✓ Month-end close & pay · 3 min read
Setting up the DATEV export
The DATEV export is included in the Pro plan. Zeitflex generates two formats: LODAS and Lohn und Gehalt. Your payroll office knows which one is yours — ask them before you set anything up.
What you need from your payroll office
Without these four details, the export does not work:
| Detail | What it is |
|---|---|
| Adviser number (Beraternummer) | the DATEV number of your tax adviser (7 digits) |
| Client number (Mandantennummer) | your number at this tax adviser |
| Format | LODAS or Lohn und Gehalt |
| Wage types | which number for hours, overtime and each premium |
Call once and ask exactly for these. The call takes five minutes and saves you three failed attempts.
Step by step
- Open Settings → Payroll & export.
- Choose the Format.
- Enter the Adviser number (Beraternummer) and Client number (Mandantennummer).
- Assign the wage types: basic hours, overtime, night, Sunday and public holiday premium.
- Save.
- Close a month and download the file (Month-end close, step 4).
- Send the file to your payroll office as a test before you use it for a real payroll run.
The result: A file your payroll office can import — with the encoding and file naming convention DATEV expects.
Personnel numbers must match
The most common reason why an import in the payroll software fails: the personnel number in Zeitflex is different from the one in DATEV.
For each person under Employees, enter exactly the number your payroll office uses. Not “1, 2, 3”, but the real one.
If your payroll office does not use DATEV
Two out of three small businesses do not work with DATEV. For all other programs — Lexware, Sage, Agenda, edlohn, SBS — there is the CSV export (from Starter). It contains the same values in a generally readable table.
Troubleshooting
| Message in the payroll software | Cause |
|---|---|
| “Mandant unbekannt” (client unknown) | Adviser or client number wrong |
| “Personalnummer nicht gefunden” (personnel number not found) | Numbers do not match |
| “Lohnart unbekannt” (wage type unknown) | Wage type mapping missing or wrong |
| Umlauts garbled | File was opened in Excel in between and saved again |
The last point happens more often than you would think: download the file and forward it without opening it.
Still stuck?
If your tax adviser is to collect the files directly instead of receiving them by email: Inviting your tax adviser.
Last checked on . We check every article against the application — if something no longer matches, that is a bug and not a difference of opinion.
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