Welcome: a blog about receipts, taxes and getting out of the shoebox

Somewhere between client work and the end of the day, almost every self-employed person has a place where receipts go: a drawer, an envelope, a folder in the inbox, the classic shoebox. They wait there until the accountant asks or the VAT return is due. This blog is written for the people who know that place and would like to get rid of it without studying bookkeeping first.

Who we write for

We write for freelancers, sole traders and owners of small companies in Germany and across Europe: the designer with three clients, the IT consultant with a small limited company, the photographer, the trades business with two employees. People who are good at their work and still experience tax as a necessary evil. You probably have an accountant (in Germany, a Steuerberater) or are thinking about getting one. You do not want to take their work away; you want to make it easier, so it costs you less and produces fewer questions.

You do not need to know tax law for that. You do need to know a handful of things about receipts that no start-up guide tells you and that still add up to real money every year: which details a receipt must show, how long you have to keep it, what is different about invoices from abroad, and why your accountant is so fond of one particular file format.

What arrives every week

A new post goes out every Tuesday, in English and in German. The topics revolve around four areas:

• Tax: VAT, input VAT, deadlines, mandatory invoice details, the small business exemption, e-invoicing. What the law requires, with a link to the law.
• Bookkeeping: how to file receipts so your accountant can book them without asking. Charts of accounts, document numbers, DATEV exports, the German GoBD record-keeping rules.
• Finance: reserves for taxes, prepayments, cash at quarter-end, the hourly rate that already has tax built in.
• Europe: what works differently in France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria or the UK when you have clients or work there.

Posts are short enough for a coffee break and concrete enough that you do something differently afterwards. Each one ends with a section called "What this means for you".

The rules we hold ourselves to

Tax content on the internet is often outdated or simply wrong. We therefore stick to three rules, and you are welcome to hold us to them:

Tip: whenever a post states a number, a threshold, a deadline, a percentage, there is a link to the official source next to it and the date on which the number applied. When the law changes, the number changes. Check it before you build on it.

First: every number has a source. We link to the law text, the German Federal Ministry of Finance, the Federal Central Tax Office, or the corresponding authorities in other EU countries. Below every post you will find the list of sources we used.

Second: we do not give individual advice. What you read here is general information. Whether a rule applies to your situation can only be judged by someone who knows your numbers, which in Germany means your Steuerberater or the tax office. A fixed note under every post is there to remind you.

Third: we do not make things up. No invented user numbers, no promises about tax savings, no features that do not exist. When we explain at the end of a post how Bonro helps with a topic, we describe what the app actually does today.

The four ground rules for a tax-ready pile of receipts

Before we go into detail over the coming weeks, here is the short version of what makes a pile of receipts "tax-ready". Everything else builds on it.

1. Capture the receipt on the day you get it. Not at month-end, not before the VAT return. A slip that has spent two weeks in a jacket pocket is often unreadable, and the reason for the purchase is forgotten. A photo at the till solves both problems.

2. Check the mandatory details while you are still in the shop. In Germany, small amounts need only a few details; larger ones need an invoice in your name. If something is missing, it takes a minute at the till and is impossible at year-end.

3. Give every receipt a category, and always the same one. Office supplies are office supplies even when you bought them at the supermarket this time. Consistent categories are what your accountant later maps to accounts. Every exception costs a question.

4. Hand over in the format your accountant imports. In Germany that is usually a DATEV booking batch, in France an FEC file, in the Netherlands an Auditfile. A folder of photos is a task for the accounting firm; a clean export file is a task already done.

And one rule that needs no place in the list because it outlasts everything: keep invoices for eight years (§ 14b UStG, as of October 2026). The general record-keeping duties for businesses in Germany are set out in § 147 AO. Digital storage is allowed if the document stays complete, unchanged and readable. Thermal paper rarely manages that; a photo does.

What this means for you

• Choose one place for receipts, digital, and use only that.
• Photograph receipts immediately, not in batches.
• For amounts above the small-amount limit, ask in the shop for an invoice in your name.
• Agree with your accountant which file format their software imports, and deliver exactly that.
• Subscribe to the RSS feed if you do not want to miss the Tuesday post.

Bonro grew out of exactly these four rules: you photograph the receipt, text recognition runs on your device, the fields are proposed and stay editable, the category is assigned consistently, and at the end there is a DATEV, FEC or Auditfile export your accountant imports directly. The posts of the coming weeks explain the rules behind it. Try Bonro