Updated: May 2026
mika is like software and a tax firm in one: you work directly in the app, mika's AI handles the bookkeeping, the Umsatzsteuervoranmeldung (the monthly VAT return), the Jahresabschluss (the annual financial statement), the balance sheet and all three tax returns, and trained bookkeepers do the quality control.
DATEV is the cooperatively owned IT infrastructure of German Steuerberater firms (Steuerberater are licensed tax advisors, a regulated profession). As a managing director you do not use it directly. At most you deliver into it through the client portal DATEV Unternehmen Online, and the actual bookkeeping happens on the firm's side.
DATEV is established, technically mature and has been the standard back end of the German tax advisory profession for 60 years. The cooperative bundles software and a data centre for tax firms and gives their clients delivery portals such as DATEV Unternehmen Online, so that receipts, bank data and reports can flow between the client and the firm. The model is clear: DATEV programs such as DATEV Rechnungswesen or DATEV Jahresabschluss sit on the firm's side, and as a business owner you see the report once your firm releases it.
A GmbH, UG or AG is required to prepare accounts: double entry bookkeeping, a balance sheet, a profit and loss account, corporate income tax, trade tax, the annual VAT return and publication in the Bundesanzeiger (the German federal gazette). In the DATEV model you do not do any of that yourself, your firm does. DATEV Unternehmen Online is the door you throw receipts through. The journal entry, the account assignment, the Umsatzsteuervoranmeldung, the Jahresabschluss: your firm does all of it. That is not wrong, it is how the system is designed.
mika is like software and a tax firm in one. With mika's AI you get the receipt checks, the account assignment, the ongoing bookkeeping, the Umsatzsteuervoranmeldung, the Jahresabschluss, the balance sheet, the profit and loss account and the corporate income tax, trade tax and annual VAT returns. Trained bookkeepers (Steuerfachangestellte and Bilanzbuchhalter, the German bookkeeping qualifications) do the quality control. You file straight from mika, without your own ELSTER certificate. For the routine you do not need a Steuerberater on top. If you want to keep an existing relationship with a firm, you keep it and use mika for the ongoing bookkeeping. The DATEV EXTF export is available at any time.
The usual feature table compares what tools can do. This table compares what you, as the managing director of a GmbH, want to have finished at the end.
DATEV Unternehmen Online captures receipts solidly: web upload, app, or through the firm's scanning centre. Text recognition extracts amounts, dates and suppliers. What the portal does not check: whether the receipt is formally correct. A wrong or missing tax number, a mandatory detail missing under section 14 UStG (the German VAT Act), a wrong VAT rate: none of that surfaces until your firm looks at it while booking, or until the Finanzamt (the German tax office) asks. In its 2026 DATEV review, omkb.de sums up complexity and a steep learning curve as the typical criticisms of the DUO workflow.
At mika the AI checks every receipt for the VAT rate, the recipient, the address and the mandatory details under section 14 UStG. Where there is doubt, the bookkeepers take a look. That saves corrections later on and it saves real money. A missing tax number or a wrong VAT rate on a supplier invoice costs you the 19 percent input VAT refund on the invoice amount. On €500 of goods purchased that is €95, simply gone.
Account assignment, meaning putting every booking on an account such as "office supplies" or "marketing costs", is the real craft of bookkeeping. In the DATEV workflow that work sits with the firm. You upload receipts to DATEV Unternehmen Online, your firm assigns the accounts in DATEV Rechnungswesen and hands the report back to you. That works, and it is the main cost driver in many GmbHs: every receipt, every booking and every correction is billed under the German fee schedule for Steuerberater. In a small GmbH with 50 to 100 receipts a month that quickly adds up to four or five figures a year.
Anyone who prepares the account assignment in DUO themselves and only wants the firm to post it runs into the same problem as with any other pre-accounting software: if you do not understand the bookkeeping logic, you assign accounts wrongly, and your firm rebooks everything at the end of the year. That costs considerably more than the DUO licence, often several times as much.
With mika's AI the account assignment happens automatically at line item level, even on complex invoices with different VAT rates, a catering invoice with 7 percent on the food and 19 percent on the service for example. Trained bookkeepers do the quality control. You do not need any prior bookkeeping knowledge.
