# DATEV

> DATEV runs bookkeeping, payroll and annual accounts on a shared data set that the tax firm (Steuerkanzlei) and the company access at the same time. The bookings sit in the DATEV data centre, and filings to the tax office and social insurance travel the same route.

- Vendor: DATEV eG, Nuremberg (Nürnberg)
- Canonical URL: https://www.convios.com/en/toolbox/datev
- Language version: https://www.convios.com/de/werkzeugkasten/datev
- Area: Operations & finance · Cluster: accounting
- Role: Off-the-shelf product · Origin: Established, AI retrofitted
- As of: 2026-08-04 · Reviewed: 2026-08-04 · Author: Dr. Oliver Gausmann, Convios GmbH
- Toolbox: https://www.convios.com/en/toolbox — Markdown: https://www.convios.com/en/toolbox.md

## Verdict

Prevents falling behind: In Germany a chain of statutory duties hangs off the accounts: record-keeping under the GoBD principles, ten-year retention under § 147 of the German Fiscal Code (Abgabenordnung), electronic filing of VAT returns and payroll notifications. Anyone who has not closed that chain loses the licence to run their own books. A competitive advantage was never on the table. That is what DATEV delivers, which is why the verdict reads as preventing a shortfall. It creates no edge. Around one million customers and 40,176 cooperative members work on the same basis, and the tax adviser at the other end of the line expects DATEV format anyway. Buying it puts you level with the rest of the market and not a step ahead. The AI features have changed little so far: DATEV Copilot ran as a free licence in a test phase in spring 2026, and the provider does not publicly name the language models underneath it.

## Suitability by company size

- Solo: suitable — Entry is small and the price is public: DATEV Unternehmen online costs EUR 11.56 per month as a user licence with no seat limit, DATEV Belege online EUR 3.83 per client per month, both plus VAT. Rights management is listed at EUR 0.00 and is therefore in every tier. The usual route runs through your own tax firm, which sets up the data set.
- Mid-market: suitable — The setup is built for this size. Belegfreigabe online is EUR 7.35 per client per month, the comfort tier EUR 25.00, and the shared document volume includes at least 5 GB with EUR 1.05 per GB per month above that. Roles, permissions and sign-in via SmartCard or SmartLogin come at no extra charge, which is rarely the case with AI-native tools.
- Enterprise: suitable with caveats — Contractual maturity and attestations are in place; the fit question remains. The setup presupposes a tax firm with an adviser number, and only customers with a direct contractual relationship to DATEV conclude the data processing agreement. Clients inside the service network (Leistungsverbund) have none and therefore conclude none. For a group with entities outside Germany that is a limit built into the product itself.

## Vendor staying power

Established: A cooperative owned by its members, in the market since 1966 and in its sixtieth year in 2026. Capital comes from members' shares and retained surpluses; an investor looking for an exit does not exist in this legal form. Part of the operating result flows back to members as a cooperative rebate.

- Legal form and register: DATEV eG, Paumgartnerstrasse 6-14, 90429 Nuremberg, cooperative register (Genossenschaftsregister) Nuremberg no. 70, VAT ID DE 133546770 (source: https://www.datev.de/web/de/berufsgruppenuebergreifend/ueber-datev/impressum, as of 2026-08-04)
- Financial year 2025: Revenue EUR 1.650 billion, operating result EUR 132.3 million after EUR 92.8 million the year before, cooperative rebate to members EUR 63.6 million, announced 27 March 2026 (source: https://www.datev.de/web/de/berufsgruppenuebergreifend/presse/presseinformationen/meldungen-2026/datev-mit-cloud-angeboten-weiter-auf-wachstumskurs, as of 2026-08-04)
- First half of 2026: Revenue EUR 881.0 million after EUR 810.2 million in the same period of the previous year, 40,176 members, 9,015 employees, more than one million customers for the first time in June 2026, reporting date 17 July 2026 (source: https://www.datev.de/web/de/berufsgruppenuebergreifend/presse/presseinformationen/meldungen-2026/datev-steigert-umsatz-und-kundenbasis, as of 2026-08-04)
- Ongoing certification: ISO/IEC 27001:2022, CIS Certification & Information Security Services GmbH, registration number I-00772/0, first issued 8 October 2010, issued 27 October 2025, valid until 28 October 2027 (source: https://www.datev.de/content/dam/markenassets/unternehmenskommunikation/zertifikate/zertifikat_iso_27001_de.pdf, as of 2026-08-04)
- Price maintenance: Public price list for companies running to 115 pages, dated 08/2026, updated every six months (source: https://www.datev.de/content/dam/markenassets/preislisten/DATEV-Preisliste_fuer_Unternehmen.pdf, as of 2026-08-04)
- Documented outages: A dedicated page for maintenance and outages publishes incidents with time window and cause, last checked 4 August 2026 (source: https://www.datev.de/web/de/berufsgruppenuebergreifend/service-und-support/informationen-zu-wartungen-und-stoerungen, as of 2026-08-04)

