Germany Receipts

[dianeatiyeh]

We are interested in moving away from storing physical receipts in our  German offices.  Has anyone experienced the  scanning option with the local authorities.  In other words, did you  complete the paperwork and move from the physical location of keeping receipts in the German local offices.  Are you now using the mobile devices and Concur electronic receipts?  Did anyone go through an audit and satisfy the local requirements of the local agencies?  We are very concerned about meeting the audit requirments and would like to know if anyone has suceeded in this process.  Please reach out and let me know your experiences.

Before we take the plunge we want to hear of other clients who successfully met the local audits in Germany with only electronic receipts and no physical copies of receipts stored.

[expensebrain]

Hi,

situation is different per location - Germany has several federal states with a different level of acceptance, occasionally changing and moving towards electronic receipts.

State of Hesse, including Frankfurt has general acceptance already. In other states, you will also find differences between large cities and the countryside.

Concur Germany is providing a guiding document how to enable electronic processing in Germany, but I think only in German language.

Across Germany, various large and small customers have already rolled out deletion of paper receipts, starting with a pharma corporation around 2012.

Long story short: this is ongoing process. Pls refer to your local legal team or local tax authorities for clarification, or wait a while until whole Germany is accepting these new options.

Regards, Michael

[sigi]

Hi,
in general it is possible in Germany to move away from storing physical receipts. You should work together with a local law/tax firm to check process and system setup. You should create a "process description" (German: Verfahrensbeschreibung). This also helps you to get clear about the overall process and this docuemnt can be stored and shown to the tax authorities when needed. If you work together with a law firm you can negotiate a liability level.

Also it is important where the data is stored. If it is stored on the EMEA data center it is much easier in the case for Germany. For the storage you have to request a formal agreement with the tax authorities. Here you can find a good reference document about Europe regulations per Country in general. https://www.psp.eu/media/allgemein/eu-compendium_e-invoicing_and_retention.pdf (This law/tax firm is also directly working togethere with SAP Concur here in Germany)
Best regards, Sigi