FastBill vs Lexware Office

FastBill

The workflow is receipts in, payments assigned, then everything exported to the Steuerberater — E1 literally walks you out of the product at year end. No SKR03/SKR04, no journal, no opening balances, no period close anywhere in the evidence; even the fixed account list of the EÜR anchor isn't evidenced, just automatic categorisation. Simplified EÜR-adjacent bookkeeping at best, the double-entry ledger stays at my adviser.

Lexware Office

SKR03 and SKR04 are both there, I can switch charts and existing bookings migrate automatically, and the monthly lock with a timestamped protocol gives me a real period close. But I found no public information on manual journals, opening balances, cost centres or accruals — and the business year is fixed to the calendar year with the calendar month as the booking period. A solid mid-level ledger, none of the accountant's extras shown.

FastBill

GoBD appears exactly once, as a retention bullet ('GoBD-konforme Aufbewahrung', E2), and the privacy policy does state 2–10 year retention for invoice-relevant documents (E4) — that is the entire story. No unalterable postings, no change history, no Verfahrensdokumentation, no auditor export. A marketing claim plus a retention sentence does not survive a Betriebsprüfung on its own.

Lexware Office

Postings genuinely become unalterable: the lock is automatic and GoBD-conform each month, logged with execution timestamps, and submitting the VAT advance return fixes that period's bookings too. What's missing for the audit-minded is everything around it — I found no public information on a Verfahrensdokumentation template, a stated retention period, an auditor's data export, or corrections handled as reversals.

FastBill

The thing I care about is real and cheap: fully automatic UStVA from the smallest tier, Ist and Soll both, Kleinunternehmerregelung configurable, one click to the Finanzamt with no ELSTER certificate (E1, E2). But it stops at the Voranmeldung — no EÜR, no reverse-charge or intra-community handling, no OSS, no ZM in the evidence, so the year-end is my adviser's problem, not the product's.

Lexware Office

One click sends the VAT advance return to the Finanzamt with ELSTER confirmation, an automatic receipt is booked and the SEPA debit just happens — that is precisely the hour of my Sunday I want back. Cash and accrual timing, the minimum-cash rule, §13b reverse charge and Dauerfristverlängerung are all handled, but the pages themselves route destination-country tax to OSS or separate registration outside the product, and I found no public information on EÜR or balance-sheet output, the Zusammenfassende Meldung, or small-business rules. Above the middle mark, well short of the full filing year.

FastBill

Premium is my Sunday: automatic bank matching, automatic receipt import across five portals, scan app with OCR, 30 processed receipts included, and e-invoices ZUGFeRD/XRechnung in both directions in every plan (E1, E2) — that clears the anchor-5 bar and two planks of rubric level 8. What's missing is the paperwork: no documented ersetzendes Scannen, no rule-based matching with learning, no PSD2-breadth claim.

Lexware Office

Bank accounts are connected, refreshing fetches new transactions, and every Umsatz gets matching suggestions checked in both directions against a receipt or an accounting category — but a booking only exists after I click accept, so the ledger is suggesting rather than matching itself. Receipts are linked to their postings (the VAT return lines expand to the vouchers), while I found no public information on OCR receipt capture, e-invoice formats inbound and outbound, or replacement scanning.

FastBill

DATEV is real and starts early: DATEV XML export for invoices and Belege already in Solo, the DATEV Rechnungsdatenservice 1.0 on Pro, and a one-click bundled handoff (E1, E2). But it is a one-way pipe — no adviser login, no scoped access, no audit of what the adviser touched, no corrections coming back.

Lexware Office

The DATEV handover is genuinely professional: the Steuerberaterzugang export builds two coordinated ZIP files that link booking to receipt image automatically after import into DATEV Kanzlei Rechnungswesen, DATEVconnect online transfers in the background via the Buchungsdatenservice, and the adviser seat costs nothing. But the access cannot be scoped — the Kanzlei sees everything including my connected bank accounts — with only a last-login visible, no audit of what they changed, and nothing coming back the other way. Best-in-class one-way export, one-sided collaboration.

FastBill

German hosting as standard and a German contracting entity are confirmed (E1, E3, E4), which is more than the pipeline's unknowns suggest. But the support and marketing chain runs through Intercom Inc and MailChimp in the US — SCCs cited, no more (E4) — the data-centre provider is unnamed, and there is no statement that an exit export keeps my ten-year retention alive after I leave.

Lexware Office

The vendor is German through and through per the provenance line, and a manual export of receipts and booking data still works after cancellation, which is a real exit door. Beyond that I found no public information: nothing on hosting location, nothing on subprocessors, nothing confirming the contracting entity, and the captured privacy pages only link onward to separate statements rather than stating any of it. An absent subprocessor list lands this in the low band for me, not the floor.

FastBill

I can almost compute my annual invoice: four tiers priced with billing period and net-plus-VAT stated, users, bank accounts, API calls and receipt limits per tier, and every add-on priced (users 5 €, extra receipts ab 10 €, dunning ab 4,90 €) (E2). The dings: Premium is only 'ab 53 €' with no stated driver, no minimum term anywhere, and 'ab 10 €' for extra receipts doesn't say what a unit is.

Lexware Office

I found no public information on pricing at all — no tier, no monthly figure, no booking or document limits, not even a hint of what an adviser seat or an extra bank account costs, so no annual invoice can be computed from what is published. As the person who checks the invoice against the headline, that is the bottom.