## Cost of leaving

Moderate: The booking data comes out and stays readable, because the DATEV format is the common language of the German market anyway. What weighs more is what is missing after the export. The audit-proof archive in the data centre carries a retention duty that runs on for ten years, and it does not simply move house. Named one-off charges come on top: EUR 350.00 flat for an inactive Unternehmen online mandate, and with DATEVasp EUR 700.00 for decommissioning plus EUR 450.00 for the data copy, each plus VAT. The third item appears in no price list: the tax firm works on the same data set, so a switch is always their switch too.

## Regulation and data

| Point | Finding | Evidence | As of |
|---|---|---|---|
| Data processing agreement | a dedicated data processing agreement, agreed with the Bavarian data protection supervisory authority, text supplied only after completing a form — The agreement is described in detail, down to individual clauses, and according to DATEV it was agreed with the Bavarian data protection supervisory authority. Its version dates from October 2017 and has not changed since. The text itself goes only to those who submit one of the three forms; no contract document is published for reading. Every customer with a direct contractual relationship must conclude it; clients inside the service network (Leistungsverbund) have none and therefore conclude none. The route there is striking: the FAQ file names www.datev.de/av three times as the only valid path, and on 4 August 2026 that address answered with a 404. The page was reachable via go.datev.de/av. | partially evidenced | 2026-08-04 |
| Storage location | data centres in Nuremberg (Nürnberg); no storage location outside Germany is offered — The ISO 27001 certificate names DATEV eG with all German locations as its scope and lists every one of them in an annex, the data centres among them in Nuremberg. The data centre page speaks of four sites covering some 4,500 square metres. There is no choice of region, and none is needed: the offering knows no region outside Germany. | evidenced | 2026-08-04 |
| Subprocessors | a maintained list exists and is named, yet cannot be read without signing in — With the agreement the customer grants DATEV general authorisation to bring in further processors. The overview carries a number, document 1000192 in the help centre, and is said to show possible third-country transfers as well. Opening it on 4 August 2026 ended at the DATEV knowledge platform, which without a sign-in serves nothing but its page title. Anyone wanting to know before signing who works behind DATEV will not learn it from publicly accessible sources. A free newsletter can be ordered to flag changes. | partially evidenced | 2026-08-04 |
| Third-country transfer | transfer permitted by contract in fault cases; recipients and the basis per recipient cannot be matched up publicly — Clause 6 d of the agreement entitles DATEV to transfer personal data to service providers in a third country. The reason given is fault clearance: manufacturers and support firms must be able to inspect error logs and memory dumps when critical faults occur. DATEV's own wording is remarkably open. In such cases, it says, it cannot be ruled out to a hundred per cent that customer information is contained there as well. Which recipient works on which basis sits in document 1000192, and that could not be read without signing in. For regular service processes with suppliers DATEV states that no exchange of commissioned data is envisaged. | partially evidenced | 2026-08-04 |
| Training on customer data | processing commissioned data for product improvement and product development is part of the standard contract and has to be struck out actively — Here the contract repays a careful reading. The agreement carries two clauses that reach beyond plain processing on instruction. Clause 15 allows DATEV to anonymise commissioned data and use it for product improvements and new developments, naming operational and sector benchmarks and statistical analysis. Clause 16 c allows commissioned data to be processed for developing new DATEV products in a secured environment, limited to people who already know the data. Both can be struck out, as the FAQ file states explicitly. The route named there for doing so, www.datev.de/avindividuell, answered with a 404 on 4 August 2026, as did go.datev.de/avindividuell, and the conclusion page does not link to it. For the AI features themselves DATEV names neither a language model nor a model provider, saying about processing only that it takes place inside the DATEV cloud. | partially evidenced | 2026-08-04 |
| Retention and deletion | deletion periods proposed per product and derived along DIN 66398; the deletion concept itself stays with the customer — DATEV derives deletion periods for every program along DIN 66398 and records them under point 2.3 of the respective data protection profile. Statutory retention duties are taken into account and take precedence over the right to erasure. Two limits remain. The customer has to draw up and run the deletion concept, because it must fit their own situation, and the substantive data is deleted by them as well. The profiles carrying the periods sit in the knowledge platform, which serves nothing without a sign-in, so the periods cannot be read before signing. | partially evidenced | 2026-08-04 |
| Certifications | ISO/IEC 27001:2022, 27701 and 27017 with a named scope, plus ISO 9001, 20000, 14001 and 21964 — The attestations are fully documented and available as downloadable certificates. The information security certificate names the standard and its version, the auditor CIS Certification & Information Security Services GmbH, registration number I-00772/0, the statement of applicability in version 3.0 dated 18 September 2025 and a term running to 28 October 2027. The scope covers DATEV eG with all German locations including software development, data processing and the data centres, and an annex lists every site individually. Two older certificates stand out against that: data carrier destruction is dated 20 November 2023, the alarm receiving centres 21 July 2022. | evidenced | 2026-08-04 |
| EU AI Act, Article 50 | unclear — DATEV picks up the AI Regulation, though as a customer topic. It offers training that helps tax firms meet the requirements, and points to new transparency duties. For its own AI features a named commitment is missing. Neither the artificial intelligence page nor the DATEV Copilot product page places its own role under the Regulation or says anything about Article 50. Anyone who has to set the labelling in their own house is given no public basis for it by the provider. Checked on both pages on 4 August 2026. | partially evidenced | 2026-08-04 |
| Audit logging | rights and user management in every tier at no extra charge; the scope and retention of an auditable log are left open publicly — The price list carries user and rights management, Rechteverwaltung online and Rechteraum-Management online at EUR 0.00 each. Access can therefore be governed in every tier without moving to a higher plan. The other half stays open: whether the customer receives an auditable log of access and changes, how far it reaches and how long it is kept sits in the general description of technical and organisational measures, document 1000562 in the help centre. That document too could not be read without signing in on 4 August 2026. Anyone who has to plan evidence duties cannot do so before signing. | partially evidenced | 2026-08-04 |

