Finance, tax & compliance
How this is scored
Whether the ERP keeps books a tax adviser and an auditor accept: general and subledgers, VAT per country, GoBD-compliant posting and archiving, e-invoices sent and received (XRechnung, ZUGFeRD), payments and dunning, and a DATEV export or a documented hand-over to the accountant.
0 — No accounting at all; invoices leave as PDFs and the books are kept somewhere else by hand.
3 — Invoices and credit notes are created in the system, but there is no ledger, no stated GoBD compliance and no export the accountant can import.
5 — Invoices, open items and payments in the system with a DATEV or accounting export, VAT rates per item, dunning, and e-invoices in XRechnung or ZUGFeRD format sent to customers.
8 — Full financial accounting or a live-synchronised one: general, receivables and payables ledgers, incoming e-invoices read and matched to purchase orders, bank feeds with payment matching, OSS and reverse-charge VAT, GoBD compliance stated with a procedure documentation, and several companies in one tenant.
10 — The money side closes inside the system: an auditor's GoBD or IDW PS 880 attestation published, consolidation and intercompany postings across entities, fixed assets and cost accounting, every posting traceable to the order, goods movement and user behind it, and period close with locked periods documented.
The Head of Finance
GoBD is stated out of the box with revision-safe archiving, ZUGFeRD and XRechnung are received and processed, payments are pulled from banks and providers via HBCI/FinTS and matched to orders, dunning is configurable, VAT per country including OSS goes to ELSTER, and the DATEV story is unusually complete — export, a booking data service, a FiBu interface and even a network of vetted tax advisers. Before I would call it a full close I still need a procedure documentation, a stated general ledger structure with several companies in one tenant, and payroll, which the vendor itself places outside a Warenwirtschaft. 2 3 7 8 10