DATEV Export Made Easy: How to Automate Your Accounting as an Online Seller

For many online sellers, handing accounting data over to the tax advisor is a recurring manual task: collecting, sorting and exporting documents. A direct DATEV export from your inventory management system can simplify this step considerably.

What Is DATEV, and Why Does the Export Matter?

DATEV is one of the most widely used software solutions for tax advisors and accounting in Germany. For e-commerce documents to be processed correctly there, they need to be in a suitable format, usually according to the SKR03 or SKR04 chart of accounts, depending on which one your tax advisor uses.

The Manual Route and Its Weak Points

Without an automated export, invoices, credit notes and payment records often have to be gathered individually and converted into a DATEV-readable format. That's time-consuming and error-prone, especially with high order volumes across multiple channels.

What an Automated DATEV Export Does

• Direct export of all relevant documents (invoices, credit notes) in the right chart of accounts (SKR03/SKR04)
• Consistent account assignment, regardless of which channel the order came through
• Instead of individual manual exports, the system hands data over to the tax advisor on a regular schedule
• Traceability, since the export stays directly linked to the original document

What to Clarify When Setting It Up

1. Which chart of accounts does your tax advisor use: SKR03 or SKR04?
2. Which document types should be exported (only invoices, or also credit notes and incoming payments)?
3. Should the export run continuously, weekly or monthly, which rhythm fits your workflow?

It's best to clarify these questions directly with your tax advisor before setting the export up in production.

Conclusion

Manual sorting and export work for documents disappears completely with an automated DATEV export, whether on your end or your tax advisor's, and the risk of transfer errors drops as well. Especially with growing order volume, the setup pays for itself quickly, since the time saved can be invested more meaningfully in actual sales.