Bookkeeping · Research allowance · AI in accounting
Ongoing bookkeeping for German tax firms and companies, the research allowance (Forschungszulage), GoBD audits and process documentation. What we roll out at your firm runs in our own daily practice — and we build the systems behind it ourselves.
We are not appointed tax advisers (Steuerberater). What we may do and what we may not is on this page, not in the fine print.
1 · Research allowance
This is the point most funding programmes lack, and it decides everything for a company in its build-up phase: the research allowance does not depend on profit. It is credited against your tax, and whatever remains is paid out.
Since 1 January 2026 the assessment base is €12 million per year, plus a 20 % flat rate for overhead and operating costs. Your own work as a sole proprietor counts at €100 per hour.
Slide in your numbers. The calculation runs in your browser — nothing is transmitted, nothing is stored.
Only the share attributable to eligible projects, including the employer's social security contribution.
€300,000
Commissioned from third parties. 70 % of it is eligible; subcontracting further down the chain does not count.
€0
Only for sole proprietors and partners, €100 per hour, at most 40 hours per week.
0 hours
SME under the EU definition: fewer than 250 employees and at most €50 m turnover or €43 m balance sheet total.
Research allowance per year
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Method: eligible expenses = gross wages + 20 % overhead flat rate + 70 % of contract research + own work (hours × €100 × 52 weeks), capped at the €12 m assessment base; 25 % of that, or 35 % for SMEs. Assumption — please verify: we apply the 20 % flat rate to wage expenses. The exact reference base follows from the statute and must be confirmed case by case. The result is an order of magnitude for the conversation, not a commitment.
The anti-cumulation rule in § 7 (2) FZulG is expense-based, not project-based. A project funded through EXIST or ZIM therefore does not exclude the research allowance — but the same personnel expense must not be claimed twice.
That requires expense-accurate time recording from day one. Whoever notices in the application year that it is missing cannot reconstruct it. That is exactly where applications fail that would have held on substance.
Two stages. First the certificate from the Bescheinigungsstelle Forschungszulage (BSFZ) via its web portal — it is a mandatory prerequisite and can be applied for before, during or after the project; the decision usually arrives within three months. Then the application to the tax office after the end of the financial year.
We write the technical project description for your BSFZ application and compile the eligible expenses. The application to the tax office is filed by your tax adviser on the basis of these documents. External advice is expressly permitted in the certification procedure; the adviser is named in the application. Responsibility for accuracy stays with you — which is why you receive documents you can check, not a black box.
§ 3 (5) FZulG (assessment base from 1 Jan 2026: €12 m) · § 4 (1) FZulG (25 %, SME increase on application) · § 7 (2) FZulG (anti-cumulation) · Amendments by the tax investment programme, BMF monthly report 08/2025 · Procedure as described by the Bescheinigungsstelle Forschungszulage
2 · Services
For tax firms
Financial accounting on behalf of and under the responsibility of your firm — entirely in DATEV, following your posting rules and your chart of accounts. You receive the books ready for reconciliation, with complete working papers on request; posting and preparation of the accounts happen at your firm.
For companies
Your ongoing bookkeeping, monthly, in DATEV or your own system — coordinated with the firm that prepares your annual accounts. You get usable figures during the year instead of only in the year after.
For founders
We stay with you into day-to-day operations: financial model and liquidity planning, setting up the bookkeeping, deadlines and filing duties of the first hundred days, choosing and configuring systems, preparing the conversations with bank, tax firm and investors.
Choice of legal form, articles of association and tax structuring belong to your tax adviser and lawyer. We make sure you walk in prepared and that the results get implemented.
For developers
For developers of accounting software we bring the domain side that most products fail on: posting logic, SKR chart-of-accounts systematics, DATEV interfaces, GoBD requirements on immutability and logging, process documentation as part of the product.
Not as an external consultant next to the team, but inside the development process: rule sets, test cases from real posting data, error classes.
3 · GoBD and process documentation
The German tax administration issues no positive attestations on the regularity of a set of books, neither in a tax audit nor by binding ruling. And third-party certificates do not bind it. The reason sits one paragraph earlier: what matters are updates, access rights and data entry — not the product, but how it is operated and documented at your company.
That is why we audit your accounting and document system against the GoBD and § 146 (4) AO and deliver what actually counts in a tax audit: an audit report with a finding per requirement, named deficiencies and concrete remediation steps — plus the complete process documentation.
Answer them for your system. Here, too, everything stays in your browser.
ImmutabilityWhen an entry is corrected, does the original content remain ascertainable — and is it evident whether a change was made originally or later?
Traceability of automationIs it documented which rule produced an automatically generated posting — and which version of that rule applied at the time?
Process documentationDoes it exist in full — general description, user documentation, technical system documentation and operating documentation?
Document linkageIs every posting linked to its source document and retrievable from within the system?
