DATEV export DIY guide — a step-by-step for German small businesses

1Short answer

DATEV is the German market-standard accounting stack used by roughly 40,000 tax firms. If your accountant runs on DATEV, you have three practical ways to hand over data from a small business without owning a DATEV client licence yourself. First: DATEV Unternehmen online , a web portal into which you upload the receipts and a booking batch; the firm reads it straight into DATEV Rechnungswesen. Second: a CSV export in the DATEV format (officially the „DATEV ASCII import format“, version 7.0) — produced by your software or a spreadsheet, imported manually by the firm. Third: a DATEVconnect API integration when your software supports it — usually overkill for a small business.

All three routes share three prerequisites: the booking batch must run on the accountant's chart of accounts (SKR03 or SKR04, occasionally SKR07 for clubs or SKR13/14 for agriculture), the receipts must be archived in a GoBD-compliant way, and the receipt-to-booking mapping must be unambiguous. Get those three right and you save the firm hours — and yourself fee minutes.

2SKR03 vs SKR04 in short

SKR stands for Standardkontenrahmen , DATEV's standard chart of accounts. Two main variants exist, semantically identical but sorted differently:

SKR03 — process order. Historically grown, sorted by operating flow (procurement, stock, sales, admin). Merchandise input sits at 3000–3999, revenue at 8000–8999. Common among trade, crafts and traditionally managed businesses.

SKR04 — closing order. Sorted after the positions of the German balance sheet and P&L under HGB. Fixed assets 0100–0999, revenue 4000–4999, merchandise input 5000–5999. Standard at GmbHs, capital companies and any business under HGB reporting requirements.

Practical rule: before you post the first entry, ask the firm which chart they run. Never switch mid-fiscal-year. A “office supplies” account is 4930 Bürobedarf in SKR03 and 6815 Bürobedarf in SKR04 — semantically identical, but an import with the wrong account number lands as a misposting or gets rejected.

For the most common small-business transactions here is the SKR03/SKR04 mapping. This is not tax advice — just the practical shortlist to prepare a batch correctly:

Revenue 19% VAT. SKR03: 8400. SKR04: 4400.

Revenue 7% VAT. SKR03: 8300. SKR04: 4300.

Merchandise input 19%. SKR03: 3400. SKR04: 5400.

Subcontracted services. SKR03: 3100. SKR04: 5900.

Rent, business premises. SKR03: 4210. SKR04: 6310.

Telecommunications. SKR03: 4920. SKR04: 6805.

Office supplies. SKR03: 4930. SKR04: 6815.

Salaries. SKR03: 4120. SKR04: 6020.

Social security (employer share). SKR03: 4130. SKR04: 6110.

Employee travel expenses. SKR03: 4660. SKR04: 6640.

3Booking-batch structure: doc no., account, contra account, amount, text

A DATEV booking batch is at its core a table. Each row is one journal entry. The mandatory fields in the ASCII import structure (DATEV format „EXTF“, version 7.0) are:

Amount (debit/credit). The gross amount of the entry, as a positive number with a comma decimal: 1190,00 .

Debit/credit flag. S or H . From the account field's perspective: debit for expense/asset, credit for revenue/liability.

Currency code. Usually EUR .

Account. The general ledger account or — for customer and supplier bookings — the debtor/creditor number. Debtors 10000–69999, creditors 70000–99999 (same ranges in both SKR03 and SKR04, different general accounts).

Contra account. The second account of the double entry.

BU key. Booking key for automatic tax calculation. Example: 9 = 19% input VAT with BU automation; without automation leave empty. Wrong BU keys are the number-one error source.

Document date. Format DDMM (within the running fiscal year) or DDMMYYYY — DATEV derives the year from the client's fiscal-year definition.

Document field 1. Your invoice or receipt number. Critical for the receipt-PDF ↔ entry mapping.

Document field 2. Usually the due date or bank statement number.

Discount. Cash-discount amount, if taken.

Booking text. Free text, max 60 characters. „Invoice 2026-042 Müller GmbH consulting July“ beats „consulting“.

The file must open with a header row declaring format version, DATEV consultant number, client number, fiscal-year start, general-ledger account length, from/to dates, description and chart of accounts. If you write the header by hand, copy the fields straight from the official „DATEV Format Description“ PDF — not from a blog example, most of which are outdated.