## Cost

- Entry: DATEV Unternehmen online costs EUR 11.56 per month as a user licence with no seat limit, DATEV Belege online EUR 3.83 per client per month, DATEV Auftragswesen next EUR 7.00 per month. All prices are quoted excluding VAT, dated 08/2026. The price list for companies is published as a 115-page PDF and updated every six months. (as of 2026-08-04)
- Where it gets expensive: The base items are small; the invoice grows through the number of line items. Belegfreigabe online is EUR 7.35 per client per month, the comfort tier EUR 25.00, each invoice taken over from a partner EUR 2.10, each bank connection in the bank data service EUR 1.37 per month. The quietest item is storage: the shared free volume starts at 5 GB and grows by 1 GB per EUR 5.00 of invoice value, above which each further GB costs EUR 1.05 per month. Anyone archiving in an audit-proof way therefore accumulates volume that never shrinks again and pays for it monthly. Ending the relationship triggers one-off charges, EUR 350.00 for an inactive Unternehmen online mandate.

## Three routes compared

### Run the accounts in the ERP instead of the tax-firm network

SAP is the usual counterpart as soon as several entities and currencies are in play, with Sage and Addison from Wolters Kluwer alongside it in the mid-market. The reason large organisations stay has little to do with bookkeeping: there the general ledger sits against the flow of goods, fixed asset accounting and group consolidation, and a switch would cut that chain open. DATEV in turn holds the link to the tax firm, which the ERP route lacks and has to rebuild through an interface.

### Put an AI-native platform in front of the tax firm

Pennylane and Candis are the two names that come up first here. They read documents, run approvals and pass the journal entries on. The price difference cannot be netted out cleanly, because neither publishes a price list on the scale of the DATEV one; the order of magnitude is a multiple of the EUR 3.83 per client per month, with more work included in return. What is given up is the closed chain. The tax adviser at the end still expects DATEV format, and the audit-proof archive with its ten-year period then sits with a young provider rather than a cooperative certified since 2010. Taking this route buys recognition quality and keeps the interface.

### Build the document run yourself, keep bookkeeping bought in

Document recognition is the part that can be built. n8n chains inbox, filing and approval together without custom code and runs in your own data centre, Claude Code writes the evaluation steps, LiteLLM keeps the model calls interchangeable, Langfuse makes the hit rate per document type measurable. Ten to fifteen person-days at a daily rate of EUR 1,200 buys a run that reads invoices and pre-codes them. What does not get built is the bookkeeping itself. Self-building fails here on three points, all of them behind the recognition step: the procedural documentation under the GoBD principles, the audit-proof archive across ten years under § 147 of the German Fiscal Code, and the filing to the tax office. The fourth point arrives later and hits harder: once the builder leaves, nobody checks the run against a changed rule.

Recommendation by size:

- Solo: Come in through your own tax firm and keep the document filing there from the start, so nothing has to be pulled across later.
- Mid-market: Buy it, and decide clauses 15 and 16 c deliberately when concluding the processing agreement. On 4 August 2026 the route there ran via go.datev.de/av.
- Enterprise: German entities only, and settle in writing beforehand which access log the customer receives and how long it is retained.