Something many people underestimate: since April 2026 mika has run its own bookkeeping ledger, independent of DATEV, and allows custom HGB accounts on top of SKR03 and SKR04. In practice that means: if your business does not fit the standard charts of accounts, say a holding with three subsidiaries, a SaaS business with staggered revenue recognition or a product mix with one-off revenue, you can set up your own accounts and structures in mika that match your reality. In the DATEV model that traditionally goes through the firm, with all the cost that implies.
This is the decisive question that the DUO workflow often obscures. DATEV Unternehmen Online is a delivery portal. It transmits nothing to the Finanzamt. The Umsatzsteuervoranmeldung, the payroll tax return and every annual tax return are filed by your firm over DATEV's ELSTER interface, not by you, and not by DUO.
With mika the AI calculates the Umsatzsteuervoranmeldung from the bookings, the bookkeepers check it and you approve it. You can file straight from mika and you do not need your own ELSTER certificate for it.
This is where the fundamental difference shows most clearly. In the DATEV model the Jahresabschluss is classic work for the firm: your firm uses DATEV Jahresabschluss or the DATEV Mittelstand programs and bills under the fee schedule. You get the finished document in October or November, often with follow-up questions, and almost always for a separate fee.
With mika you get the complete Jahresabschluss in the "Bookkeeping and financial statements" plan. The balance sheet, the profit and loss account and the notes under HGB (the German Commercial Code) are prepared from the ongoing bookkeeping, you approve them as the managing director and you file them. You do not need your own ELSTER certificate for it. The Bundesanzeiger XML for publication is included. For the eBilanz (the electronic balance sheet filing) mika works together with eBilanzPlus.
For companies that want to write their own invoices, DATEV offers DATEV Mittelstand Faktura mit Rechnungswesen compact. A compact software solution, installed locally, with invoicing and accounting in one package. E-invoices under EN 16931 (XRechnung, ZUGFeRD) are supported. The software is solid, but it follows classic DATEV logic: local installation, a learning curve and a licence price from the DATEV price list.
At mika quotes and invoices are built in, in the cloud, GDPR compliant on AWS Frankfurt. E-invoicing under EN 16931, XRechnung and ZUGFeRD are standard. Every invoice also carries a QR code for instant payment from a banking app. In our experience customers pay faster, because they do not have to type out an IBAN and a payment reference first. You settle open invoices in a payment run straight from mika, without switching to online banking.
If you have freelancers submitting receipts every month, or employees paying with their own card, you need a clear workflow. mika has a native 5-step process for it: enter the expense, validate the receipts, confirm, pay, done. External people submit through a public one-time link, without a mika login. Expenses without a receipt (tips, parking fees) you record with a description. Everything stays in the app. mika's AI assigns the expense to the right account automatically and the reimbursement is recorded as a payment. No double entry, no CSV export.
At DATEV this runs through separate modules such as DATEV Reisekosten or DATEV Arbeitnehmer online, depending on the firm's setup. It works, but it is an additional DATEV program with its own licence, its own training and its own workflow between you, your employees and the firm.
mika is the first German bookkeeping solution with a native MCP server (Model Context Protocol) officially operated by the vendor, for Claude, ChatGPT and other LLM clients. Since March 2026, read-only, for every customer. You connect your AI tools straight to your mika data and ask bookkeeping questions with your real numbers as context. You ask Claude or ChatGPT: "how much cash will I have next month after the Umsatzsteuervoranmeldung?" or "which single supplier am I paying the most?" The answer comes out of your data, not off the internet.
On the DATEV side, February 2026 brought the DATEV Copilot, the successor to the DATEV GPT prototype. The Copilot bundles AI functions such as text generation, document analysis, translation, research and anonymisation. Worth knowing: the Copilot is built primarily for day-to-day work inside the firm, so for Steuerberater and their staff, not for clients (DATEV AI overview). An officially operated, native MCP server for external LLM clients is not part of the DATEV portfolio.
