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:

Furthermore, your payroll accountant requires information on other salary components, absences and employee documents (for example: sickness certificates). These must also be made available and sent to the payroll accountant via an export of the preliminary payroll so that they can enter them manually in DATEV. 

Tip
We recommend that you give your payroll 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

Step 1: Check data

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

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

Step 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" containing all the currently available data will be created.

Step 3: Create a DATEV export for fixed salaries and personal info and send it to DATEV

Click on Create export > LODAS/Lohn & Gehalt > Personal data, Fixed salaries. If you have set up the transfer of fixed salaries, these are also included in the export. In the Documents window that opens automatically, click on Send to DATEV. The export is sent to DATEV and your payroll accountant receives an automatic email notification. Further information: Exporting Master Data via the Lohnimportdatenservice. 

Notes
▶︎ If you use accounting groups, the DATEV exports for each accounting group will need to be exported individually during preliminary payroll and transferred to DATEV. You can find out what needs to be taken into account in our article Using Accounting Groups With the DATEV Integration. 
▶︎ Once the employment relationship of an employee has ended and they are, thus, considered terminated, they will not be included in the DATEV export from the accounting month that follows the termination, and their data will not be sent to DATEV.

Tip
Details on how your payroll accountant can feed the export 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).

Step 4: Create a DATEV export for one-time compensations and send it to DATEV

Click on Create export > LODAS/Lohn & Gehalt > One-time compensations. In the Documents window that opens automatically, click on Send to DATEV. The export is sent to DATEV and your payroll accountant receives an automatic email notification. Further information: Export of One-Time Compensations With the DATEV Integration.

Step 5: Send further information to your payroll accountant

Download the "Excel file" export created in step 2 under Documents and send it to your payroll accountant together with any other payroll-relevant documents (such as sickness 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 payroll accountant, create another Excel file. If your payroll accountant has access to Personio, they can pull this data themselves. You can find an overview of the process on the payroll accountant's side in the corresponding best practice article.

Step 6: Finish payroll in DATEV

Your payroll accountant will manually enter the required information, such as any further salary components and absences, into DATEV. Your payroll accountant will let you know once payroll has been completed in DATEV and the relevant documents have been created. 

Step 7: 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.

Step 8: Distribute documents to employees

Click on Distribute Documents to distribute the checked documents to the Documents tab > Payroll of the employee profiles.