sevdesk or Rechnungskit? Do the books yourself or automate up to your tax advisor

Partly. Rechnungskit replaces the invoices for your store in sevdesk, partner apps included, and delivers the DATEV bookings with fees and payouts as well. It doesn't replace your own bookkeeping: your tax advisor then handles the VAT return, EÜR, bank reconciliation and incoming receipts. If you want to do that yourself, sevdesk remains the right tool.

Yes, and that's the usual way to switch. You run both systems in parallel for one billing period and compare documents and bookings before you switch over.

They stay where they are. Rechnungskit doesn't import or archive invoices created elsewhere; you keep meeting your retention duty for old documents (eight years under § 14b (1) UStG and § 147 (3) AO) in your previous system. What Rechnungskit can pull in are past orders and payments from your connected shops and payment providers, which then become new, validated invoices. For the number sequence, you set the number Rechnungskit continues from, so nothing overlaps with your old documents.

Documents are stored tamper-proof and unchangeable for eight years for as long as your account exists (WORM archive with checksums). Eight years is the retention period for invoices and accounting records (§ 14b (1) UStG, § 147 (3) AO); the requirements for the archive are set out in the GoBD. You can export them at any time, and for 90 days free of charge after you cancel. The final assessment of your process documentation (Verfahrensdokumentation) is up to your tax advisor.

For an online store with Stripe: below about 320 orders a month Rechnungskit is cheaper, above that sevdesk is. With sevdesk you pay for Buchhaltung (€25.90), the Shopify app from Eshop Guide (€11.49) and MiracleSync (from €11), €48.39 a month in total, and do the remaining bookings yourself, such as PayPal fees, or pay for more tools. Rechnungskit costs €24 at 100 documents, €40.50 at 250, €68 at 500 and €105.50 at 1,000, with finished DATEV bookings including fees and payouts from Stripe, Mollie and PayPal, qualified VAT ID checks and deferred subscriptions (as of October 14, 2026). sevdesk's plans billed monthly: Rechnung €11.90, Buchhaltung €25.90 and Buchhaltung Pro €34.90 net; on a 12-month term €9.90, €22.90 and €30.90, on 24 months €8.90, €19.90 and €27.90. The free plan allows 3 invoices or e-invoices a month. Each additional user costs €5.90, and the partner apps bill separately.

Not by itself, but through a partner app in the Shopify App Store. Eshop Guide costs €11.49 (Standard) or €22.99 (Premium) a month, and Appify charges by documents, from 10 documents free up to 3,000 for €88.99. The app creates an invoice in sevdesk for every order, turns refunds into credit notes and can set the delivery date once the order is fulfilled in Shopify. Per the sevdesk help center, the partners answer questions about the integration. Rechnungskit connects to Shopify directly, without an extra app.

Yes, each through a partner. Faktur Pro connects WooCommerce, and SHOPSY's integration connects Shopware. For Amazon, eBay and Etsy, sevdesk lists Billbee as the partner; per the sevdesk help center, connecting Amazon is "not directly possible". The partners charge for their services themselves. Rechnungskit connects Shopify, WooCommerce and Shopware directly; it doesn't support Amazon yet.

For Stripe, sevdesk names the partner MiracleSync, from €11 a month. It pulls the Stripe transactions and creates one booking for the payment and one for the fee. You connect PayPal as a payment account; the fees then come in as single transactions, and per the help center you book them as an expense, ideally in one batch a month. For other payment providers, the help center points to PayJoe, which charges per transferred transaction. Mollie and Klarna aren't on the integrations page. Rechnungskit matches payments, fees and payouts from Stripe, Mollie and PayPal itself and passes them on as DATEV bookings.

With limits. The partner MiracleSync (from €11 a month) pulls invoices from Stripe into sevdesk and books the payment and the fee. Deferred revenue for annual subscriptions isn't documented; a help center search for "Rechnungsabgrenzung" finds no article. You set other EU countries' VAT rates through the OSS tax rule, but per the help center (as of March 2025) not together with the e-invoice feature; you file the OSS return yourself, and sevdesk doesn't offer an interface for automatic submission yet. Businesses that keep balance-sheet accounts have to defer income for a period after the balance sheet date (§ 250 (2) HGB, § 5 (5) EStG). Rechnungskit writes subscription invoices from Stripe Billing or its own subscriptions with the service period and books the deferral in the DATEV export if you keep balance-sheet accounts.

The sevdesk help center puts it this way: "Basically, there is no certification that confirms a software is GoBD compliant." What counts is your process, including your process documentation. Technically, sevdesk locks outgoing invoices automatically once they are finalized; corrections then go through a credit note and a new invoice. Automatic locking can be switched off in the settings, and then, per the help center, you are responsible for locking promptly yourself. The GoBD require that a record cannot be changed without leaving a trace (§ 146 (4) AO). In Rechnungskit every invoice is locked from the moment it is created, with no switch.

Yes, on every plan, including the free one. You enter the Leitweg-ID for public-sector buyers on the invoice or the contact. When you create an invoice, sevdesk checks whether mandatory details are missing. From the Buchhaltung plan you can upload incoming e-invoices; sevdesk then shows XML invoices in readable form and checks them against the Mustang rules. Since January 1, 2025, every business in Germany has to be able to receive e-invoices, and transition periods for issuing them run until the end of 2027 (§ 14 (1) UStG, § 27 (38) UStG). Rechnungskit creates every invoice as ZUGFeRD 2.5 and checks it before sending; it can't receive e-invoices.

Your tax advisor can look into your account through the tax advisor portal, which per sevdesk is basically free for the firm. For DATEV there's the booking data service and the invoice data service 1.0, or a file export in DATEV format; for the booking data service, your tax advisor sets up DATEV Unternehmen online for you. The export contains what has been booked in sevdesk. Fees and payouts only reach DATEV if they were booked in sevdesk first, by you or by a partner app. Rechnungskit passes revenue, payments, fees and payouts on as matched EXTF bookings, each invoice booking with a document link.

You cancel in your account under your plan, or by email to support@sevdesk.de, at least 14 days before the end of the booked term. Otherwise the subscription renews for the same term, by two years at most. The free plan is cancelled through support. Per the terms, data is archived during the contract term and you can export it until the term ends; per the help center it stays stored for up to three months after cancellation. Download your invoices first, because the eight-year retention duty is yours (§ 14b (1) UStG, § 147 (3) AO). Rechnungskit doesn't take over invoices from other systems; you choose the number at which its invoice sequence continues.

Both are accounting programs for freelancers and small businesses, with VAT returns, EÜR, a bank connection and store connections through partners. Which one fits better comes down to plans and details such as e-invoice receiving or the API; we've compared Lexware Office separately. For an online store the bigger question is a different one: if you want to keep the books yourself, pick one of the two. If your tax advisor should do them and get finished bookings from you, pick Rechnungskit.

From the providers' publicly available sources, checked on October 14, 2026, with footnotes for each row. Where we found no reliable source, the table says "Not documented". If you spot a mistake, write to support@rechnungskit.de and we'll correct it and re-date the page.