Clearing account (Geldtransit): booking PayPal, Stripe, Klarna, Mollie and Shopify Payments in DATEV

When a customer pays by PayPal, card or Klarna, the money does not land in your bank account right away. The payment provider takes it, deducts its fee and transfers a lump sum days later. Your bank statement then shows an amount that matches no single invoice. That is what the clearing account (Geldtransit) is for.

What a clearing account is

The clearing account holds money that is in transit. Each customer payment books to it at the full amount, regardless of what arrives later. The provider's fee goes out again as an expense, and so does the payout to the bank. Once all three are booked, the account is at zero.

Principle · one payment of €119.00

In, out, zero

Customer pays

PayPalStripeKlarna

€119.00the full invoice amount, against the customer receivable

Provider's clearing account

1. Payment+€119.00
2. Fee−€2.50 to expenses
3. Payout−€116.50 to the bank
4. Balance€0.00

Result

Invoicepaid, open item cleared

Bank€116.50 as part of a bundled payout

Expense€2.50 fee

In the DATEV standard charts the account is called Geldtransit, 1360 in SKR03 and 1460 in SKR04. Further providers take the following numbers, such as 1361 and 1362. Your tax advisor decides which number goes to which provider.

Entries in SKR03 and SKR04

Five transactions cover almost everything. The accounts are the usual standard accounts; your tax advisor may use others.

The invoice itself books like any other: debtor to revenue. A refund adds the cancellation invoice that corrects the revenue. A chargeback revives the receivable; as long as the customer keeps the goods, no cancellation invoice is created.

VAT on the fees per provider

The fee is a service the payment provider supplies to you. How VAT applies to it depends on where the provider is based and whether its service is exempt:

With the reverse charge you owe the VAT on the fee yourself (§ 13b(1) and (5) UStG) and, with full input VAT deduction, deduct it again in the same month. In DATEV a tax key on the fee account handles this, usually 506. For an exempt service, such as payment services under § 4 no. 8(d) UStG, you owe no tax under § 13b. Small businesses also owe the § 13b tax but cannot deduct it (§ 19(1) UStG). For Stripe in detail, see booking Stripe fees.

The providers one by one

All providers follow the same principle. They differ in how they bill:

• Stripe deducts the fee per payment and pays out at fixed intervals. More under Stripe DATEV export.
• Shopify Payments pays out online and in-store sales in one payout, details under Shopify and DATEV.
• PayPal keeps the money in your PayPal account until it is withdrawn. Purchases and payments without an order often run through PayPal too, so some tax advisors keep PayPal like a bank account, with its balance at month end. More under PayPal in DATEV.
• Klarna bills fees per payout, including later fee corrections.
• Mollie bills fees collectively per payout, not per transaction.
• Unzer issues separate invoices for its fees. Your tax advisor books the credit on the bank account from the bank statement.
• GoCardless collects SEPA direct debits, with the fees deducted from the payout.

How the data gets into DATEV

To book, your tax advisor needs the individual items of each payout: which payments, fees and refunds it contains. There are three ways:

1. Statements by hand: your tax advisor downloads the providers' reports and books from them. That works for a few transactions.
2. DATEV's payment provider data service: DATEV transfers payment data from PayPal, Amazon, Amazon Pay, eBay, Klarna, Mollie, Shopify and Stripe into its accounting program, matches it to invoice bookings and provides it as booking proposals (DATEV, in German). The invoice bookings have to exist already.
3. A booking batch from the invoicing software: if the software knows invoice and payment, it delivers revenue, payments, fees and payouts already booked, usually as a DATEV booking batch.

There is no customer invoice for fees and payouts. Every booking still needs a document (GoBD, para. 61 ff.), such as the provider's statement or a self-made document from its data.

Month-end close: is the account at zero?

At month end, the clearing account shows what is still in transit. A balance equal to a payout that arrives next month is correct. Anything beyond that usually means a booking is missing. Typical causes are a fee correction, a refund without a booking, a chargeback or a payment without a matching order.

Payment providers with Rechnungskit

Rechnungskit fetches payments, fees and payouts directly from the connected providers, matches each payment to its invoice and splits each payout into its items. In the DATEV export, each provider gets its own clearing account:

• Payments, fees, payouts, refunds and chargebacks go into a separate payments batch, apart from revenue.
• The tax keys on the fees are preset per provider, and your tax advisor can change them.
• For each payout, Rechnungskit creates a payout document as a PDF, and the fee and payout bookings link to it.
• For PayPal and Stripe there is a month-end balance reconciliation and a statement in the tax advisor area.
• If a payout is off by a cent, you get a task instead of a silent rounding.

The accounts and all mappings are explained in the help article DATEV and your tax advisor. The provider connections are under PayPal, Stripe, Klarna, Mollie and Unzer, and the export under DATEV export.