When it comes to accounting in Germany, DATEV is everywhere. With hundreds of thousands of businesses relying on its tools, DATEV is the backbone of financial operations across the DACH region. For SaaS providers targeting German businesses, integrating with DATEV isn’t just nice-to-have — it’s a must.
Yet, navigating DATEV’s ecosystem can be complex without the right knowledge and partner. That’s exactly why Chift offers a powerful, Unified Accounting API with built-in support for DATEV. Let’s break it down.
How does DATEV’s software work?
To successfully integrate with DATEV, SaaS companies need to understand that they are dealing with two complementary systems, each with distinct roles, APIs, and use cases:
DATEV Unternehmen Online (DUO): The cloud-based gateway
DATEV Unternehmen Online is a cloud-based platform that facilitates digital collaboration between businesses and their accountants. It’s designed to support the exchange of documents such as invoices from companies to accountants and tax advisors.
Key API features:
- Real-time invoice management: Upload, categorize, and track invoices (PDF, JPG, PNG, e-Invoice).
- Banking integration: Sync bank transactions to enrich financial records.
- OCR technology: Use optical character recognition to pre-fill data from scanned receipts.
- Approval workflows: Enable invoice approval flows.
- Document archiving & mobile access: Store everything securely in the cloud, accessible anywhere.
Use cases:
- Freelancers and SMEs digitizing receipts.
- Retailers managing cash transactions and VAT.
- SaaS products offering spend management, expense automation, or document capture.
DATEV Rechnungswesen (ReWe): The on-premise accounting engine
DATEV Rechnungswesen is an on-premise accounting solution designed for businesses that manage their own accounting. It’s especially popular with mid-sized and larger companies that need more advanced features. The software covers everything from basic financial accounting to cost tracking and asset management, making it a complete all-in-one solution for managing your company’s finances.
Key API features:
- Comprehensive accounting: General ledger, cost centers, asset tracking.
- Detailed reporting: Generate P&L statements, balance sheets, cash flow.
- Payroll integration: Pull in payroll data for accounting.
- Multi-entity management: Perfect for firms managing multiple clients or subsidiaries.
- Strict VAT compliance: Automate tax calculations to meet German regulatory standards.
Use Cases:
- Accounting firms serving multiple clients.
- Mid-sized and large companies with in-house finance teams.
- SaaS products offering invoicing, ERP integration, or financial consolidation.
DUO + ReWe together: How data moves across
In many scenarios, businesses use both DUO and ReWe. Here’s how it works:
- Upload documents and booking proposals into DUO.
- Transfer data via the DATEV data center.
- Retrieve finalized accounting data into ReWe.
But beware — this process is asynchronous, multi-steps, and far from “plug and play.” Without the right integrations, it’s slow and error-prone.
Main challenges of building a DATEV integration in-house
While essential for many SaaS vendors, building an integration with a complex system like DATEV presents significant challenges — making it a daunting task even for the most skilled development teams. Among the key difficulties are:
- Gatekeeping: Gaining permission to send data requires a multi-step approval process with DATEV and often the support of paid consultants. Even accessing the sandbox environment comes with it’s own validation process.
- Fragmented workflows: Integrating with DUO vs. Rechnungswesen involves different endpoints and business rules.
- Batch processing & asynchronous jobs: Unlike modern REST APIs, DATEV often requires batch job creation, execution, and monitoring.
- High setup costs: Between approval, sandbox testing, production access, and compliance with DATEV's technical and branding requirements, building in-house can be time-consuming and expensive.
Those are only some of the reasons why building a DATEV integration yourself is not recommended.
Use Cases and Scope of the Chift DATEV API Integration
Chift has already done all the hair-pulling work and allows you to quickly embed a DATEV integration into your product. With Chift's DATEV connector, SaaS providers access both Rechnungswesen and DUO from a single integration layer to interact with the following data:
- Sync sales and purchase invoices
- Digital receipts and attachments (PDF) through DUO
- Customer and supplier data
- Analytics accounts
By tapping into this critical financial data, software vendors can dramatically increase their product’s value, automate key workflows, and streamline collaboration between businesses and their accountants.