4GoBD retention (10 years) and file storage

The Principles for the proper keeping and retention of books, records and documents in electronic form and for data access (GoBD) is the German Federal Finance Ministry (BMF) circular of 28 November 2019, which superseded the 2014 version. It defines how tax-relevant data must be stored. Five points matter for DATEV exports:

10-year retention. Books, records, inventories, annual accounts, booking documents and invoices: 10 years under Section 147 (3) AO. Commercial letters and other documents: 6 years. The clock starts at the end of the calendar year in which the last entry was made.

Non-alterability. Once posted, receipts must not be modifiable. A PDF in a cloud folder qualifies only if the folder enforces versioning and change logs or read-only access.

Completeness. No receipt may be missing. A booking without a receipt lets the tax office estimate or disallow the expense.

Traceability. You must be able to go from booking to receipt and back. Practical rule: document field 1 in the batch (invoice number) equals the PDF filename. „2026-042.pdf“ and „document field 1 = 2026-042“ line up.

Machine readability. The file must be searchable in the event of a tax audit. A scanned image PDF without an OCR text layer does not qualify — at minimum the invoice number, date and amount must be present as text in the PDF.

For small-business filing, a per-fiscal-year layout works well: /Bookkeeping/2026/Receipts/AR/ for outgoing invoices (debtors), /Bookkeeping/2026/Receipts/ER/ for incoming invoices (creditors), /Bookkeeping/2026/Bank/ for bank statements, /Bookkeeping/2026/Cash/ for cash-register receipts, /Bookkeeping/2026/Payroll/ for payroll journals, and /Bookkeeping/2026/Export/ for the booking batches. If you park the whole tree in a WORM-capable store (write-once-read-many), you meet the non-alterability requirement technically.

Sources. DATEV help on format and Unternehmen online: datev.de/web/de/service-und-support/dokumente-online/hilfe . GoBD full text (BMF letter of 28.11.2019): bundesfinanzministerium.de — GoBD . Prior version (11.07.2019) archived: archive.org — GoBD 2019-07-11 .

5Invoices: what belongs in the export

Every outgoing invoice produces at least a revenue entry and — unless paid on the spot — a receivable entry. In the simplest form that is one row:

Customer paid cash: 1000 Cash to 8400 Revenue 19% VAT (SKR03) , gross amount, BU key for tax automation, doc field 1 = invoice number.

Customer on account: 10001 Debtor Customer XY to 8400 Revenue 19% VAT , gross amount, doc field 1 = invoice number, doc field 2 = due date.

Payment later: 1200 Bank to 10001 Debtor , gross (VAT already embedded in the debtor booking, no second VAT posting).

What must show up in the export so the firm never asks back: full invoice number in document field 1, exact invoice date (not payment date), gross amount, correct tax rate (7% books/food/hotels, 19% standard, 0% intra-EU with reverse-charge note, Section 13b UStG for foreign service providers) and a booking text describing the transaction. Collective postings like „mixed revenue“ or „July revenue“ are only acceptable when the collective document ships with a per-invoice list.

For the invoices themselves: they must carry the mandatory items under Section 14 (4) UStG (full name and address, tax number or VAT ID, invoice date, sequential invoice number, quantity and type of service, service date, itemised net and tax). A generator such as our invoice template generator validates that automatically; otherwise a checklist works.

6Payroll postings (DATEV Lohn) — short note

DATEV Lohn is a separate application (LODAS or Lohn und Gehalt). Data exchange with Rechnungswesen runs either through DATEV's internal coupling (inside the firm) or through a separate payroll booking batch with typical rows: 4120 Salaries (SKR03) / 6020 Wages (SKR04) to 1755 Wage & church tax and to 1740 Social funds . Accounts and BU keys depend on the firm's setup — do not guess, ask the firm for the exact booking scheme.

For businesses whose payroll is done externally but who want to book payroll journals into DATEV Rechnungswesen monthly: Pistacio exports a monthly payroll journal from the Workforce Pro module, from which a DATEV-format booking batch can be produced directly — including finance accounts and cost-centre splits when you maintain them in the employee master. This does not replace payroll accounting, but it removes the manual transfer from PDF payslips into the ledger.

7Cash-register special cases

Cash registers are the number-one focus of German tax audits — and the number-one reason for estimated assessments. For the DATEV hand-off four points are critical:

Daily close. Every cash day is closed individually (cash report or Z-report from an electronic register). Collective postings for whole weeks are not permissible. Daily entry: 1000 Cash to 8400 Revenue (split by tax rate) .