## Context

- Implements method: [Regulatory Density Test](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/regulatory-density-test) — The test asks how much regulation sits in a market and whom that protects, and DATEV is the case that shows it: the GoBD principles, § 147 of the Fiscal Code and the filing routes are the real moat, which no feature comparison makes visible.
- Implements method: [Data Monetization: Improve, Wrap, Sell](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/data-monetization-improve-wrap-sell) — The method distinguishes whether data improves the product, wraps it or is sold, and clauses 15 and 16 c of the processing agreement are a lesson in the first of those, written into the contract rather than the product vision.
- Implements method: [Operating Model Grid (Standardization and Integration)](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/operating-model-raster) — The grid sets standardisation against integration, and the tax-firm network is the rare case of high standardisation combined with high integration across two separate companies.
- Implements method: [RPV Organizational Fit Test (Resources, Processes, Values)](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/rpv-organisationsfit) — Resources, processes and values explain why a cooperative with 40,176 members decides differently from a funded challenger, and why the pace on AI features hangs on that rather than on the technology.
- Alternative: [BLP Digital](https://www.convios.com/en/toolbox/blp-digital)
- Alternative: [Pleo](https://www.convios.com/en/toolbox/pleo)
- Displaces: Paper document folders and the handover to the tax firm in a box, Separate data sets in the company and the tax firm that get reconciled at year end, Your own filing routes to the tax office and social insurance, Spreadsheets for open-item lists and payment runs

## Evidence

- Legal form, seat, register court, register number and VAT identification number — https://www.datev.de/web/de/berufsgruppenuebergreifend/ueber-datev/impressum (as of 2026-08-04)
- Data processing agreement, alignment with the Bavarian data protection supervisory authority, dated October 2017, clauses 6 d, 9, 15, 16 c and 19 e, the option to strike clauses via the individual contract, deletion periods along DIN 66398, references to documents 1000192 and 1000562 — https://www.datev.de/content/dam/markenassets/unternehmenskommunikation/datenschutz/faqs_dsgvo_2025-2.pdf (as of 2026-08-04)
- The processing agreement is concluded through forms only, with no publicly available contract text, and is mandatory for every customer with a direct contractual relationship — https://www.datev.de/web/de/berufsgruppenuebergreifend/ueber-datev/datenschutz-und-compliance/datenschutz-und-unternehmenssicherheit/vereinbarung-zur-auftragsverarbeitung (as of 2026-08-04)
- ISO/IEC 27001:2022, auditor, registration number, term running to 28 October 2027 and a scope covering all German locations including the data centres — https://www.datev.de/content/dam/markenassets/unternehmenskommunikation/zertifikate/zertifikat_iso_27001_de.pdf (as of 2026-08-04)
- Overview of certificates with standards and issue dates, among them ISO 27701, ISO/IEC 27017, ISO 9001, ISO 20000, ISO 14001 and ISO 21964 — https://www.datev.de/web/de/m/ueber-datev/datenschutz/zertifikate/ (as of 2026-08-04)
- All quoted prices, units and frequencies as well as the one-off charges for decommissioning, data copy and inactive mandate, dated 08/2026 — https://www.datev.de/content/dam/markenassets/preislisten/DATEV-Preisliste_fuer_Unternehmen.pdf (as of 2026-08-04)
- Revenue, operating result, member count, employees and cooperative rebate for the 2025 financial year, announced 27 March 2026 — https://www.datev.de/web/de/berufsgruppenuebergreifend/presse/presseinformationen/meldungen-2026/datev-mit-cloud-angeboten-weiter-auf-wachstumskurs (as of 2026-08-04)
- Half-year figures for 2026, members, employees and passing the one-million customer mark in June 2026, reporting date 17 July 2026 — https://www.datev.de/web/de/berufsgruppenuebergreifend/presse/presseinformationen/meldungen-2026/datev-steigert-umsatz-und-kundenbasis (as of 2026-08-04)
- Four data centre sites covering some 4,500 square metres and certification to ISO/IEC 27001 — https://www.datev.de/web/de/m/ueber-datev/das-unternehmen/rechenzentrum/ (as of 2026-08-04)
- Training offering on the requirements of the AI Regulation, without placing its own AI features or saying anything about Article 50 — https://www.datev.de/web/de/berufsgruppenuebergreifend/ueber-datev/innovation/kuenstliche-intelligenz (as of 2026-08-04)
- DATEV Copilot as a free licence in its test phase, requiring SmartCard, SmartLogin or a user account, processing inside the DATEV cloud, with no language model named — https://www.datev.de/web/de/shop/produkt-details/datev-copilot-90431 (as of 2026-08-04)
- A dedicated maintenance and outage page giving the time window and cause per incident — https://www.datev.de/web/de/berufsgruppenuebergreifend/service-und-support/informationen-zu-wartungen-und-stoerungen (as of 2026-08-04)