How does the system derive the company code when posting a goods movement?

The correct answer highlights the relationship between the plant and the company code in SAP S/4HANA. A plant is a critical organizational unit in the system, and it is uniquely tied to only one company code within a client. This means that whenever a goods movement occurs, the system can directly derive the company code from the plant involved in that movement, ensuring accuracy and consistency in financial reporting and transactions.

This design helps maintain organizational structure within the system, as it prevents ambiguity about which company code a given plant operates under. Given that a plant can only belong to a single company code, this eliminates the complexities and potential errors that could arise if a plant were allowed to span multiple company codes, ensuring that transactions are correctly recorded and reported under the right entities.

In the context of the other options, manual selection of the company code by users is less reliable and could lead to increases in errors. Each goods movement having a company code reference is not accurate, as the goods movement is tied to the plant, which inherently determines the associated company code. Lastly, while the location of the plant can impact logistical and operational aspects, it is the direct relationship between the plant and the company code that defines how the company code is derived during a goods movement.