FastBill vs Lexware Office

FastBill

Everything evidenced is invoicing plus income/expense tracking — 'Behalte den Überblick über deine Einnahmen und Ausgaben' with expense capture, payment matching and automatic categorisation — and nowhere in four captured pages do double-entry, SKR03/SKR04, journals, opening balances or a period close appear; the books themselves are explicitly outsourced to the Steuerberater via export.

Lexware Office

The captured help pages show a real double-entry base: SKR03 or SKR04 selectable with existing bookings auto-migrated when the chart is switched, calendar-month booking periods tied to document dates, and a monthly hardening that freezes everything booked through the second-to-last month. We found no public information on manual free postings, opening balances, cost centres, accruals or multi-year comparatives, so the ledger beyond the basics stays dark.

FastBill

GoBD appears as a single feature bullet ('GoBD-konforme Aufbewahrung') with a stated 2–10 year retention in the privacy policy, but there is no described audit trail, no immutability or reversal mechanics, no Verfahrensdokumentation and no auditor export — one claim on archiving does not make records survive an audit.

Lexware Office

Immutability is engineered rather than just claimed: an automatic monthly Festschreibung described as GoBD-conform, a manual lock to a freely chosen date, a protocol of every lock with timestamp, and bookings frozen as soon as a VAT pre-registration is transmitted. We found no public information on a supplied Verfahrensdokumentation, a stated statutory retention period, or a GoBD-compliant data export for the auditor, which is what separates a working lock from full audit readiness.

FastBill

The UStVA leg is genuinely strong — fully automatic, Ist and Soll, Kleinunternehmer configurable, submitted to the Finanzamt with one click without an ELSTER certificate even in the smallest tier — but there is no evidence of EÜR or Bilanz output, reverse-charge, intra-community supply or OSS, which is consistent with a product that hands the year-end to the adviser.

Lexware Office

The VAT pre-registration loop is fully wired: transactions auto-fill the correct positions, one-click transmission with ELSTER feedback, payment by SEPA direct debit or bank transfer from the generated voucher, and the period locks on submission, with Ist/Soll timing including Mindest-Ist, §13b reverse charge, intra-community supplies and Dauerfristverlängerung all documented. Destination-country taxation is explicitly routed to OSS or a separate registration rather than the product, and we found no public information on EÜR, a balance sheet, Zusammenfassende Meldung or small-business §19 handling, with retroactive filings capped at the second-to-last year.

FastBill

E-invoicing both directions in ZUGFeRD and XRechnung across all plans, a scan app with OCR, automatic receipt import from portals and automatic bank matching clear rubric level 5 comfortably and part of 8; what's missing is PSD2 feed breadth, rule-based matching that learns, and any documentation of ersetzendes Scannen before I trust the paper to the shredder.

Lexware Office

Bank transactions are fetched and automatically receive matching suggestions on each refresh — by exact document number in the remittance text, contact name or customer number — checked in both directions with receipts linked to their postings, and connected bank accounts are demonstrably part of the account. We found no public information on OCR for captured receipts, user-definable matching rules with learning, or inbound ZUGFeRD/XRechnung handling, so the evidence chain stays at suggested matches.

FastBill

A documented DATEV XML export of invoices and Belege available from the Solo tier, a bundled one-click handoff, and DATEV Rechnungsdatenservice 1.0 in Pro — that is a real, named-format handoff, but there is no adviser login, no bidirectional corrections, no receipt-image linking evidence and no period handover with locking; the adviser receives data, never works in the system.

Lexware Office

The DATEV handoff is the best-documented part of the product: scenario-based exports for Buchungsmandant versus Selbstbucher, automatic background transfer via DATEVconnect online to the Buchungsdatenservice, receipt images and booking data coordinated so the booking links to the receipt image after import in DATEV Kanzlei Rechnungswesen, plus Rechnungsdatenservice and ADDISON OneClick, and the adviser seat is explicitly free. Access is all-or-nothing — the captured help page states granular restriction is not possible and the adviser sees everything including bank accounts — and we found no public information on corrections flowing back from the Kanzlei.

FastBill

Nothing anywhere states an export that keeps statutory retention alive after the customer leaves, which is the specific durability question here.

Lexware Office

The imprint names a Freiburg company and separate privacy statements exist for the cloud product, but the captured pages give no statement of hosting location, no subprocessor list and no certification, so I cannot place the books on named European infrastructure from public information. The one durable fact is the manual export of vouchers and booking data that still works after cancellation — a partial answer to whether retention survives leaving the vendor.

FastBill

All four tiers, the annual-debit billing period, VAT treatment, per-tier limits (users, bank accounts, API calls, 30 receipts, 20 dunning cases) and the add-ons are public, and DATEV export starts in the cheapest tier so nothing commonly needed hides in an unpriced plan; the residual gap is the 'ab' pricing on Premium and the add-ons, which leaves overage volume and minimum term not fully computable.

Lexware Office

The only priced fact I found is that the tax adviser access is 'komplett kostenlos' for client and Kanzlei alike. Beyond that we found no public information on tier prices, booking or document limits, billing period or VAT treatment, so a business cannot compute a real annual invoice from the captured pages.