The following article explains how our DATEV integration with LODAS and Lohn und Gehalt allows you to automate and easily run your monthly payroll.

How Does Monthly Payroll With DATEV Integration Work?

If you have activated DATEV integration, after completing the preliminary payroll in Personio you can transfer data to DATEV with the Lohnimportdatenservice and then import relevant documents into Personio using the Lohnauswertungsdatenservice. You can transfer the following data using the integration:

Your accountant will also need information about salary components (such as one-time compensations or bonus payments), absences and employee documents (such as sickness certificates). You will need to provide these to your accountant via an export of the preliminary payroll so that they can manually enter them into DATEV. 

Tip: We recommend that you give your accountant access to your preliminary payroll via a Personio profile so that they can pull this data themselves.

The Monthly Payroll Procedure With DATEV Integration

1. Check the data
   Go to the Payroll section and select a subcompany (if available). Check the flagged data changes for each employee in the Personal data, Salary and Absences tabs. Click on the relevant employee for more details on the data changes.
   

   Helpful hint: Validations flagged in red will help you amend many of the DATEV attributes. General attribute changes are flagged in orange in the payroll table.

2. Approve payroll
   Click on Approve payroll and confirm the approval in the pop-up window. The payroll table will be frozen and an export "Excel file" in the format "Payroll_MM_YYYY_number.xlsx" containing all the currently available data will be created. 
3. Create the DATEV export and send it to DATEV
   Click on Create export > Export LODAS/Lohn & Gehalt file. An ASCII export of the current personal data from all subcompanies will be created in the format "Payroll_MM_YYYY_LuG.txt". If you have set up the transfer of fixed salaries, the export will also contain these. In the Documents window, which will open automatically, click on Send to DATEV. The export will be sent to DATEV and your accountant will receive an automatic email notification of this. Further information: Exporting Master Data via the Lohnimportdatenservice
   

   Tip:
   Details for your accountant on how to feed the ASCII file into DATEV are available in the DATEV Help Center: for LODAS in document LODAS ASCII-Import (Fenster); and for Lohn und Gehalt under Datei aus dem Rechenzentrum zum Import auswählen (Selecting a file from the data center for import).

4. Send further information to your accountant
   Download the export "Excel file" created in step 2 under Documents and send it to your accountant together with any other payroll-relevant documents (such as medical certificates). 
   

   Tip: If you approve the payroll before the end of the payroll period, the Excel file and the DATEV export will not yet contain all the payroll-relevant data (such as absences or working hours that were approved later). To send the updated data to your accountant, create another "Excel file". If your accountant has access to Personio, they can pull this data themselves. An overview of the process on the accountant's side can be found in the corresponding best practice article.

5. Finish payroll in DATEV
   Your accountant will manually enter the required information, such as any further salary components and absences, into DATEV. Your accountant will let you know once payroll has been completed in DATEV and the relevant documents have been created. 
6. Import and check the documents
   Go to the Payroll section and select a subcompany (if available). Click on Retrieve documents in the payroll table. Check the documents in the preview, which you can access by clicking on View documents in the relevant employee column. The employee-related documents are assigned to the employees via the DATEV Personalnummer. To download all the employee and employer documents in one go, click on Documents. Further information: Importing Documents via the Lohnauswertungsdatenservice
7. Distribute documents to employees
   Click on Distribute documents to distribute the checked documents in the Documents > Payroll tab of the employee profiles.