Help & Documentation

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Accounting Reports & Setup

Year-end reports (EÜR, VAT, DATEV) plus companies, products, and branding

Two things make the accounting area work for you: the reports that summarise the year for the tax office (Accounting → Reports — EÜR, UStVA, ZM, and a DATEV booking export), and the one-time setup that everything else draws on (Settings → Accounting — your companies, product catalogue, expense categories, and document branding). Set up once, report at the end of each period.

Where reports and setup live

Reports and setup are two separate places. Run reports from the accounting area; configure the underlying data in Settings.

  • Accounting → Reports — EÜR, UStVA, ZM, the DATEV booking export, and the Anlageverzeichnis (fixed-asset register) export, each in its own panel.
  • Settings → Accounting — companies, products, categories, invoice and quote settings, banking, cash registers, the e-invoice inbox, recurring invoices and expenses, the sevDesk import and dunning.
  • Branding (logo and accent colour for your PDFs) lives in Settings → Account → PDF Branding.
  • A company that keeps double-entry books (GmbH or UG, Bilanz) does not get the Anlage EÜR panel — the EÜR is only for cash-basis bookkeeping. It gets the Bilanz workspace (journal, Bilanz and GuV, exports) in that place instead; UStVA and ZM stay available.
  • A cancelled invoice and its Storno are both in the Buchungsstapel: the invoice as the sale it was (Soll, on its invoice date), the Storno as the reversal (Haben, on the Storno date). The two net to zero. Before, only the Storno was exported.
  • The Bilanz journal books the same pair: the cancelled invoice as the sale on its invoice date, the Storno as the mirrored entry on the Storno date. This applies to invoices dated 1 January 2026 or later. An invoice from an earlier year and its Storno both stay out of the journal, so years you have already closed keep their figures.
Tips
  • Invoice numbering, templates, and email defaults are also under Settings → Accounting — they're covered in the Invoices topic.
  • With multi-company on, every report is scoped to the company you've selected in the switcher.
  • Closing the Save dialog without saving shows "Download cancelled. Nothing was saved." — the file was not written, so export again when you are ready.

EÜR — income-surplus statement

The Anlage EÜR summarises a tax year's income and expenses in the BMF format. It exports as a bundle: the PDF plus audit CSVs for revenue, expenses, cancellations and fixed-asset disposals. 'Export ELSTER XML' downloads the same figures as an ELSTER file you can upload in Mein ELSTER.

  1. Open Accounting → Reports and find the 'Anlage EÜR' panel.
  2. Pick the tax year.
  3. Click 'Export EÜR ZIP' to download the PDF and the supporting CSVs.
  4. Hand the bundle to your accountant or upload it to your tax software.
Tips
  • It pulls from your finalised invoices and expenses, so make sure those are complete and categorised first.
  • If you're a Kleinunternehmer, your revenue goes on the Kleinunternehmer line and the PDF is marked § 19 UStG automatically.
  • An invoice counts as income on the day it was paid, whether a bank transaction settled it or you set it to paid with 'Mark as paid'. An invoice that was paid and cancelled later is in the revenue list twice: as the receipt in the year the money came in, and as the Storno line.
Common Pitfalls
  • An empty EÜR usually means the wrong year is selected, or invoices/expenses for that year aren't finalised yet.

VAT returns — UStVA and ZM

The UStVA is your periodic VAT advance return; the ZM (Zusammenfassende Meldung) declares intra-EU sales. Both preview the figures by tax code and can be handed to ELSTER.

