11. Reports

Module: Reports. Included in every plan.

This module answers the questions that arise between two invoices: where does the money come from, who pays on time, what is left at the end of the month? Open it from Reports in the sidebar, pick the report on the left and the period at the top.

Two bases — and why that matters

Every report states in its header what it rests on. There are two bases, and they deliberately produce different numbers:

Basis	Counts	Reports
Booked entries	only what is posted in the bookkeeping	Business analysis (BWA), P&L / cash-basis, trial balance, account ledger, VAT return, open items
Issued invoices	every invoice you issued, booked or not	Revenue, payment behaviour, order backlog

Important

An invoice you have written but not yet booked appears under Revenue and not in the BWA. That is not a fault; it is the difference between "sold" and "posted". When two numbers disagree, this is almost always why.

All amounts are net, i.e. without VAT, so figures stay comparable regardless of the tax rate. (Exception: open items are gross — outstanding is what must actually be paid.)

For the period, pick year, quarter, month — or Custom with a free from–to date range.

Sales

Revenue

Four views of the same revenue:

View	Shows
by month	the year's development, with the previous year as a second bar
by quarter	the same, coarser
by customer	ranked: revenue, open receivables, average days to pay, share
by article	which products and services actually earn

Under by article, hand-typed positions appear as manual. They count — they earned money — but they stay recognisable as such.

Payment behaviour

At the top, how long your paid invoices took (average, fastest, slowest); below, the open amounts by age: not due, 1–30, 31–60, 61–90, over 90 days.

This is the basis for deciding whom to call and where the reminder process should run.

Order backlog

Quotations and order confirmations that have not yet become an invoice. Converted documents are excluded — they are invoices already.

Finance

BWA — the business analysis

The BWA follows the row layout of the DATEV standard form (BWA-Form 01, "Kurzfristige Erfolgsrechnung") and works down from revenue to the result:

revenue + inventory change + own work capitalised

= total output − material / cost of goods = gross profit − personnel, premises, vehicle, advertising, repairs, depreciation, other costs = operating result − non-operating expense (interest expense, other)

• non-operating income (interest income, other) = result before taxes − taxes on income and profit = preliminary result

The % GL column sets every row against total output — the ratio a BWA is read by (total output = 100). Tick Compare previous year and each line additionally gains last year's figure and the percentage change.

Which cost lands in which line follows from the ACCOUNT it was booked to, i.e. from your chart of accounts (SKR03 or SKR04). Bookings on accounts that belong to no line appear as unassigned, so no amount disappears unnoticed.

Note

A BWA is an analysis, not a profit determination. It shows the direction; the annual accounts make it official.

P&L and cash-basis (EÜR)

The same bookings, two ways of looking at them:

• P&L counts by invoice date — revenue counts when you wrote the invoice.
• Cash-basis (EÜR) counts by payment date — only money that actually moved (§ 4 Abs. 3 EStG).

If your cash-basis view looks empty although invoices are booked: nothing has been paid yet. That is precisely the message.

Trial balance

Every account with debit and credit — once for the selected period, once cumulated since the start of the year, plus the balance. Amounts follow the DATEV convention: the revenue or expense account net, the VAT on its own tax account, the receivable or payable account gross. A cancellation reverses its original booking account by account.

At the end comes the proof: total debit must equal total credit, and the difference must be zero. If it is not, something in the bookkeeping is wrong.

Note

The sheet lists movements, not opening balances — it does not replace annual accounts.

Account ledger

Clicking a row of the trial balance opens its account ledger: every posting of that account with date, document, counter-account and a running balance — the way from a figure back to the bookings behind it. Exactly this traceability (the "Kontenfunktion") is what the GoBD expect from a bookkeeping system. The account can also be typed in directly.

VAT return and open items

You know both from Bookkeeping — they appear here as well, because this is where people look for them. Same figures, not a second version.

The VAT return computes per month or quarter — the quarter is the filing interval for most small businesses. Every line carries the box number (Kennzahl) of the official form (81 for 19 %, 86 for 7 %, 66 for input tax, 41/43/48 for tax-free turnover depending on the legal ground), so the figures transfer straight into ELSTER. Open items show receivables and payables — gross, as they are to be paid.

Liquidity

Cash flow

Money in and out of your account, month by month, from the imported bank statements — plus the total still expected from open invoices.

Taking a report with you

Three routes, each for the report and period currently on screen:

Route	Result
CSV	a file for Excel — semicolon separated, comma decimals, umlauts intact
PDF	a finished sheet to hand over
Print	a print view without menus; your browser turns it into a PDF

Every output carries the title, period and basis in its header, so the sheet still says what it shows once it has left the platform.

Important

We prepare the VAT return and the cash-basis statement; we do not file them. Both must be submitted electronically — the VAT return since 2013, the Anlage EÜR since 2018 (§ 60 Abs. 4 EStDV). Filing goes through ELSTER or your tax adviser; the figures come from here.

Who may do what

Access level	View reports	Export
Owner, admin	✓	✓
Power user, standard user	✓	✓
Auditor (tax adviser)	✓	✓
Guest	—	—

Auditor is the role for your tax practice: read everything, take the BWA and the trial balance away, change nothing.