Lexware Office vs sevDesk

Lexware Office

The chart of accounts is real — SKR03 or SKR04, switchable, with existing bookings migrated automatically — calendar months serve as the booking periods, and a monthly locking cycle stands in for the period close. We found no public information on free manual postings, journals, opening balances, cost centres or accruals, and the fiscal year is fixed to the calendar year.

sevDesk

Double-entry is explicitly offered ('einfache und doppelte Buchführung') with cost centres, BWA, trial balance, depreciation and a cashbook — more than an EÜR list. But the evidence names no chart of accounts, no opening balances, and no period close or locking, so the ledger underneath the screens is only partially evidenced.

Lexware Office

Immutability is documented better than most: automatic monthly locking in a night window with a cutoff to the second-to-last month, an initial locking on activation, manual locking to a chosen date, a protocol of every executed locking with timestamps, and submission of the VAT advance return locks that period's bookings. For what a Betriebsprüfung needs beyond that, we found no public information on corrections booked as reversals, a per-posting change history, retention across the statutory period, a supplied Verfahrensdokumentation, or a data export for the auditor.

sevDesk

Nothing: no GoBD claim, no Verfahrensdokumentation, no word on unalterable postings, no change history, and no retention statement anywhere in the captured pages; the AVV and TOM in the privacy policy are GDPR artifacts, not tax-audit documentation. For a Betriebsprüfung this dimension is unevidenced end to end, and silence on immutability is itself information.

Lexware Office

The VAT advance return runs end to end — positions filled per transaction, one-click transmission with ELSTER confirmation, null returns, payment by direct debit or transfer, an automatic voucher afterwards — with cash-versus-accrual timing, minimum-cash taxation, §13b reverse charge, intra-community supplies and Dauerfristverlängerung documented. Destination-country OSS taxation is explicitly routed outside the product, and we found no public information on the EÜR or a balance sheet, the Zusammenfassende Meldung, §19 small-business treatment or E-Bilanz; retrospective filings are limited to the second-to-last year.

sevDesk

The UStVA goes electronically to ELSTER without an extra certificate and EÜR/GuV are produced, which clears electronic submission. But reverse-charge, intra-community supply, OSS, §19 and Dauerfristverlängerung are all silent — the routine filing is there, the special cases are not.

Lexware Office

Fetched bank transactions receive matching suggestions on each refresh, the matching logic is documented in detail — criteria, improvement markers, checks in both directions, up to 1000 assignments per operation — and a posting only exists once the user accepts a suggestion, with separate guidance on genuinely linking bank transaction and receipt. We found no public information on OCR receipt capture, rule-based matching with learning, ZUGFeRD/XRechnung handling, or documented replacement scanning; an e-invoicing module is named in the product navigation without format detail.

sevDesk

Feeds across 4,000 banks, app and drag-and-drop receipt capture with AI categorisation, and ZUGFeRD/XRechnung in both directions with EN 16931 validation — solidly above the feed-and-OCR anchor. No rule-based matching with learning, no stated receipt-to-posting linkage in one click, and nothing on ersetzendes Scannen or compliant archiving of the digital original.

Lexware Office

Four handover scenarios are documented down to the ZIP files — manual DATEV Belegtransfer and Stapelbuchungsimport, or DATEVconnect online via the Rechnungsdatenservice and Buchungsdatenservice — and the export started from the tax-adviser login produces receipt and booking files that link automatically in DATEV Kanzlei Rechnungswesen, booking to receipt image. The adviser seat is free and the last login is visible, but access cannot be restricted to individual areas — the adviser sees everything including connected bank accounts — and we found no public information on corrections coming back from DATEV or an audit of what the adviser changed.

sevDesk

Named DATEV and ADDISON interfaces to the Steuerberatung plus an in-account collaboration invite meet the export-and-adviser-login anchor. The evidence says nothing on whether receipt images ride along in the export, on scoped access with an audit of what the adviser changed, or on corrections coming back bidirectionally.

Lexware Office

The vendor presents as a German house from Freiburg, but we found no public information on where the books are hosted or on any subprocessor; only separate privacy statements for the cloud and the desktop products are offered. A manual export of vouchers and booking data remains available even after cancellation, but we found no public information on a documented archive export that keeps retention compliant for the statutory period after leaving.

sevDesk

German contracting entity (sevDesk GmbH, Amtsgericht Freiburg, German VAT ID), a deliberate German server location and a subprocessor section exists. But the infrastructure is unnamed, the subprocessor list's completeness is unconfirmed, and there is no stated export that would satisfy statutory retention if the contract ends — with a ten-year obligation, that gap matters most.

Lexware Office

We found no public prices at all in the captured material — no tier price, no booking or document limits, no minimum term, no VAT treatment; the only pricing statement is that the tax adviser access is free. A business cannot compute an annual invoice from these pages.

sevDesk

Tier structure is public: 1/12/24-month terms, one user per plan, the free tier's 3-invoice limit, unlimited invoices in paid plans and DATEV named in the invoice plan. Adviser seat pricing, VAT treatment and marketplace partner costs ('nicht inkludiert') are unstated, and the 24-month 'ab*' comparison prices plus a 70% promo make the real annual invoice harder to compute.