  1. In the 'UStVA' panel, choose the year and the month or quarter to build the preview.
  2. Click 'Export CSV' for figures to type into Mein ELSTER, or 'Export ELSTER XML' for a file you upload there.
  3. Use the 'ZM' panel the same way for intra-community sales; it exports with 'Export ZM XML'.
  4. 'Validate against ELSTER' checks the XML with ELSTER before you file it. It needs no certificate, files nothing, and is not offered in the iOS app.
  5. Re-filing a period that was already transmitted to ELSTER from the app is detected automatically: the panel shows a correction note, and the filing goes out as a Berichtigung (UStVA Kz 10 / ZM meldeart 11) that supersedes the earlier one.
Tips
  • The UStVA only applies if you charge VAT — a Kleinunternehmer sees a note explaining it isn't needed.
  • The ZM only shows content when there are intra-EU sales in the period.
  • A ZM period containing credit notes (negative amounts) is also filed as a correction — ELSTER does not accept a negative amount on an original report.
  • In the UStVA a cancelled invoice is counted in its own period and taken back in the period of its Storno. Issued and cancelled in the same period (with Ist-Versteuerung: paid and cancelled), it nets to zero; across two periods the first shows plus and the second minus.
  • With Ist-Versteuerung the UStVA counts the amount received. An invoice you set to paid with 'Mark as paid' counts in the month of its payment date, like one settled through a bank transaction.

DATEV booking export

Beyond the per-transaction DATEV export in Banking, the Reports area produces a full SKR04 Buchungsstapel — the booking stack your accountant imports into DATEV for the whole year.

  1. Open the 'DATEV Buchungsstapel' panel.
  2. Pick the tax year.
  3. Click 'Export Buchungsstapel' and send it to your accountant.
Tips
  • With multi-company on, the export covers the selected company only.
  • Invoices and expenses you deleted are never in the file. Until v0.703.55 they were: deleting a row leaves a hidden marker behind so the deletion reaches your other devices, and the export read that marker as a real document — so your accountant could be sent bookings for things you had removed, while your EÜR already left them out. The same is true of the Bilanz, GuV, SuSa and GoBD exports.
  • Text you type into a booking — Buchungstext, Belegfeld, account names — is neutralised before it reaches the CSV, so a description starting with "=", "+", "@" or "-" is shown literally in your accountant's spreadsheet instead of being run as a formula. Amounts are never touched and still sum.

Multiple companies

If you keep separate books — say freelance income and a Gewerbe — enable multi-company accounting. A company switcher then appears across the accounting pages, and invoices, expenses, numbering, and reports are kept apart per company.

  • Invoices, expenses, invoice numbering, EÜR, UStVA, and DATEV are all scoped per company.
  • Expense categories are shared across companies.
  • Disabling multi-company hides the switcher but keeps all company data — re-enable to bring it back.
  1. Go to Settings → Accounting → Companies and enable multi-company accounting.
  2. Open the company manager to add each company with its name and, optionally, VAT ID and DATEV client code.
  3. Switch companies from the bar that now appears at the top of the accounting pages.

Product & service catalogue

Save the things you sell or rent so you don't retype them on every quote and invoice. Each catalogue entry carries a name, unit, default price, and tax rate.

  • Edit a product to update its defaults; archive ones you no longer offer.
  • Import or export the catalogue as CSV to bulk-load it.
  • Archived products are hidden until you toggle 'Show archived'.
  1. Go to Settings → Accounting → Products and click 'Add product'.
  2. Fill in the name (German, and English if you bill in both), unit, default price, default tax rate, and an optional SKU and description.
  3. Save — the product is now selectable as a line on quotes and invoices.

Document branding

Put your logo and brand colour on your PDFs. Branding is set per account and applies to your invoice, quote, and expense documents.

  1. Go to Settings → Account and find the PDF Branding area.
  2. Upload a logo (PNG, JPEG, or SVG, up to 2 MB).
  3. Pick an accent colour from the presets or with the custom colour picker. Choosing your own accent colour needs Pro; without it the swatches are locked and PDFs use the default colour.
  4. The live preview shows how it lands on a PDF page.
Tips
  • Branding is per account, so all your companies share the same logo and colour.
See also

Do the setup once — companies, your product catalogue, categories, and branding — and the day-to-day documents practically fill themselves in. Then reporting is just picking a period and exporting: EÜR and DATEV for the year, UStVA and ZM each filing period.

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