Many of the forwarders we talk to book in DATEV or have their books kept there. The invoice, however, is created somewhere else: in the TMS, in Excel, in a billing service. In between sits somebody who enters the invoice a second time, in accounting or at the tax advisor. With 300 outgoing invoices and 300 freight invoices a month, that is two days of double entry, every month.
Here is how the handover runs without double entry, what DATEV needs for it and where the system sets limits. DATEV is named in this piece for what it is: the accounting system we deal with most often in Germany. Not as a recommendation, not as criticism.
DATEV accepts bookings as a batch. The format is DATEV's own: account, contra account, amount, date, document field, booking text. Added to that is the document image as PDF, linked through a document number. Upstream systems take this route too, and it is documented. A direct interface into the client file exists through the DATEV data services. Their activation runs through the tax advisor.
For automation that means: the service has to produce two things, the batch and the documents, and link both cleanly. Everything else is account assignment, and that is a rulebook.
The service reads the invoices the TMS or the billing service produced, per day. For every invoice the booking follows from three rules. Revenue account by service type: freight, toll or ancillary service. Tax key by customer and country. Debtor account from the customer master. The invoice PDF is the document.
The rules sit in a table the tax advisor releases. If an account changes, the table changes, not the service. An invoice for which no rule applies, say a new customer without a debtor account, goes to the review list, not into the batch.
Intake runs as described in Processing freight invoices automatically: read, match to the order, check against the agreement. Only checked invoices go into the batch, with the creditor account from the supplier master and the expense account by service type. The review cases, deviation above threshold or no order found, stay out until a person has decided.
From 2027 e-invoicing joins in: German companies with more than 800,000 euros in prior-year revenue must then issue e-invoices, from 2028 everyone. Incoming XRechnung and ZUGFeRD documents the service reads as structured data; the document image is then the PDF that came with it or a generated view.
Once a day, at some customers weekly, the service produces the batch and the document files. It places them at the agreed location or hands them over through the data services once those are activated. Every handover writes a protocol: number of bookings, total, number of documents, review cases. Plus a checksum accounting uses to reconcile the batch against the TMS.
If no batch comes together on a working day although invoices were produced, the watchdog reports it. Accounting hears about it before the month-end close, not during it.
Three things the service does not do, on purpose:
A caveat: this setup fits forwarders with 200 to 2,000 invoices a month. Below that, the document upload DATEV offers itself is enough. Above it, the question is whether the TMS should be connected directly to the data services, and then we are not the right partner for it.
The tax advisor imports the batch and carries the responsibility for the booking. That is why he belongs at the table in week 2 of the project. He releases the account assignment table before the first batch arrives. And he says whether he wants the batch as a file or through the data services. Without that alignment you build a service the recipient will not accept.
How many invoices does your accounting or your tax advisor enter a second time each month? Tell me the number and the system they come from. I will show you a batch with its protocol. Ask for a process check: 30 minutes, no sales pitch.
