How to Export Invoices in DATEV Format (2026)
Postings alone, or the invoice with its document attached - the two DATEV handovers compared, how to code an incoming invoice, and how Tailride exports.
Last updated: August 2026 · ~11 min read · Published by Tailride
Two different things get called "the DATEV export", and most guides describe only one of them.
The first sends postings - one booking record per document, coded and closed, with the invoice itself left behind. The second sends the invoice and its document together, so the practice posts from the actual thing rather than from somebody else's summary of it.
Which one you use decides how much of the work lands in your office and how much lands in your Steuerberater's, and it decides whether the document is there when someone asks for it.
Tailride produces the second kind of handover. Each supplier invoice crosses as data plus its original PDF, typed as an incoming invoice, filed under Eingangsrechnungen, period already set, amounts already split by VAT rate and coded against SKR03, SKR04 or your own chart. Having the documents to export is the other half of the job, so we do that too - inboxes, supplier portals, and however far back you need to go. Free for your first ten invoices each month; paid plans open at €12 monthly on annual billing. See the integrations →
Short answer
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Buchungsstapel carries posting records only. Compact, final, and the document does not travel with it.
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A DATEV Unternehmen online package carries invoice data and the source document, one record per invoice.
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Tailride produces the second kind: the PDF attached, the amounts split by VAT rate, and deliberately no line items.
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A supplier invoice posts as creditor, expense account, input VAT - not debtor, revenue, output VAT. Guides that say otherwise are describing sales invoices.
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Agree the chart of accounts with your Steuerberater before the first export, not after the first rejection.
The two things called "the DATEV export"
Buchungsstapel: the posting without the invoice
A Buchungsstapel is a batch of booking records. Each row is a finished posting: an amount, two accounts, a tax key, a date, a reference.
It is compact and it imports cleanly. It is also a conclusion. By the time a document becomes a row, someone has already decided which expense account it belongs to, and the invoice that justified the decision is not in the file. Your adviser receives the answer without the evidence.
That works for a phone bill. It is thin for anything an auditor might ask about.
A DATEV Unternehmen online package: the invoice, with its document
The other route sends invoice data and the document together, as a single ZIP the practice imports into DATEV Unternehmen online.
Inside, there is an index file listing what the package contains, then one data file per invoice paired with the source PDF. Each record is typed as an accountsPayableLedger - an incoming invoice, filed under Eingangsrechnungen, tagged with the accounting period it belongs to.
The practical difference: your adviser opens a posting and the invoice is there. They can check it, split it, or code it differently. Nothing was flattened before it arrived, and nothing has to be fetched from a shared drive later.
Not the same as the DATEV Rechnungsdatenservice, which is worth separating because the names blur. The Rechnungsdatenservice is ordered by the practice and authenticated with a DATEV SmartCard or SmartLogin - you cannot switch it on alone. We cover that route in the sevdesk guide. The package described here is one you generate yourself and hand over.
What actually has to survive the handover
Three things, and the list is shorter than most people expect.
The VAT split. A supplier invoice carrying both 19% and 7% has to arrive already split, because that split is what determines the input VAT you reclaim. Collapse it to one total and the figure is wrong. This is the part that has to be right in the file, and the Tailride export splits by rate.
The document. Under GoBD the record has to be reproducible. A posting row pointing at an invoice stored somewhere else is exactly the gap audits are for. The original PDF - or the e-invoice file where the supplier sent one - travels inside the archive.
Enough identity to post against. Supplier name and city, VAT ID, invoice number, invoice date, due date, delivery date, currency. The delivery date carries more weight than it looks: in German VAT it decides which period the invoice belongs to.
What deliberately does not travel: line items
Tailride reads invoices to the line - that is how the VAT split is worked out in the first place. Those lines are not written into the DATEV file, and that is a decision rather than a gap.
Allocating each line to an expense account is the practice's job, because the chart of accounts is the practice's. A tool that pushes forty positions into their system, guessing at an account for each, creates review work instead of removing it. What they want is a correctly split invoice with the document attached, and that is what arrives.
