What connects to DATEV

DATEV is where the Steuerberater works: the Kanzlei imports the bookings, prepares the advance VAT return (Umsatzsteuervoranmeldung) and the annual accounts, and often runs payroll too. Everything upstream has to arrive in a form that office accepts without rework.

That makes DATEV the most common target in a DACH stack. Shops and marketplaces send revenue, refunds, and fees, as in Shopify to DATEV. Payment providers send settlements, as in Stripe to DATEV. For a one-off PayPal or Stripe export, our free converter turns it into a booking batch. Spend and travel tools send card transactions and expense reports with input VAT split out, as in SAP Concur to DATEV. HR systems send master data, wage types, and absences for payroll, as in Personio to DATEV, where LODAS and Lohn und Gehalt expect different import formats.

Where DATEV integrations break

The chart of accounts is yours, not the plugin’s. SKR03 and SKR04 number the same concept differently (look up any common account in our SKR03 to SKR04 converter), and most Kanzleien add accounts of their own. Every revenue, fee, and expense type needs an explicit mapping to your Sachkonten.
Tax keys are not tax rates. A 19% domestic sale, a 7% item, an EU distance sale under OSS, reverse charge on a foreign supplier, and an export are different tax keys. One wrong key and the advance VAT return is wrong. Our DATEV tax key finder shows which key belongs to which case.
Debtor and creditor numbers must be stable. DATEV wants each customer and supplier on one numeric Personenkonto. Without a persistent mapping from each source system’s IDs, the same customer ends up as three Debitoren.
The batch is strict, and it imports as a unit. The header carries consultant, client, fiscal-year start, and account length, Belegfeld 1 holds at most 36 characters with no spaces or dots, and a single malformed line rejects the whole batch. Our EXTF validator checks a file against these rules line by line. If you build the export yourself, the same rules come as an open-source library.
Locked periods stay locked. Once the Kanzlei has festgeschrieben a period, a correction has to arrive as a new, correctly dated booking. The pipeline has to know what it already delivered, or a re-run books the month twice.