Help & Documentation

Offline-first guidance for safe gear lists.

Cash Book (Kassenbuch)

Cash registers that support the GoBD requirements: running balance, cash counts, and locking

The Cash Book (Accounting → Cash book) records every cash movement — takings, cash purchases, owner deposits and withdrawals, and transfers to or from the bank — across one or more named registers (Kassen), each with its own opening balance and running Kassenbestand. It's built to GoBD rules: gap-free document numbers, a balance that can never go negative, append-only entries with reversal-only corrections, and Festschreibung (locking). Cash income and expenses flow into your EÜR and UStVA automatically.

What the Cash Book is for

A separate ledger for physical cash, kept to the standard the Finanzamt expects.

  • Each register (Kasse) has a name, an opening balance, and a running Kassenbestand shown large at the top of the ledger.
  • Five movement types cover every case: cash takings (Bareinnahme), cash spend (Barausgabe), owner deposit (Einlage), owner withdrawal (Entnahme), and a bank transfer (Geldtransit).
  • Takings and cash spend are tax-relevant and feed your EÜR/UStVA; deposits, withdrawals, and transfers are tax-neutral.
  • You can run several registers — for example a main till and a petty-cash box — and switch between them.
  • On a desktop the ledger scrolls inside its own box, at most 70 % of the window tall, with the column headers pinned at its top. On a phone each entry is a card with the same Storno, edit and lock buttons.

Set up a register

Create your first register before booking anything.

  1. From the cash-book list, open 'Manage registers' (or go to Settings → Accounting → Cash registers).
  2. Enter a name, an opening balance, and an opening date, then create it.
  3. Rename, archive, or reactivate registers from the same page at any time.
Tips
  • Archiving a register hides it from the ledger switcher but keeps its full history.
  • Once a register has its first booked entry, the opening balance and date are frozen — a GoBD requirement, with no override.

Record a cash movement

Every entry is added to the selected register and stamped with the next document number.

  1. Select the register, then click 'New entry'.
  2. Pick the movement type.
  3. Enter the amount (always a positive, gross figure) and the date.
  4. For takings or spend, choose the VAT rate and, optionally, a category and the counterparty.
  5. For a bank transfer, pick the direction (cash → bank or bank → cash) and an optional reference.
  6. Add a description and save — the entry gets the next Beleg number (provisional until the device is online) and the running balance updates.
Common Pitfalls
  • A booking that would push the running balance below zero is rejected — you can't pay out more cash than the till holds, even with a back-dated entry.
  • Mark an expense or invoice as paid in cash and a matching mirror entry appears in the Cash Book automatically — don't also enter it by hand, or you'll double-count it.
  • An invoice paid in instalments gets one mirror entry per cash payment. A later payment — in cash or by bank transfer — never changes or removes an earlier entry, and marking a part-paid invoice as paid in cash books only the remaining amount.

Count the till (Kassensturz)

A Zählprotokoll records the physical cash on hand and reconciles it against the books.

  1. Click 'Count till' to open the denomination grid.
  2. Enter how many of each note and coin you have; the counted total, the expected balance, and the difference update live.
  3. Save the count — the figures lock so the record can't be quietly changed.
  4. If there's a difference, book it in one click: an overage posts as takings, a shortfall as spend (both at 0% VAT).
Tips
  • A saved count is permanent; recounting creates a new record rather than editing the old one.

Locking and corrections (GoBD)

Cash records must be tamper-evident, so editing is deliberately limited.

  • Festschreibung locks an entry: after that, only internal notes can change — the figures are frozen.
  • Every entry locks by itself at the end of the day it was recorded. You can correct or delete it on that day only; from the next day on, a mistake is fixed with a reversal.
  • You can't edit or delete a locked entry. To fix a mistake you book a reversal (Storno) — a new, opposite entry dated today that cancels the original for your tax figures.
  • Document numbers are issued by the server, one sequence per register, so two devices cannot produce the same number. A new entry first shows a provisional number marked “provisional”; the final number is assigned as soon as the device is online and can differ. Until then the entry is not locked.
  • Exporting the Kassenblatt PDF for a period up to a chosen date locks every entry up to that date.
Common Pitfalls
  • Looking for a delete or edit button on a locked entry — there isn't one by design. Reverse it instead.

Export and how cash reaches your taxes

The register feeds both your reports and your accountant.

  • Export a Kassenblatt PDF or a GoBD CSV journal per register and date range from the 'Export' menu.
  • Cash takings and spend are picked up by the Anlage EÜR and the UStVA on the entry's date.
  • Set the date filters before exporting — they double as the export period (and the PDF's locking range).
See also

Think append-only: book each cash movement as it happens, count the till when you need to prove the balance, and lock entries to close a period. Corrections are always a reversal, never an edit — that's what keeps the Cash Book GoBD-clean.

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