If you do need per-line cost centre allocation, raise it with us rather than assuming the export covers it. It is a different workflow, and it is worth knowing how many people genuinely need it.
Coding an incoming invoice, the right way round
This is where guides most often go wrong, and it is an easy mistake because both directions involve an invoice, a VAT figure and a chart of accounts.
A supplier invoice - one you received and have to pay - posts like this:
| Side | Account | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Credit | Kreditor (creditor) | you owe this supplier |
| Debit | Aufwandskonto (expense account) | you incurred a cost |
| Debit | Vorsteuer (input VAT) | you reclaim this from the tax office |
A sales invoice - one you issued - is the mirror image: debtor, revenue account, output VAT. Money owed to you, income earned, VAT owed by you to the state.
Everything on this page is the first kind, because that is what arrives from Amazon, Meta, Telekom and forty other suppliers.
A worked example
A Meta Ads invoice for €119 gross: €100 net advertising spend plus €19 VAT.
| SKR03 | SKR04 | |
|---|---|---|
| Advertising expense, net €100 | 4600 Werbekosten | 6600 Werbekosten |
| Input VAT 19%, €19 | 1576 Abziehbare Vorsteuer | 1406 Abziehbare Vorsteuer |
| Owed to supplier, €119 | creditor account for Meta | creditor account for Meta |
Debits must equal credits exactly: €100 and €19 against €119.
Note what is absent. No debtor number, no revenue account. If a guide tells you to assign a debtor account and a revenue account to an invoice a supplier sent you, it is describing the other direction, and following it puts your advertising spend into your sales figures.
SKR03, SKR04, and whose chart wins
SKR03 is organised by process and is common in trade and manufacturing. SKR04 follows the structure of the balance sheet and is more usual for service businesses. Many practices run a modified version of one of them.
The choice is not really yours. Your adviser's DATEV expects a particular chart, and anything coded to a different one becomes re-coding work in their office, billed back at their hourly rate.
Settle three things before the first export:
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Which chart exactly, including any house modifications
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Which expense accounts your recurring suppliers map to - the fifteen that make up most of your volume
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Which creditor number range to use, so two systems do not invent conflicting ones
Agree those and the monthly handover stops being a negotiation.
How the Tailride export works
The export itself is the short part. What makes it work happens earlier.
Collection. Invoices are pulled from Gmail, Outlook and IMAP, including those sitting in the email body and those behind a "view invoice" link rather than an attachment. Supplier portals that never send email - Amazon, Meta and Telekom among them - are signed into and collected from. Retroactive scanning goes back through your history for whatever was missed before you started.
Extraction. Field accuracy from production data:
| Field | Extraction accuracy |
|---|---|
| Vendor name | 99.7% |
| Tax amount | 99.2% |
| Invoice total | 99.1% |
| VAT / GST numbers | 97.9% |
Coding. Automatic coding maps every line to SKR03, SKR04 or your own chart. Rules are set once per supplier and apply to every invoice from them afterwards. Where a document's tax treatment conflicts with the rate actually charged, the export stops and asks rather than posting a silent zero - reverse charge and foreign VAT are flagged, never quietly written off.
Validation, then the file. Every document is checked before the package is built, and the export dialog shows the result before you commit: how many records cross as invoices, how many as document-only entries, and how many are blocked. Receipts and order summaries - documents with no invoice data to post - cross as document-only records, reaching the practice without pretending to be postings. You choose whether the PDF attachments go with them.
When the classification is wrong, you overrule it. Some documents look like receipts and are invoices. Open the preview, change the type, mark it as an invoice, and a full ledger record is written for it: date, amount, VAT rate, currency, invoice number, booking text, supplier VAT ID, due date, delivery date, supplier name and city. A document that would have arrived as a stray attachment becomes something the practice can post.
What comes out is a ZIP the practice imports into DATEV Unternehmen online: invoice data split by VAT rate, each record filed as an incoming invoice under Eingangsrechnungen with its period set, and the original PDF or e-invoice file alongside it.
