DocuWare + DATEV - Hand Over Incoming Invoices to Accounting Automatically
Published on 3 September 2026
The incoming invoice has been captured, checked and approved in DocuWare - and then what? In many companies, this is exactly where the duplicate work begins: accounting or the tax advisor retypes amounts, accounts and tax rates. Our DATEV interface for DocuWare puts an end to that: approved invoices travel to DATEV as a ready-made package - document and posting record together, at the push of a button.
From approval workflow straight into accounting
The interface picks up where automated invoice processing ends: during invoice approval in DocuWare, vendor account, G/L account, tax rate and cost center are captured as index data - and an invoice can be split across multiple line items via a table directly on the document. As soon as an invoice reaches the defined status, it is ready for export.
The export itself runs per company and month: the interface collects all approved, not-yet-exported invoices, downloads the invoice PDFs including stamps and annotations from DocuWare, and builds a DATEV import package from them. Several companies? No problem - the export is built to be multi-entity.
Document and posting record travel together
Technically, the interface uses the official XML format of the DATEV document management (version 6.0). That means each invoice produces not just a PDF but a complete posting record - with invoice number, date, amount, currency, vendor, G/L accounts, tax rates and cost centers. When imported into DATEV, for example via Belegtransfer into DATEV Unternehmen online, document and posting proposal are linked automatically.
For your tax advisor, that means: no retyping, no matching, no chasing missing documents. For you, it means a faster month-end close and a document flow that is fully traceable.
Quality is checked before anything leaves the building
An export is only as good as its data. That’s why the interface checks every document before it goes into the package:
- Sum check: The split across G/L accounts must match the invoice total exactly.
- Master data reconciliation: The vendor account is checked against the vendor master; IBAN and BIC are compared between document and master data and validated against SEPA rules.
- Schema validation: Every generated XML file is validated against the official DATEV XSD schemas - anything DATEV would reject never leaves the system in the first place.
Issues are flagged with a clear warning and can be corrected before the export runs. So only clean packages reach your tax advisor.
No document twice, none lost
Every exported document receives an export status with a date stamp in DocuWare - and is automatically skipped in future exports. A monthly overview shows at any time how many documents are open, exported or deliberately excluded from the export. And if something does need to be posted later, a month can be reopened in a controlled way - logged and traceable, without deliberately excluded documents slipping back into the export.
Proven in daily production use
This interface is not a concept paper: it has been running in production for years, handing over approved incoming invoices for several companies to DATEV month after month. It is built cleanly on the official DATEV standards and the DocuWare platform - tailored to the customer’s processes, update-safe and documented. On request, the solution also transfers master data (debtors and creditors) and further posting data to DATEV.
The DATEV connection is a typical example of our core topic integration & interfaces: connecting DocuWare wherever your data is needed - in your ERP, in accounting, at your tax advisor. You can find all key facts about the interface summarized on our DocuWare + DATEV page.
How to get started
You already process your incoming invoices in DocuWare - or want to get there? Then the path to automatic DATEV handover is shorter than you think. Contact us - we’ll look at your invoice process together and show you how the export fits into your accounting.
Frequently asked questions
Which DATEV format does the interface use?
The interface generates the official XML format of the DATEV document management (DATEV XML interface, version 6.0). For each invoice it produces the document as a PDF plus the corresponding posting data as an accountsPayableLedger record - bundled into an import package that is read in via DATEV Belegtransfer into DATEV Unternehmen online, for example.
Where does the posting data come from?
From DocuWare itself. Vendor account, G/L account, tax rate, cost center and the split across multiple line items are captured as index data during invoice approval. The interface reads this data and converts it into DATEV posting records - no retyping required.
What happens if data is incorrect or incomplete?
Plausibility checks run before every export - for example whether the split amounts match the invoice total, the vendor account exists and the IBAN is valid. In addition, every XML package is validated against the official DATEV schemas. Faulty documents are flagged with a clear warning instead of arriving broken at your tax advisor.
Are documents ever exported twice?
No. Every exported document receives an export status with a date stamp in DocuWare and is automatically skipped in future exports. The monthly export shows at any time how many documents are open, exported or deliberately excluded - and a month can be reopened in a controlled way if needed.