GoBD compliance: what German businesses need to know

What is GoBD?

GoBD — *Grundsätze zur ordnungsmäßigen Führung und Aufbewahrung von Büchern, Aufzeichnungen und Unterlagen in elektronischer Form* — are Germany's rules for managing and storing financial records digitally. Issued by the Bundesministerium der Finanzen, they apply to every business liable for tax in Germany.

In plain terms: if you keep books electronically (which almost everyone does), GoBD defines how your accounting software must work and what your obligations are during a tax audit.

The seven core principles

GoBD requires that your financial records satisfy seven properties:

• **Completeness** — every transaction must be recorded without exception
• **Correctness** — entries must accurately reflect the underlying transaction
• **Timeliness** — records must be created promptly after the transaction occurs
• **Order** — records must be structured and retrievable within a reasonable time
• **Unchangeability** — once posted, entries must not be silently altered
• **Traceability** — every change must carry a timestamp and user identity
• **Auditability** — tax authorities must be able to access data on request

Document retention periods

The clock starts at the end of the calendar year in which the document was created. Deleting records before the retention period expires is a GoBD violation.

Electronic invoices and GoBD since 2025

Since January 2025, XRechnung and ZUGFeRD are mandatory for B2B invoices to public-sector clients. From 2027, the obligation extends to all B2B transactions. GoBD requires these e-invoices to be stored in their original machine-readable format — printing the PDF and discarding the XML is not compliant.

The Z1/Z2/Z3 data access requirement

During a *Betriebsprüfung* (tax audit), the Finanzamt has the right to access your accounting data at one of three levels:

1. 1**Z1 (direct access)** — the auditor uses your system directly
2. 2**Z2 (indirect access)** — you provide a read-only view and run queries on request
3. 3**Z3 (data transfer)** — you export data in DATEV or GoBD-XML format

Most SMEs satisfy this through DATEV export, which your Steuerberater can pull on request.

How Finovo meets GoBD requirements

Finovo is designed to satisfy GoBD out of the box:

1. 1Every transaction is timestamped with an immutable audit trail
2. 2Document edits are logged with user identity — no silent overwrites
3. 3Invoices are stored in their original format, including XRechnung XML and ZUGFeRD PDF/A-3
4. 4One-click DATEV export satisfies Z3 data access requests
5. 5Data is stored in EU-based data centres (Frankfurt) for the full retention period

If your Finanzamt requests a GoBD export, your Steuerberater can pull it directly from your Finovo workspace.