The limit worth naming: where every bill arrives as an attachment and carries one line at one rate, a Buchungsstapel out of whatever you already run will do the job perfectly well. The argument for anything else starts with itemised bills, portal-only suppliers, and documents nobody ever received.
What your practice sees at the other end
Worth knowing, because it is the half you do not watch.
They import one ZIP. Each invoice appears as a posting proposal with the document beside it - not a filename to go and find, the actual page. Where the coding is already there, they confirm it. Where it looks wrong, they change it, and they can see what they are changing it against.
The difference shows up in what does not happen: no email asking you to resend the March hosting invoice, no shared folder to reconcile against the postings, no month where the ledger and the document archive disagree about what exists.
What to check before you hand it over
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The period is closed at both ends. One calendar month, nothing straddling the boundary.
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Every document has a supplier. A record with no creditor is the most common rejection.
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Multi-rate invoices split. Open one carrying two VAT rates and confirm both survived.
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Nothing exported twice. If you have sent this period before, exclude what already went.
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Blocked count is zero. Anything blocked is a document that will not import, and it is cheaper to fix before sending than after.
Then send it the way your adviser prefers. Some want the file; some would rather pull it themselves through their own DATEV access, which is usually less work for everyone.
FAQ
What is the difference between a Buchungsstapel and a DATEV Unternehmen online package?
A Buchungsstapel is a batch of finished posting records with no document attached. A DATEV Unternehmen online package carries the invoice data and the source PDF together, one record per invoice, filed as an incoming invoice with its period set. Tailride produces the second kind.
Does the DATEV export include line items?
No, and that is deliberate. Invoices are read to the line - that is how the VAT split is worked out - but the lines are not written into the DATEV file. Allocating each line to an expense account belongs to the practice that owns the chart of accounts. What the file has to carry is a correctly split invoice with the document attached.
How do I post an incoming supplier invoice in DATEV?
Credit the creditor account for the supplier, debit the expense account for the cost, and debit input VAT. For a €119 advertising invoice: €100 to Werbekosten (4600 in SKR03, 6600 in SKR04) and €19 to Abziehbare Vorsteuer (1576 in SKR03, 1406 in SKR04), against €119 owed to the supplier.
Is this the same as the DATEV Rechnungsdatenservice?
No. The Rechnungsdatenservice is ordered by your practice and authenticated with a DATEV SmartCard or SmartLogin, so you cannot set it up on your own. The package described here is one you generate and hand over yourself. Some bookkeeping tools offer the Rechnungsdatenservice route instead - our sevdesk guide covers how that one works.
Why was my DATEV import rejected?
Usually a missing creditor on a document, or debits not matching credits. Both start at capture, not at export - a document that arrived without a supplier identified was already broken before anyone pressed the button.
Should I use SKR03 or SKR04?
Whichever your Steuerberater uses. SKR03 is process-oriented and common in trade and manufacturing, SKR04 follows the balance sheet and suits service businesses, and many practices run a modified version. Ask before the first export.
What happens to receipts that are not really invoices?
They can go across as document-only records - the document reaches the practice without claiming to be a posting. Useful for order summaries and till receipts that belong in the file but have no invoice data to book.
Can I export a single invoice?
DATEV handovers are built around an accounting period, normally one calendar month. That is a convention of German reporting rather than a software limit. The better question is whether the period is complete, which is why collection matters more than the export button.
Is this tax advice?
No. This is general information about file formats and bookkeeping mechanics. Which accounts apply to your business, and which chart your practice uses, is a question for your Steuerberater.
The takeaway
The handover format is a real decision, not a technicality. A Buchungsstapel gives your adviser a conclusion. A DATEV Unternehmen online package gives them the invoice, with the document attached and the VAT already split, and lets them do the part they are paid for.
And no format helps with a document nobody collected. The month before the export is where this is won or lost.
Related guides
Sources
General information about file formats and bookkeeping mechanics, not tax advice. Confirm your chart of accounts, account mappings and filing obligations with your Steuerberater.