Cash-count integrity. The computed balance must at any time match the physical count. Differences go into 1590 Cash-count difference expense or 4790 Cash-count difference income — never silently „smoothed“.

TSE requirement. Electronic cash-register systems have needed a certified technical security device (TSE) since 1 January 2020 under Section 146a AO and the Cash Register Security Regulation. The DSFinV-K export from the register must be produced during an audit — separately from the DATEV booking batch.

Split by tax rate. A café serving food on-premises (19%) and takeaway (7%) must book daily takings split by rate. The Z-report should already show the split; if it does not, the register is misconfigured.

8Common mistakes

The same six error patterns come up over and over in conversations with tax advisors — all avoidable:

Wrong chart of accounts. SKR03 accounts in an SKR04 ledger (or the reverse) — the import passes but the mapping is wrong. Always confirm the firm's chart first.

BU key set twice. If you both set the BU key and manually book the tax account, DATEV posts VAT twice. Rule of thumb: either BU automation (key set, no tax account) or manual (tax account explicit, no key).

Missing or inconsistent document number. Without a unique document field 1, the firm cannot find the matching receipt. Use the same number in the booking batch and in the PDF filename — not „RE-2026-042“ in one place and „2026042“ in the other.

No header, or a header from the wrong year. If fiscal-year start or from/to dates in the header do not match the booking date, DATEV Rechnungswesen refuses the import. Always derive the header from the official format description, do not copy an old file.

Intra-EU sales booked as domestic. An invoice to an Austrian customer with a valid VAT ID is intra-community (revenue 8125 SKR03 / 4125 SKR04) and must appear in the recapitulative statement (ZM). Book it on 8400 and it drops out of the ZM — spotted at latest during the VAT return.

Receipts without OCR text layer. A phone photo of a till receipt is „a receipt“ but without an OCR text layer is not machine-readable. Under GoBD that is a defect. Scanner apps with OCR (many mobile scanners have it built in) solve this for under €5 per month.

Sources and further reading

DATEV help: datev.de/web/de/service-und-support/dokumente-online/hilfe

GoBD letter (BMF, 28.11.2019): bundesfinanzministerium.de — GoBD

GoBD 2019-07-11 (archive.org): archive.org — GoBD 2019-07-11

Section 147 AO (retention periods): gesetze-im-internet.de/ao_1977/__147.html

Section 14 UStG (invoice mandatory items): gesetze-im-internet.de/ustg_1980/__14.html

Section 146a AO and Kassensicherungsverordnung (TSE): gesetze-im-internet.de/ao_1977/__146a.html

Frequently asked questions

Do I need my own DATEV licence to send data to my accountant? No. For businesses the default route is DATEV Unternehmen online: you upload receipts and a booking batch through a web portal, and the firm imports it into their DATEV environment. Alternatively you produce a CSV in the DATEV ASCII format and transfer it as a file. A DATEV client licence is only needed if you keep the books yourself in DATEV Rechnungswesen.

SKR03 or SKR04 — which one should a small business use? Both are semantically identical, just sorted differently. What matters is which chart your accountant runs — you don't choose, they do. SKR03 is common in trade and crafts; SKR04 is standard at GmbHs and any business under HGB reporting. Never switch mid-year — a switch is only clean on 1 January.

How long do I need to keep booking receipts? 10 years under Section 147 (3) of the German Fiscal Code (AO) for booking receipts, invoices, books and annual accounts. 6 years for commercial letters and other business documents. The clock starts at the end of the calendar year in which the last entry was made or the receipt was created. For electronic receipts the GoBD applies — non-alterability, completeness, machine readability.

What is a BU key and when do I need one? The BU key (Buchungsschlüssel) drives DATEV's automatic tax calculation. Setting key 9 on an expense booking, for example, tells DATEV to post 19% input VAT automatically. Rule: either use BU automation (key set, don't touch the tax account) or book manually (tax account explicit, no key). Doing both at once double-posts VAT.

Can I hand over cash-register bookings as a weekly lump sum? No. Under GoBD and Section 146a AO every cash day must be closed and documented individually. A daily cash report or Z-report, split by tax rate, is the minimum. Weekly or monthly collective postings are one of the most common triggers for estimated assessments in tax audits — and for cash-heavy businesses also a TSE compliance issue.