FastBill vs Lexware Office

FastBill

The vendor's own words are 'Behalte den Überblick über deine Einnahmen und Ausgaben' — an income/expense overview with banking and categorisation, nothing more. No SKR03/04, no journal, no opening balances and no period close appear anywhere in the evidence; the DATEV export mapping implies some fixed account scheme, so this is EÜR-grade simplified bookkeeping, not a ledger I could close a year on.

Lexware Office

SKR03 and SKR04 with automatic migration of existing postings, calendar-month booking periods, and a monthly locking run with a timestamped protocol is a real ledger underneath the screens — the Buchungsmandant scenarios even contemplate the Kanzlei preparing the Jahresabschluss on these books. We found no public information on manual journal postings, opening balances, cost centres or accruals, and the fiscal year is fixed to the calendar year, so a mid-grade ledger is what the pages support.

FastBill

'GoBD-konforme Aufbewahrung' is a single marketing line, and while the statutory retention period (ten years, up to thirty) is genuinely stated, there is no Verfahrensdokumentation, no change log, no immutability after close — indeed no close at all to lock a period against. That is a retention promise with nothing audit-shaped behind it.

Lexware Office

The locking mechanics are described in earnest — automatic monthly locking, an initial lock on activation, manual locking to a chosen date, a protocol of every execution with its timestamp, and bookings of a reporting period fixed once the USt-VA is submitted. We found no public information on a supplied Verfahrensdokumentation, a statement of the statutory retention period, or a GoBD-compliant export for the Betriebsprüfer, which keeps it short of the documented-audit grade.

FastBill

UStVA is truly electronic — submitted 'mit einem Klick ans Finanzamt, ganz ohne ELSTER-Zertifikat' from the smallest tier, with Ist/Soll and the Kleinunternehmerregelung configurable. But the evidence is silent on EÜR output, reverse-charge and intra-community supply, let alone OSS or Dauerfristverlängerung, so the filing story ends at the Voranmeldung.

Lexware Office

The USt-VA is filled automatically from business transactions, submitted to the Finanzamt with one click, confirmed by ELSTER, then booked and paid by SEPA debit or transfer — with Ist/Soll timing including Mindest-Ist, §13b and intra-community supplies, Dauerfristverlängerung and Nullmeldung handled. OSS appears only as guidance that destination-country taxation must be reported via OSS or separate registration, retroactive filings stop at the second-to-last year, and we found no public information on Zusammenfassende Meldung, §19 handling or EÜR/Bilanz generation.

FastBill

Scan app with OCR, automatic bank matching and automatic receipt import at the top tiers, metered bank accounts per plan, and e-invoices in ZUGFeRD and XRechnung both directions — a real feed-to-receipt chain. Ersatzendes Scannen is never documented and automatic receipt processing is metered (30 Belege included), so whether paper may be destroyed and what volume costs stay open.

Lexware Office

Bank transactions are fetched and receive matching suggestions on every refresh, with two suggestion types, checks in both directions, sensible criteria (matching amounts, exact document number in the remittance info, identical contact or customer number) and receipts linked to their postings — though nothing is booked until the user accepts and at most 1000 assignments run per operation. We found no public information on OCR receipt capture, PSD2 breadth across institutions, ZUGFeRD/XRechnung handling or ersetzendes Scannen being documented.

FastBill

DATEV XML export of Rechnungen and Belege sits in every plan including Solo, Pro adds a DATEV Rechnungsdatenservice 1.0, and there is a one-click bundled handover to the Steuerberater — more than a CSV dump. But there is no adviser login, no scoped access, no audit of what the Berater touched; my queries would be resolved by email around the system, not inside it.

Lexware Office

This is the part they understand: four documented DATEV handover scenarios, DATEVconnect online background transfer with the Rechnungsdatenservice and Buchungsdatenservice, and a Steuerberaterzugang export that produces two coordinated ZIP files where booking and receipt image link automatically after import into DATEV Kanzlei Rechnungswesen — plus a free adviser login and a manual export that survives cancellation. But the adviser login cannot be restricted in scope and sees every connected bank account, and we found no public information on an audit of what the adviser changed or corrections coming back through DATEV.

FastBill

A Frankfurt GmbH running 'in einem Rechenzentrum in Deutschland' with SCCs for third-country transfers is a solid start, but the named chain includes US firms (Intercom Inc., MailChimp) in support tooling, the infrastructure provider is unnamed, and no full subprocessor register is published. Nothing addresses retention surviving contract end — the archive export question I care most about — which is presumably why the pipeline left the critical attributes unconfirmed.

Lexware Office

We found no public information on where the Lexware Office books are hosted, on the contracting entity's jurisdiction being confirmed on the vendor's own captured pages, or on any subprocessor list; the captured material shows only separate privacy statements for the cloud and desktop products. The provenance names a German company in Freiburg, so this is not the non-EU worst case, and a manual export of vouchers and booking data remains available after cancellation — but we found no public information on retention-compliant archiving or a documented archive export for the full statutory period.

FastBill

Four tiers with monthly-equivalent prices, annual debit and the 10% annual discount, net-plus-VAT treatment, users by tier with extra seats at 5 €, bank-account limits and priced add-ons are all public. What a business still cannot compute: the document/receipt limits of the lower tiers, what pushes Premium beyond 'ab 53 €', and any minimum term or overage rate.

Lexware Office

We found no public information on tier prices, billing periods, booking or document limits, user costs, or at which tier the DATEV export and bank connections begin. The only pricing fact published in the captures is that the tax adviser login is completely free; no annual invoice is computable from these pages.