Stripe DATEV export: getting Stripe payments into DATEV as a booking batch

If you use Stripe and work with a tax advisor (Steuerkanzlei) who uses DATEV, you will sooner or later face the same question: how do Stripe sales get into the books without someone retyping reports every month? This page shows the routes to a booking batch and what matters during the import. What the individual bookings look like and how VAT on the fees works is covered in Booking Stripe fees.

Does Stripe have a DATEV integration?

No. Stripe provides reports as CSV in the Dashboard, for example on payouts and balance transactions. They contain amounts, fees and references. Accounts, tax keys and the DATEV format are missing, so someone else has to do the account assignment.

There is a second problem. Stripe provides payment data, but not necessarily invoices. If you sell through Payment Links or your own checkout, you have a record for every payment but no invoice document yet. Your bookkeeping needs both.

Why the payout is not revenue

The most common mistake when booking Stripe is treating the payout like a bank transaction. Your bank account shows one amount that contains several days of payments, minus fees and sometimes minus a refund. If you book that amount as revenue, you understate sales, miss the fees and lose the link to individual customers. Bookings have to be individual and complete, though (§ 146(1) AO, German).

The clearing account doubles as a built-in check: at month end it has to come back to zero. If a balance remains, a payout is missing or a fee was not recorded. With more than one payment provider, a separate clearing account per provider is common practice. No law requires it, but it is the only way to trace a leftover balance to the right provider.

What belongs in the DATEV batch

Your tax advisor imports bookings as a batch in DATEV format, often called EXTF after the identifier in its first line. DATEV publishes the specification in its Developer Portal. The header names the advisor number (Beraternummer), client number (Mandantennummer), fiscal year and period. Below it comes one line per booking with amount, debit or credit, account, contra account, tax key, date, document field (Belegfeld) and booking text.

Stripe needs two kinds of bookings, which often run in separate batches:

For revenue, document field 1 (Belegfeld 1) usually carries the invoice number. DATEV uses it to match open items when the payment hits the same debtor account. For payments it usually holds the Stripe reference, so every booking can be found again in Stripe.

Three routes from Stripe to DATEV

Stripe to DATEV

Three routes compared

CSV by hand

Download the Stripe report and assign accounts to every line yourself, every month

Invoicesfrom another program

DATEV data service

DATEV takes Stripe's payment data and turns it into booking suggestions, from €10.00 a month according to DATEV

Invoicesfrom another program

EXTF export with documents

A tool delivers revenue, fees and payouts as a finished batch, set up once

Invoicesin the same step, via document link

CSV and manual work only pay off with a handful of payments a month. Every payout has to be broken into its parts and assigned to accounts, and you still need another program for the invoices to your customers.

The DATEV data service for payment providers (Datenservice Zahlungsdienstleister) pulls payment data from Stripe automatically and creates booking suggestions that your tax advisor processes further in Kanzlei-Rechnungswesen (DATEV Marketplace, German). It covers the payment side; it does not create an invoice for each payment.

A tool with an EXTF export covers both sides. It creates the invoices, books revenue, fees and payouts, and hands over the documents at the same time. Whichever provider you compare, check these points:

• Does each payment provider get its own clearing account, so reconciliation works per provider?
• Are fees and payouts included as separate bookings, or only the payments?
• Are the documents attached to the bookings via document link, or does your tax advisor have to match them?
• Who assigns the invoice number, and where are the documents kept for the eight years that § 147(3) AO requires for accounting vouchers?
• Are refunds and chargebacks booked and corrected automatically?

Stripe Billing and deferred revenue

If you bill subscriptions through Stripe Billing, there is one more case. An annual subscription paid in October is only one quarter earned on December 31. Businesses that prepare a balance sheet record deferred revenue (passiver Rechnungsabgrenzungsposten, pRAP) for it (§ 250(2) HGB, German).

Stripe provides the basis, because every subscription line carries a service period. Stripe does not calculate or book the deferral, though. How to spread it is explained under deferred revenue and, for subscription models, under Deferring revenue for SaaS and online courses.

As for the invoices themselves: Stripe Billing generates PDFs. A PDF without a structured data set is not an electronic invoice but an "other invoice" (sonstige Rechnung) (§ 14(1) sentences 3 and 4 UStG, German). For domestic B2B invoices the e-invoice becomes mandatory in stages, with transition periods set out in § 27(38) UStG. What that means for Stripe is covered under Stripe invoices.

Documents and the import order

A booking batch without documents is only half the job. DATEV can attach document images directly to the booking via a document link (Beleglink). For that, the documents have to be in DATEV Unternehmen online beforehand, for example via DATEV Belegtransfer. That makes the order important.

Stripe and DATEV with Rechnungskit

Rechnungskit covers the whole route from the Stripe payment to the DATEV package:

• Every Stripe payment and every Stripe Billing invoice becomes a checked ZUGFeRD invoice with your number sequence, and every refund becomes a cancellation invoice. Everything is stored unalterably in the GoBD archive.
• The revenue export is a DATEV package: the EXTF batch with a document link per invoice, the Belegtransfer package with the PDFs, and a short guide for your tax advisor.
• The payments export books every payment to a dedicated Stripe clearing account, fees collected per payout, refunds as a reversal of the payment, and each payout as bank to clearing account.
• For annual subscriptions, the export also books the deferral if you prepare a balance sheet and have set up the deferral account.
• Your tax advisor gets their own access, where they can adjust accounts, generate exports and lock them.

Rechnungskit does not download Stripe's monthly fee invoice. You get it in the Stripe Dashboard under Settings, Documents. What else to watch for with the fees is covered in Booking Stripe fees.

Setup takes a few minutes. You connect Stripe with a restricted API key; the Stripe integration guide shows every step with screenshots. You enter the chart of accounts, advisor number and client number once, as described under DATEV export for your tax advisor. How Rechnungskit differs from plain converters is in the comparison with Fizard, and what Stripe covers itself is in the Stripe vs. Rechnungskit comparison.