Bookkeeping services in Berlin

What “preparatory” actually means

The term means exactly that: we handle the ongoing work on your receipts. Each one is captured, checked for completeness and legibility, assigned to the right account and posted. By the end of the month there are figures you can work with – and the basis for everything else is complete, organised and documented.

How the collaboration works

• Initial conversation: we look at your receipts situation and clarify what volume and rhythm are realistic.
• Quote: you get a fixed monthly fee, in writing and easy to follow.
• Setting up the handover: we define how and when receipts reach us – digitally or as a folder.
• Ongoing operation: we post, you get the report. Open questions are clarified in batches, not one by one.
• Handover: organised, documented and on the agreed date.

Submitting receipts correctly – the three most common mistakes

Almost all follow-up questions come from the same three issues: cash receipts without a note of what was bought. Entertainment receipts without the names of attendees or the occasion. And invoices to a GmbH or UG issued to a private name instead of the company. Fixing these three things saves half of all follow-up questions.

Completeness matters too: please include receipts you are unsure about as well. We capture them, flag the open points and put them forward for clarification. What never arrives cannot be considered by anyone.

GoBD and digital receipts

Digital receipts are the norm today, not the exception. To be accepted, they must be archived unalterable, complete and traceable – that is what the GoBD (German record-keeping rules) require. A PDF sitting only in an ordinary email inbox is generally not enough.

We build a handover and filing process with you that fits your business, and document it so it can be used for your own process documentation.

You may generally destroy paper receipts after scanning – but only once there is no statutory duty to keep the original, no particular evidentiary interest speaks against it, and the scanning procedure is documented in a traceable way. Talk to us before you reach for the shredder.

Two things are often confused here. Every domestic business has had to be able to receive e-invoices since 1 January 2025 – without exception, including small businesses.

For issuing invoices, the legislator has staggered the rules:

• Until 31 December 2026, you may still send paper or PDF with the recipient’s consent.
• From 1 January 2027, businesses with more than €800,000 in prior-year revenue must issue e-invoices.
• From 1 January 2028, the obligation to issue them applies to everyone else too.

Exceptions to the issuing obligation include low-value invoices up to €250, transport tickets and invoices to private customers. Small businesses under § 19 UStG (the German VAT Act) are exempt from issuing e-invoices, but they still need to be able to receive them.

A plain PDF is not an e-invoice. What matters is the structured data set – the XML file for an XRechnung, or the XML part embedded in the PDF for ZUGFeRD. For record-keeping, this means the structured part must be archived in its original format, unaltered. A printout or screenshot does not replace it, even if everything on it is legible.

You already need to be able to receive them. We set up the handover process so the original files reach us and are filed correctly – and we will let you know in good time when issuing them becomes relevant for your business too.

Books, records, inventories, annual financial statements and management reports: ten years.

Accounting vouchers such as invoices and receipts: eight years – this period was shortened from ten to eight years on 1 January 2025.

Business correspondence received and sent, including emails: six years. What matters is the content, not the medium; purely private or irrelevant messages are not included.

The period always begins at the end of the calendar year in which the matter was concluded: for books, the last entry; for financial statements, their adoption; for a receipt, its issue date; for correspondence, receipt or dispatch.

This happens more often than most people think, and it is one of our specialties. We first sort the documents, create an overview and post the past transactions until the bookkeeping is up to date again. Talk to us early – the longer the backlog, the more work catching up takes.

We also take on clients that others turn away: the business where nobody knows anymore which receipt is where. The company that has just received a letter from the tax office that nobody can make sense of. In situations like this, we do what has to happen first anyway: sort, post, create an overview.

Trades: material and labour shares, advance payments, partial invoices, construction-site receipts.

Care and health: billing with payers, shift and premium structures, high documentation requirements.

Hospitality and retail: cash management, high receipt volume, many small amounts, casual staff and mini-jobs.

Staffing services: assignment-based billing, industry surcharges, high turnover.

Services and freelancers: manageable receipt volume, but often a backlog to sort out.