Classic ERP systems are document-oriented. A document consists of several parts: a header, multiple line items, tax lines and cost-centre assignments. DATEV and comparable accounting programs, by contrast, work with journal entries in debit/credit logic: account, contra account, amount, tax code. Between the two worlds lies a translation that someone has to do.
Two common routes, and why neither satisfies
The first route is handing over balances. The tax advisor sees totals but not what they are made of. Review, queries and traceability suffer, because in the end someone has to dig through the individual documents anyway. Every query lands back on the company's desk.
The second route is the ERP vendor's connector. It delivers the individual postings, but costs licence and set-up fees and is hard to justify for smaller companies. It often also ties you to a specific release.
Does this sound familiar?
If your tax advisor only receives balances, or you pay for an expensive connector to export, let us show you in a first conversation how to avoid both.
The third route: translating the logic yourself
We built the process so that it converts the document parts into debit/credit logic. A document with several revenue accounts or tax rates becomes the matching journal entries, with every line. We deliver the result as a posting batch in DATEV format, which DATEV and similar programs import directly. The tax advisor receives every single posting without an additional connector.
Technically, this is a mapping rule, not a black box. Each line item is assigned to a general ledger account, the contra side comes from the customer, supplier or bank account in the document header, taxes are represented by the matching tax code, and cost centres travel along as additional information. Before export, a reconciliation checks that the generated entries add up to the document. Only when they do is the batch created.
Many tax advisors want exactly that: complete, auditable data instead of totals.
Three takeaways
- Individual postings are the prerequisite for auditability. Delivering only balances shifts the work to the tax advisor.
- The translation is logic, not a product. If you understand the structure of your documents, you do not need an expensive licence for it.
- A clean export relieves everyone. Companies save effort, and the tax advisor receives data they can work with immediately. How accounting, data and steering fit together is what our Finance Office is about.