Receiving e-invoicesCan you receive, process and retain structured e-invoices in an audit-proof way — mandatory since 1 January 2025?
Change history of the rule setCan you reconstruct who changed which posting rule, and when?
Finding
The quick check is no substitute for an audit. It shows where an audit would start.
We build AI-driven accounting systems ourselves and know the places where they regularly break — because we have to close them while building. § 146 (4) AO requires that "the original content remains ascertainable" and that no change is made "whose nature leaves it uncertain whether it was made originally or only later". That is where automated systems fail — not on posting quality.
We do not audit our own systems. For those we name you an independent auditor. For systems we helped build we issue a manufacturer's declaration — labelled as what it is: a statement by the manufacturer, not an independent audit.
GoBD paras. 179–181 (positive attestations, binding effect of certificates) · § 146 (4) AO verbatim · Paragraph numbers follow the 2014 version; current version of the BMF circular of 28 Nov 2019
4 · Why now
In tax firms, ongoing bookkeeping piles up while annual accounts wait. In companies, the figures arrive when the financial year is long over. Both have the same cause: the part of the work that is not tax advice ties up the time of those who are supposed to advise.
And the deadlines keep running. The obligation to receive e-invoices has applied since the start of 2025 — the most common misconception in the market is that it only begins with the issuing deadlines in 2027 and 2028. The research allowance was expanded on 1 January 2026, but is granted only on application, and the SME uplift only if it is expressly requested.
E-invoicing: receiving mandatory since 1 Jan 2025, issuing obligations staggered until 2028 · Research allowance: amendments by the tax investment programme effective 1 Jan 2026
5 · AI in accounting
We advise companies that develop and operate AI-driven posting software for DATEV tax firms, and we take part in the development. The rule sets running in production there stem in substantial parts from our work.
Services: building rule sets for automated account assignment · rollout and integration with DATEV · guiding the transition in day-to-day firm operations · review of data protection and professional secrecy under § 203 StGB and § 62a StBerG.
Disclosure: in every system assessment we state our involvement in the products under review before the engagement begins. Systems we helped build, we do not audit.
6 · Who we are
We say this openly because it answers the question you are asking anyway: how can one person deliver all of this? By having the routines — document processing, account assignment, reconciliation, documentation — run on systems we built ourselves and whose rule sets we know down to the last line.
What that means for you: every decision that concerns your engagement or your data is made by a human. The systems operate under § 203 StGB and § 62a StBerG — with confidentiality agreements, EU hosting and a documented rule set. What they do is traceable; what they may not do is defined.
AI builds AI. We build our systems with the same tools we roll out at your firm. That cycle is the proof that it works — and the reason we know where it breaks.
What we build ourselves
Developed with a partner company and in production in daily firm operations: rule sets for automatic account assignment, test cases from real posting data, error classes that are persisted and checked on every run. Where the system is not sure, it asks — instead of guessing.
What we build ourselves
Conceived, written, legally reviewed, built, tested and published with AI — in one day, including domain, mail infrastructure and data processing agreement. The calculator and the quick check run without a server, without trackers, without a single external resource. You are looking at the work product, not the brochure.
7 · Who does what
We are not appointed tax advisers (Steuerberater) and provide bookkeeping services within the limits of § 6 no. 4 of the German Tax Advisory Act (StBerG). That is not a restriction we hide; it is the division of labour the whole chain rests on: for every stage it is defined what we do, what we hand over and who carries on with responsibility. Nothing falls between two stools — that is why tax firms can work with us.
Whoever offers you, as a bookkeeping service, the annual accounts and the tax return as well is offering you something § 5 StBerG forbids them to do. That is why this list sits here and not in the fine print: it is the reason your tax firm keeps its tasks and you know where you stand.
We store no client documents locally and work exclusively through EU-hosted systems. For client communication we use our principals' addresses, not mailboxes of our own.
Data processing agreements under Art. 28 GDPR are in place for the service providers we use; processing takes place contractually only in the EU or EEA, and any transfer to a third country would require our prior consent. We provide our list of sub-processors and the underlying contracts on request — for your record under Art. 30 GDPR.
§ 5 and § 6 no. 4 StBerG · Delimitation according to the tax administration's guidance on bookkeeping assistance · On interpretation: German Federal Fiscal Court, judgment of 16 Apr 2024, VII R 22/21 · § 62a StBerG (service providers) · GoBD para. 181
8 · Contact
Ulrich Waldmann
GUV IT Solutions Germany LLC
info@guvsolution.net +380 95 877 9114Reply within one working day — from a human.
Bring what is stuck right now — a client file that keeps waiting, a system you would not trust in a tax audit, a development project you are not sure is eligible for funding.
In the first conversation you get an assessment of what holds and what does not, and what it would cost. If we are the wrong people for it, we tell you in the same conversation.