Export for the bookkeeping (DATEV)

Under Accounting → Export an admin hands a period to the tax office as one ZIP file.

What the ZIP holds

• Every invoice issued in the period, as it went out: the PDF and, where the invoice has one, its e-invoice (XML). Cancelled invoices and their cancellation invoices are both in it, because both are booked.
• Every external cost of the period with the status Ok or Processed, as the file that was uploaded. Drafts and costs still To clarify stay out: they can change.
• A list (CSV, opens in Excel): one row per document and VAT rate with number, date, customer or supplier, net, tax, gross and due date.

A document belongs to the period its document date falls in: the invoice date, or the date on the supplier's invoice. A period is at most a year.

docket remembers which documents an export held. Export a period again and the list marks them as exported before, so the tax office doesn't book them twice. The ZIP itself is kept for a day.

The DATEV booking batch

Off by default: the tax office gets the documents and the list and books them itself.

An admin switches it on under Admin → Integrations → DATEV. From then on the ZIP also holds a booking batch in DATEV format (EXTF_Buchungsstapel_….csv), which the tax office reads into DATEV Kanzlei-Rechnungswesen. docket needs to know once:

• the consultant number and client number your tax office keeps you under,
• the month your fiscal year starts,
• the accounts: one revenue account per VAT rate and per kind of invoice without German VAT (reverse charge, third country, small business …), one expense account for external costs, one each for suppliers abroad (below), and one collective account each for customers and suppliers.

The form fills in the standard accounts of SKR03 or SKR04 on request. Ask your tax office whether they fit, and for the two collective accounts, which have no standard number.

How docket books:

Document	Booking
Invoice	Gross per VAT rate: collective customer account (debit) against the revenue account. No tax key, so taxed revenue belongs on an automatic account such as 8400 or 4400.
Cancellation invoice	The same, credit.
External cost	Gross: collective supplier account (credit) against the expense account, with the input-tax key 9 (19 %) or 8 (7 %). Without a key at any other rate, and when you couldn't deduct the VAT.
External cost from abroad, no VAT on the invoice	You owe the tax (§ 13b UStG): collective supplier account (credit) against the account for suppliers in other EU countries or outside the EU. No tax key, so these are automatic accounts such as 3123 and 3125 (SKR03) or 5923 and 5925 (SKR04).

A customer's or supplier's own account. Without one, every customer is booked on the collective customer account and every supplier on the collective supplier account. If your tax office keeps a debtor or creditor number per party, enter it as DATEV account on the customer (Administration → Customers) or the supplier (Administration → Suppliers): the batch then books on that account. The ZIP then also holds EXTF_Debitoren-Kreditoren.csv with the name and address of each of these accounts; the tax office reads it in before the booking batch.

Suppliers abroad. On the supplier, Taxation of its invoices says whether it sits in another EU country or outside the EU. Its invoices without VAT are then booked as reverse charge; one that does carry VAT is booked like any other.

docket decides nothing per line and locks nothing: the tax office checks the batch before it books it. Three things it should know:

• One batch per fiscal year. A period that crosses the start of your fiscal year makes two files.
• Documents without an account are left out of the batch, for instance an invoice at a VAT rate you set no revenue account for. The list says so in its column In the booking batch.
• The document files don't travel inside the batch. DATEV takes them separately, so they sit beside it in the ZIP.

Access for your tax office

Your tax office can download the export itself, without anyone of you sending it. It gets no docket account for that and costs no seat.

An admin invites it under Accounting → Export → Access for your tax office with its e-mail address. The tax office gets a mail with a link (valid for seven days) and signs in with it. After its first sign-in it requests a fresh link itself at any time, at your workspace's address with /kanzlei at the end; that one is valid for 30 minutes. If the invitation gets lost before, send it again with Send link again. There is no password.

Signed in, the tax office sees only this: the period to choose, how many invoices and external costs it holds, and the list of earlier exports. Nothing else of docket.

The tax office requests the export for a period. docket puts the ZIP together in the background and mails it as soon as the file is ready. The mail holds a link to sign in, not the file: the download is in the portal, in the list of earlier exports. The file is kept for 24 hours; after that the tax office simply requests the export again. Each tax office downloads only what it requested itself. Every one of its exports is listed for you under Earlier exports with the tax office's name.

Revoke ends the access at once, an open sign-in included. Up to five accesses per workspace.

Related: External costs · E-invoices