No need to re-enter what has already been posted.
ReportNow! reads the exports of the software you already work with. How a file is imported is quickly explained. This page goes into more detail on what happens to figures that do not add up.
Where the data comes from.
DATEV account ledger (Kontenblatt)
Postings with their dates, preceded by the trial balance
The import recognises opening balances by their date, the first day of the financial year, and by the balance brought forward account. The posting text is not enough for this; a loss carryforward, for instance, is not labelled “EB-Wert” there. Debtor and creditor accounts are not imported, because the account ledger shows every debtor and creditor posting a second time on the control account.
Lexware Office
Account export as ZIP or CSV
You can import the ZIP from the export directly. Balances brought forward on the first day of the financial year become opening balances; debtor and creditor accounts are left out, as with DATEV. The application describes how to create the export in Lexware Office step by step under Financials › Import.
Payroll
DATEV payroll report (LOPS-Auswertung “Personalkosten”), DLS export from the payroll software, for instance from Lexware Office
The import reads the month of a LOPS report from its header and compares it with the file name. If the two differ, this is reported, because payroll data in the wrong month shifts costs without any total giving it away. The DLS export (Digitale LohnSchnittstelle format, used for payroll audits) brings not only the wage types per person and month but also the employee data: master records, weekly working hours and gender, derived from the social security number. The import checks each person’s taxable gross pay against their payroll account. The export does not contain the employer’s contributions to health, long-term care and unemployment insurance; where possible, the import derives them from the employee’s contributions and marks them as derived.
Open items from DATEV
Customer item lists: the open items list and the cleared items list
DATEV supplies them as an HTML file with the extension .xls. The import therefore checks the content rather than the extension, and recognises from the file header whether it is the open or the cleared items list. From the open items list the Receivables module calculates the ageing, and from both together the days to pay.
E-invoices
XRechnung and ZUGFeRD, as XML or PDF
Both permitted syntaxes, CII and UBL, are read. An e-invoice is appended to the existing sales data. The CSV export of outgoing invoices, by contrast, replaces everything that came from earlier exports of the same company; appended e-invoices remain. If an invoice line already exists as an e-invoice, the export does not import it a second time and reports it as an issue. Credit notes are imported with the sign reversed.
Bank statements
CSV export from the bank, including Qonto
Because every bank names its columns differently, the import reads them by heading. For Qonto, the application describes how to get the file under Direct cash flow › Import. If the file contains the account balance and the opening balance has been entered, the statement balance check recalculates every row and names the day of the first difference.
CSV, general
Invoices, balances, postings, payroll data, employee master data, mappings, plan figures
What matters is the column heading, not the position of the column. Headings may be in German or English, or a mixture of both; the language of the interface makes no difference. If a column has a different name in your export, you map it once with “Map columns”. A sample file shows which columns are expected.
SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, Odoo
Further accounting and ERP systems
Each further system gets an import of its own; reports and setup stay the same. Which one comes first depends on what prospective customers work with. Tell us in the demo which software you use.
Preview first, then import.
Every import first shows a preview: which company and which period it applies to, and how many existing rows it replaces. Nothing is written until you click “Import”. Runs are logged, and each one can be deleted again together with its rows – for the accounting data, however, only as long as none of its months has been closed. Deleting a run does not bring back what it replaced.
- Only the months in the file are replaced. This applies to accounting and payroll data, per company. If you supply January again later, the other months are left untouched, and importing the same file twice gives the same result.
- Warning for cumulative balances. If, for three quarters of the accounts, the amount grows month by month and keeps its sign, the preview points out that the trial balance probably contains cumulative balances rather than monthly movements. You can still import it.
- Cross-check on import. For the DATEV account ledger, the import recalculates the trial balance in the same file from the postings; for the LOPS report, it recalculates the total costs from the individual cost types.
- Zero rows are not stored. A trial balance contains every account in every month, even without any movement. For the report, a row with 0 makes no difference.
Late postings do not change a closed month.
Between a company’s January and February exports, experience shows that dozens of January postings are added and a few disappear. Once you have reported on January, its figures should no longer change as a result.
To achieve this, you close the month for the company (Master data › Period). Every later accounting import then leaves it untouched and posts the difference per account to the next open month. There, the row shows the month it comes from. The closed month keeps its figures, and nothing is missing from the total across all months.
Why only the difference
The February export contains January again in full. If the whole of January were moved into February, it would appear twice in the year. Only the difference from the position at the time of closing is therefore moved.
Opening balances stay at the start of the financial year
Posted in May, an opening balance would appear in the balance sheet as a sudden addition. It is therefore never moved. If it differs from the stored value in a closed month, the preview shows this, and the new value is not imported.
A month can be reopened at any time
A closed month can be reopened. Rows that have already been moved to a later month are only brought back by the next import that contains this month.
Reclassifications as journal entries
You record a reclassification for reporting as a document with a contra entry, which must net to zero on its own. It sits alongside the imported balances and is kept through every further import.
Whatever does not add up is reported.
ReportNow! never silently discards a row and never fills in a mapping on a guess. Every inconsistency appears as an issue. That costs a few minutes during setup and prevents figures that look plausible and are still wrong.
Not assigned
An account with postings but no line appears as an issue on import. Below the report, a note in red says how many accounts are affected and what amount is missing as a result.
Deliberately excluded
Technical accounts used by the bookkeeping belong in no report. For them, you choose “in no statement” in the account range. They then appear in grey instead of red, so that nobody mistakes them for an open issue. The amount is still shown below the report.
No ticking off by hand
ReportNow! checks whether an issue has been dealt with by looking at the assignment. Once the account falls within an account range, the issue counts as resolved, and it disappears from the list with the next import.
Example: the balance brought forward accounts
DATEV carries the opening balance sheet on balance brought forward accounts (9000, 9008, 9009). If you assign them to a balance sheet line, the opening balances are counted twice, and the balance sheet still looks plausible. If you leave them unassigned, an issue remains that never goes away and at some point is wrongly “resolved”. That is why there is a third state, “in no statement”; the excluded amount is shown below the report.
You set up master data once.
When importing accounting data, ReportNow! creates new accounts and cost centres itself. A name you have corrected by hand is never overwritten by a later import. You assign accounts in ranges, such as “8000–8599 → Revenue”, and a narrower range takes precedence over a wider one. An exception therefore needs only a row of its own, and the general rule stays as it is.
- One cost centre catalogue for three modules. Financials, HR and Sales use the same numbers, maintained under Master data › Cost centres.
- You create dimensions yourself. In Sales you analyse by customer, item, country, revenue type or anything else you need. All it takes is to create the dimension and include a column with its name in the export.
- Derived dimensions need no column. Country per customer, product group per item or sales region per country come from mappings that you maintain once.
Bring an export with you.
In the demo we are happy to import one of your files. That way, in the 30 minutes you see your own figures instead of the sample company’s data.