In most mid-sized German businesses the bookkeeping is done by the tax adviser, who works with DATEV. The business supplies the documents: sales invoices, purchase invoices, the cash book, bank statements. For a long time that meant folders going to the practice, where everything was entered. Today much of it is digital - but often only halfway.
The question of a DATEV connection comes up when the tax adviser asks for documents that are already in the system. Or when the practice posts the shop’s sales invoices by hand and that shows on its bill. Or when someone in the business starts pre-coding postings in Excel so the practice has less to do.
What DATEV is for a business
DATEV is the German tax advisers’ cooperative and the software most practices use for bookkeeping. Two things matter for a business: DATEV Unternehmen online, a portal through which documents go to the practice and reports come back, and the DATEV formats in which other programs can output postings and documents. The business needs no DATEV program of its own - it needs programs that speak DATEV.
Document images and posting batches
Two terms that come up in every conversation with the practice:
- Document image (Belegbild): the invoice as a PDF or scan. In Unternehmen online every document image is uploaded, and the practice posts from it. Programs can hand them over directly, with amount, date and invoice number attached, so the practice no longer has to read them off.
- Posting batch (Buchungsstapel): a list of finished postings - account, contra account, amount, tax code, document number - in DATEV format. The practice imports it instead of entering every invoice individually. Many inventory and accounting programs can produce posting batches.
Document images are enough if the practice is to do the posting. Posting batches make sense when your own system already knows how things are posted - for sales invoices that is usually the case.
What goes from where to the tax adviser
| Source | What | Typical route |
|---|---|---|
| Inventory system or ERP | sales invoices, credit notes, open items | posting batch plus document images, often built in |
| Online shop | orders, invoices, credit notes | through the inventory system or a shop extension |
| Payment providers such as PayPal, Klarna, Stripe | payouts, fees, refunds | statements that have to be matched |
| Bank | account transactions | the practice usually collects these itself |
| Suppliers | purchase invoices | scan or PDF into Unternehmen online, often from the mailbox |
| Till | till closings | often still a slip of paper or Excel |
| Travel expenses, company card | receipts | photos, apps, often by hand |
What many systems can already do
Before having anything built, look at the programs you already have. Most inventory systems, invoicing programs and ERP systems can output sales invoices as posting batches and document images in DATEV format, often with a direct handover to Unternehmen online. For Shopify, WooCommerce and Shopware there are extensions that pass orders on to DATEV as invoices; how shop and inventory system come together is covered in connecting online shop and ERP. Often the function is there and was simply never set up, because nobody knew which accounts and tax codes to put in.
Where things are still retyped
- Sales invoices from Word: to the practice they are a document image without data, entered one by one. As soon as the invoice comes out of a system, that disappears.
- The till: the till closing is on a slip of paper, the office copies it into a list, the practice enters the list.
- Payment providers: PayPal pays out in batches, minus fees. The practice has to match the payout to the individual invoices - without a connection that is manual work, and with many small orders a lot of it.
- Purchase invoices from the mailbox: they arrive as PDFs, are printed, signed off, scanned and uploaded. A workflow that starts digital, ends digital and consists of paper in between.
That is double data entry in its purest form: the data is there, and a person enters it again.
What a connection needs
Technology is rarely the problem here. The groundwork lies in the posting rules:
- Chart of accounts: SKR 03 or SKR 04 - the practice says which applies and which revenue accounts are used for which item groups and countries.
- Tax codes: which tax rate belongs to which line, and how are foreign sales and tax-free deliveries marked?
- Debtors: which customer number becomes the debtor number, and are there collective debtors for shop customers?
- Document numbers: they have to match the invoice number in the system so the practice can bring invoice and payment together.
- Timing: is each invoice handed over as it is issued, continuously, or collected for the period close?
All of this needs agreeing with your tax adviser before the first handover runs. How documents have to be kept and what the practice needs for proper bookkeeping is something you also settle with them - that is their field, not the software’s. Whether your ERP or your payment provider can be connected for a handover, we check up front where possible; not every system gives up its data in a usable form.
How to proceed
- Ask your tax adviser what they enter by hand today and how they would prefer to receive documents.
- Check which of your programs already have a DATEV export - and whether it was simply never set up.
- Agree the chart of accounts, tax codes and debtors with the practice.
- Start with the largest volume, usually sales invoices, then add shop and payment providers.
Where a ready-made export is missing, or data from several systems has to be brought together first - shop, inventory system, payment provider - we build the interface that hands it over in the form the practice expects.
