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Good to know

Our DATEV integration is available on selected plans only. Please contact your dedicated solutions contact or our support team if you are interested.

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DATEV Variants

Kombo currently offers 2 distinct DATEV integration variants:

• DATEV HR
• DATEV Lohnaustauschdatenservice (we call this DATEV LAUDS from here onwards)

The primary difference is the underlying API they use to synchronize employees into Kombo. DATEV HR uses the Lohnergebnisdatenservice API, which means it has access to payroll results on a monthly basis. DATEV LAUDS uses the Lohnaustauschdatenservice API, which means it has real-time access to the data in the payroll tool. DATEV LAUDS syncs faster, has access to more data points (e.g. email addresses, salary types, …) and comes with an easy-to-use write API. We recommend most new customers to use our new DATEV LAUDS integration.

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DATEV LAUDS limitations

For the following use cases we recommend you to use our DATEV HR integration:

• You require historical salary information (coming to LAUDS soon).
• You want to exclusively use the DATEV ASCII write interface and your end customers are very price sensitive (DATEV HR is 15 cents cheaper per employee per month for the end customer).

Everyone else should use or migrate to the new DATEV LAUDS variant.

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Implementation

Integrating with DATEV can be both challenging and rewarding. If you are planning to undertake a DATEV integration, we encourage you to reach out to us for assistance. For our enterprise-tier clients, we offer comprehensive support throughout the integration process. This includes help with generating the necessary files, explaining key concepts, and providing insights that are often overlooked. We also offer testing sessions and access to our production testing environment.

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Connecting DATEV integrations

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Creating a sandbox integration

To develop your integration with Kombo, you will connect DATEV at least a few times. DATEV offers a sandbox with some sample development data. Here is everything you need to know about that. Call our Create link endpoint. Specify the tool datevhr and enter the remote_environment SANDBOX. The other parameters are up to you. This will create a link to connect a DATEV sandbox account. Find the credentials for that here:

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In Kombo Connect

• System: any
• Consultant ID (Berater Nummer): 455148
• Client ID (Mandanten Nummer): 1

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In the DATEV popup

• Select login with DATEV Benutzerkonto
• Username: Test6
• Password: bTomu4cTKg

For development with DATEV LAUDS we recommend to use the credentials above only for testing the connection flow/setup. The example data contained in this sandbox, is not suited for any read/write implementation. We will provide your with our production equivalent sandbox instead, which is included in your Kombo contract, if you have the DATEV option.

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Creating a production integration

A detailed guide that you can share with your customer is available here. Since customers usually don’t have direct access to their DATEV instance (managed by their tax consultant), the consultant must enable specific DATEV services to access the required APIs. These services come with a nominal cost, typically passed on to the customer. Based on your scope config a combination of the following services is required:

• DATEV Lohnergebnisdatenservice (read payroll data)
• DATEV Lohnimportdatenservice (write payroll data)
• DATEV Lohnauswertungsdatenservice (read documents/payslips)
• DATEV Lohnaustauschdatenservice (read and write data in realtime + eAU)

We recommend having the tax consultant enable these services and provide the necessary credentials. Afterward, your customer can schedule a call to set up the connection together. While this process may seem complex, we see a high conversion rate, as tax consultants are typically well-versed in DATEV and benefit from the integration.

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Reading data from DATEV

DATEV can be used as the source of truth for employee data. It is particularly useful for tax-relevant and compensation data. However, it is important to note that some commonly required fields, such as email addresses and phone numbers, cannot be read from DATEV with the DATEV HR variant. Also, data with DATEV HR changes infrequently, usually once per month when the payroll run is done. Data is only available after a payroll run. This limitation may restrict the integration’s usefulness for many HRIS use cases. DATEV LAUDS, on the other hand, is a real-time data mirror of the underlying DATEV software. You will be able to read updates whenever the payroll clerks change the data and the sync finishes.

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Read employee data through unified API

You can fetch employee data from DATEV using our unified GET employees endpoint. The endpoint will return all employees that are available in DATEV. For some DATEV usecases you may want to extend our model for example with tax relevant data. You can use custom fields to achieve this. You can also use remote data to see all the available data. You can also reach out to our support to adjust our remote data model so it returns the data for all available months, which is particularly relevant for analytics.

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Documents / payslips

Documents can be downloaded with this endpoint. The response contains a download link to the document. The endpoint requires you to submit the employee_id. Alternatively you can passthrough a remote_id / Personalnummer by using remote:{Personalnummer}. The accounting month and the document type are also required. A list of available document types can be found here. Most common is payslips and the document type is LOBN.

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eAU

The electronic sick certificate is now available for publicly insured employees. Using our eAU API you can validate sick leaves. We offer the following endpoints:

• check if eAU is available
• create eAU request
• check eAU status

We wrote a detailed guide about the eAU process here.

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Writing data to DATEV

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Submitting the data to DATEV

Writing data to DATEV is done by one of two ways:

• LAUDS JSON API
• Legacy ASCII Interface

Kombo customers will get exclusive access to our extended DATEV LAUDS API documentation, including field requirements, dependencies and implementation recommendations. We currently offer documentation for the following use cases:

• Creating employees
• Updating employees
  • including compensation adjustments
  • including termination
• Submitting work hours/timesheets
• Submitting absences

The corresponding endpoint is available through our passthrough endpoint. Some use cases require access to tables and fields not available in the LAUDS API. For these we will assist you in generating ASCII files in DATEVs proprietary format. You can generate such files based on our use-case specific ASCII write documentation. Examples would be: bAV, company cars or bikes. Afterwards you can submit the files to DATEV using the POST ASCII endpoint. The necessary information to generate the file can be queried with the GET system-information endpoint.

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Importing data in DATEV

For DATEV LAUDS, the data gets imported automatically. If the tax advisor has the client already opened at the time of the data transfer, they need to close and reopen the program to see the changes. For the ASCII import, there are a few steps to import the files. First, open the Daten Übernehmen function and select ASCII-Import (the actual files are not in ASCII) When the form is open, instead of selecting a file Aus dem Rechenzentrum abrufen (Lohndatenimportservice). Now the user should be able to see all the files that were submitted.

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Tracking if files were imported

Our integration tracks if files that were submitted to DATEV were imported. Call our Get data pushes endpoint to receive all recent files with their status.