SAP R/3 and VAT attribution

My employer, a major charity/Public Sector body, has purchased a new R/3 Finance and Business system from SAP

My employer is a Business/Non-Business Partially Exempt entity for VAT purposes. Accordingly, the system is required to "attribute" input tax to non business, exempt and taxable supplies in order to calculate the amount of input tax which can be reclaimed. In the initial stages of configuration, it seems that the concept of attribution is new to SAP. I find this difficult to believe for such a prestigious product.

I would like to ask whether any fellow AccountingWEB members have had experience operating R/3 in a Partially Exempt organisation. If so, can SAP deal with VAT in a Partial Exemption situation adequately, or have they had to have special configuration to produce a work-round answer? Any views/experiences would be gratefully received.
"Geoff"