Even better? Chift handles all the complexity of authentication, too. Since Rechnungswesen and DUO use different login systems — including OAuth2 with strict token requirements — Chift abstracts it all away, so your team doesn’t have to worry about session handling or scope management.
Here’s how different types of SaaS platforms are leveraging Chift's Unified Accounting API:
Sync invoices and customer data across tools
Keep invoices and customer profiles in sync between your ERP, CRM, and DATEV to ensure clean books and consistent customer records — automatically and in real-time.
Power cashflow forecasting with live AP/AR data
Cashflow tools use Chift to pull open receivables and payables directly from users’ accounting software, enabling accurate forecasts without manual imports.
Automate ecommerce-to-accounting workflows
Ecommerce platforms rely on Chift to send financial transactions into accounting systems — with no ongoing maintenance or CSV exports. VAT rules, payout structures, and invoice creation are all handled behind the scenes.
Enable seamless payment reconciliation
Payment solutions use Chift to feed enriched transaction data (fees, payouts, chargebacks) directly into the accounting layer, eliminating reconciliation headaches for users.
Auto-send Z-Reports from POS to DATEV
Make manual Z-report exports a thing of the past with seamless accounting integrations that handle multiple payment methods, product categories and VAT rates.
Sync PMS orders and payments with accounting
Property management systems use Chift to transform reservation and payment data into clean accounting entries — automating revenue recognition, VAT handling, and reconciliation.
For detailed examples of accounting integrations, head to our Chift case studies page.
Our recommendations for integrating with DATEV
If you still decide to build a DATEV Integration in-house, here are a few things you need to keep in mind to improve your odds of success:
- Start with clear scope: Define whether your integration needs DUO, Rechnungswesen, or both.
- Prepare for OAuth2 and password-based Auth: DUO uses OAuth2, while Rechnungswesen typically relies on account credentials. When setting up OAuth2, the slate must be at least 20 character long and you must supply the clientId and not the client secret for the refresh token. And since each request must be linkedin to the client accounting folder and accounting year, you need to pull that info.
- Plan for long approval timelines: Include consultant hours and DATEV validation steps in your project timeline.
Leverage existing solutions and save time and money! You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. A specialized partner like Chift can save you months of development.
How to activate a DATEV connector with Chift
- Provide your DATEV Rechnungswesen account username and password.
- If activating DUO, also provide your Client Number and Consultant Number (retrievable via the DATEV portal).
- Configure the integration through Chift's platform — we handle the rest, including secure connection setup and compliance checks.
Integrate with DATEV and other accounting systems through Chift’s Unified Accounting API
Why stop at DATEV? With Chift's Unified Accounting API, SaaS providers can access a plug-and-play layer that connects not only to DATEV but also to other popular European accounting platforms. In addition to DATEV, you can connect seamlessly with platforms such as Sage Génération Experts, Visma eAccounting, Sage 100, Pennylane, MyUnisoft, and many others. Build once, scale across markets — without multiplying your integration workload.By leveraging Chift’s unified approach, you drastically reduce development effort and ongoing maintenance, accelerate time-to-market, and support fast, scalable growth. This allows your dev team to stay laser-focused on your core product, while your marketing and sales teams confidently promote a wide integration portfolio to your customers.
Interested in exploring Chift’s powerful integration capabilities? Contact our team today for a personalized demonstration.
DATEV API integration FAQ
What DATEV API endpoints are accessible?
Integrating with Visma eAccounting gives you access to multiple data models to push or pull information. For example:
- Clients
%%/clients%% - Suppliers
%%/suppliers%% - Invoice attachments
%%/attachments%% - VAT Codes
%%/vat-codes%% - Journal Entries
%%/journal/entries%% - Invoices
%%/invoices%%
Consult our DATEV API documentation for a list of all the available endpoints.
What is the rate limit of the DATEV API?
While DATEV APIs support batch jobs, they are not designed for high-frequency, real-time calls. Jobs are processed asynchronously, and you must monitor the status of each batch, making careful scheduling essential.
If you want to learn more about how Chift can help your SaaS product integrate with DATEV quickly and painlessly, reach out to our team today!
