Bookkeeping? It's a Breeze.

Kontist Bookkeeping is only suitable for the self-employed with the following requirements:

You are not subject to double-entry bookkeeping
In general, freelancers (Freiberufler) are not obliged to do double-entry bookkeeping. Self-employed (Gewerbetreibende) are only obliged to do it if their annual turnover is over €600,000 or the profit over €60,000. If this is not the case, you are not required to do double-entry bookkeeping.

You only use your Kontist account for a one business or only use your account for one tax number.
In this case, you have no mixed sales from different business activities in your account.

In addition to your Kontist business account, you should not have a second account. 
This also applies to credit card accounts, PayPal or other payment service providers. You should use your Kontist account for all business income and expenses. For this reason, we cannot offer Kontist Bookkeeping to the self-employed in e-commerce.

You should generally avoid cash payments in your company.  If it cannot be avoided in exceptional situations (for example with entertainment expenses), transfer the amount from your Kontist account to your private account in a timely manner. In doing so, you generate an outgoing transaction, for which you can upload the corresponding receipt. Kontist Bookkeeping is not for you, if you do a lot of cash transactions.

As a customer of the Kontist Tax Service, you authorize the Kontist Tax Advisory to take care of all your tax matters for you, which includes comprehensive tax advisory consultations, your private and business annual tax return as well as the communication with the local tax office (Finanzamt). None of this is included in Kontist Bookkeeping. Find more details here.

Start of the service: 
The service starts immediately after you upgrade, but only after you have uploaded the receipts. If you posted in August, your advance VAT return for August will be created in the app. If you pay quarterly, the next VAT return will be made for the current quarter, but in that case you have to pay every 3 months.

How it works:

1. All your business transactions have to go through Kontist. 

2. You attach receipts to the transactions.

3. The accountants of the Kontist Tax Advisory (“Kontist Steuerberatung”) book the transactions for you.

4. You see in the mobile & web app how the transactions are booked.

5. At the beginning of the month/quarter, your bookkeeping and VAT statement is ready for you to be checked. If necessary, you can adjust individual transactions.

6. Confirm the VAT declaration by clicking “Confirm VAT declaration” and then click on “Submit VAT declaration”. In this way, you will send it to the tax office by the web-app. You can find the transmission protocol in the web app.

7. The profit & loss statement (EÜR) will be issued by the Kontist Tax Advisory for you on request.

In order to prepare your income tax declaration, you need a P&L statement (EÜR), which is already included in Kontist Bookkeeping and will be issued for you in the end of the year. On this basis, you can make your income tax declaration yourself or hire a tax advisor.

If you decide later on to organize your yearly income tax declaration via the Kontist Tax Service, the costs are calculated at €1320 plus VAT for the tax year. Small businesses and those who have recently started their business (less than 2 years) pay €720 plus VAT for the tax year. More details here.