This paper discusses some of the most common pitfalls which had been encountered by the authors, over more than ten years, with SAP-based plant maintenance systems. The experience is drawn from maintenance engineering consulting for a variety of companies where the SAP Plant Maintenance module is used as the integrated computerised maintenance management system. The companies span the defence-, oil and gas-, mining-, and manufacturing industries in Australia and South Africa. The aims of this paper are to identify five of the most commonly encountered problem areas with the SAP Plant Maintenance system; discuss the main effects of these problems on the management of the maintenance process; propose some remedies to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of maintenance relying on the SAP PM module; and identify potential problems to look out for when implementing the proposed remedies. Although this paper is not the silver bullet to slay all SAP PM related problems, it will assist maintenance managers and reliability engineers to better understand how and why things can go wrong with their SAP PM systems, and where to look for solutions to alleviate these problems.