.

1.4 Integration with Other Master Data Objects#

Rating Scale has a narrower integration footprint than most Phase 2 objects: it is a pure upstream input consumed by exactly two downstream templates, with no criteria sources feeding into it the way, for example, Permission Group draws from Foundation Objects. Route Map and Compensation Plan sit in the same landscape zone but have no direct data-model link to Rating Scale — Route Map is configured independently against Permission Role for approval routing, and Compensation Plan’s merit-guideline logic consumes a completed rating’s outcome only as a downstream business rule at runtime, not as a stored reference back to the Rating Scale object.

Part 2: SF-Specific Field Details#

2.0 Scope of SF Ownership#

Legend: ◎ = Owner / Critical, ○ = Direct involvement

2.1 Scale Definition (Core Identification)#

Scale Definition is the minimum record a Rating Scale needs to exist — it is what every Goal Plan Template and Performance Form Template’s scale picker resolves back to.

2.2 Rating Level Configuration#

Rating Level Configuration is the repeatable child record — one row per level — that actually defines the scale a rater sees and the number the system stores.

2.3 Localization (Translated Labels)#

Localization is a deliberately separate maintenance step from defining the scale’s levels — a scale can be fully configured (levels and values complete) and still ship untranslated for a global rollout if this step is skipped.

2.4 Usage in Consuming Templates#

A Rating Scale itself scores nothing — it only becomes meaningful once bound into a Goal Plan Template or Performance Form Template. This section covers how that binding works and where the most common design mistakes occur.

What to Read Next#

L1) Big Picture

L2-A) Master Data

L2-B) Transaction