How to Send Your Books to Your Steuerberater Digitally
The shoebox of receipts era is over. Here's how to hand off clean, digital records to your tax advisor, and what format they actually want.
Most German tax advisors (Steuerberater) still receive financial records in a format that hasn’t fundamentally changed in decades: a pile of documents, physical or digital, that they then have to process manually. The tax advisor becomes the data entry person, billing at 80-200 EUR per hour for work that software could do in seconds.
There’s a better way. And increasingly, Steuerberater are asking for it.
What Your Steuerberater Actually Wants
Before assuming what format to use, ask. The question to ask your tax advisor (Steuerberater) is simple: “Do you use DATEV, and if so, would you prefer me to provide DATEV EXTF exports?”
The answer, for virtually all German tax advisors (Steuerberater), is yes. DATEV is used by approximately 88% of German tax advisors. An EXTF file (DATEV’s external import format) allows them to import your complete transaction records directly into DATEV Rechnungswesen without any manual data entry.
The DATEV EXTF Format
An EXTF file is a structured CSV file with a specific header and field structure. Each row represents one booking entry, covering: the transaction amount and debit/credit direction, currency and exchange rate for foreign currency items, the expense account number (Sachkonto) from SKR03 or SKR04, the contra account (Gegenkonto), the VAT key, the document date, a document reference (typically the invoice number), and a booking description.
Generating this correctly requires your tax advisor’s advisor number (Beraternummer) and your client number (Mandantennummer), both of which your tax advisor (Steuerberater) will provide.
The Workflow with KontoMatch
The handoff workflow works in three steps.
First, process your documents during the month. Upload invoices and receipts as they arrive. KontoMatch extracts the data and suggests an expense category automatically, which maps to the corresponding SKR03 or SKR04 account code at export. Upload your bank statement at the end of the month and confirm the automatic matches.
Second, at month end or quarter end, export the DATEV EXTF file. Configure the export with your tax advisor’s advisor number (Beraternummer) and your client number (Mandantennummer) (your tax advisor will give you these). The export includes all processed invoices and matched transactions in the correct format.
Third, send the EXTF file. Email it directly or upload it to whatever shared system your tax advisor (Steuerberater) uses: DATEV Unternehmen online if they’ve set that up, or simply a shared folder or email attachment.
Your tax advisor (Steuerberater) imports it with a single action in DATEV Rechnungswesen. No data entry on their end.
What to Include Alongside the EXTF File
A clean EXTF file is the main deliverable, but your Steuerberater will also want the source documents for verification and audit purposes. This means the original PDFs of your invoices and receipts, organized by month.
The practical approach is a folder structure: one folder per month, containing the EXTF file and a subfolder of the source documents it references. Modern cloud storage (Dropbox, Google Drive, or DATEV Unternehmen online) makes this easy to share and keeps the records accessible for the 10-year retention period.
Questions to Ask Your Steuerberater
If you’re transitioning from paper/mixed digital to a clean digital handoff, have this conversation explicitly: which advisor number (Beraternummer) and client number (Mandantennummer) the EXTF files should use, whether they prefer SKR03 or SKR04, which months to process and when, and whether there are specific account numbers they want for particular expense types.
Getting aligned on these details upfront means the first import works cleanly rather than requiring correction.