On top of that there is the mika Agent in the app. It has access to your own data and answers concrete questions like "why does this invoice have a to-do?", "show me all AWS invoices from Q3" or "what do I owe the Finanzamt this month?". The mika Agent also turns letters from the authorities into clear instructions. A letter from the Finanzamt saying "section 152 AO late filing penalty" becomes: "you filed the Umsatzsteuervoranmeldung late, the Finanzamt wants €50, and here is the deadline for appealing."
If you are in the middle of founding a GmbH or UG, the first few weeks are administrative routine: the Fragebogen zur steuerlichen Erfassung (the tax registration questionnaire), applying for a tax number, preparing an opening balance sheet.
mika solves the tax registration simply. You upload your incorporation documents, the wizard asks you a few questions, and after 10 to 15 minutes you can file. If you become a mika customer it is free. If not, it costs €49 one-off. In the DATEV workflow this is likewise a service of the firm, commissioned separately and billed under the fee schedule.
Three special cases that come up often in mika's audience: payroll for a growing GmbH, ecommerce with Stripe volume, and strategic tax questions where the advice goes beyond the routine.
DATEV is respected as an institution in bookkeeping and is often the only realistic option for a Steuerberater. On user experience from the client's side the picture is more mixed. On Trustpilot DATEV has low ratings, mostly from business owners who work with DATEV Unternehmen Online and find the interface technically dated, slow and the support hard to reach. In its 2026 DATEV review omkb.de confirms the typical criticism: complexity, a steep learning curve, a design that takes getting used to.
None of that is surprising. DATEV is designed as a tool for tax firms. When you look into software as a business owner and client, and that software was optimised for your Steuerberater, it feels like a bookkeeping workshop. Which is exactly what DATEV is.
mika sits at 4.2 out of 5 stars on Trustpilot. Niels Laupert, managing director of JUMPSEAT, describes a typical moment of switching: "record speed! For the first time in 12 years we filed on time." That is exactly the difference between the DATEV plus firm workflow and mika: with one of them you are waiting on the firm in October, with the other the statement reached the Finanzamt long ago.
DATEV pricing is famously hard for end customers to see through. The official DATEV price list for companies lists individual modules, but the real total is made up of several components: the DUO base fee, individual cloud applications, the bank data service, plus whatever your firm charges on top under the German fee schedule for Steuerberater. That follows from the cooperative model: the firm is your billing partner, DATEV supplies the infrastructure.
Plus your Steuerberater under the fee schedule. DATEV modules without a firm make practically no sense for a GmbH, because the workflow is built around the firm.
Under the StBVV, the German fee schedule that sets what a Steuerberater may charge, the mid-range fee for a GmbH works out at:
A GmbH with a balance sheet total of €2.5 million and 10 employees pays €24,298/year to its Steuerberater at the StBVV mid-range fee.
mika scales with bank transactions per month, not with revenue and not with complexity. Six clear bands between €49 and €549 per month, anything above that as an individual quote.
Standard plan (agencies, consultancies, B2B and B2C SaaS, ecommerce with Pathway, real estate either purely commercial or purely private):
Three typical profiles show what this means in practice for a GmbH. The revenue and headcount figures are rough indications for service GmbHs (agencies, consultancies, SaaS).
DATEV is not the wrong tool, it is the right tool for a different situation. Specifically:
For mika's typical audience, meaning a GmbH or UG with up to 30 employees, no internal finance team and no close tie to a Steuerberater, DATEV is the more complicated option: two worlds, two contracts, two invoices, and at the end of it your firm does the actual bookkeeping with DATEV in the background.
For a GmbH, UG or AG, mika is the right choice if you want bookkeeping off your plate as a task. mika is like software and a tax firm in one. With mika the bookkeeping takes care of itself, including the Jahresabschluss, the balance sheet and the tax returns. Trained bookkeepers quality check the ongoing books. The "Bookkeeping and financial statements" plan starts at €99 a month.
DATEV is the right choice if you want to keep the classic workflow with a DATEV firm and only digitise the receipt upload. DATEV is your firm's world, mika is the world built for you. If you do not want that division of labour, mika is the obvious choice.
As of May 2026.
mika has made my life so much easier and more efficient!
No. You do not need your own ELSTER certificate. You never have to log into ELSTER.
Yes, on the question that decides it: do I need DATEV plus a Steuerberater, or can a GmbH meet its accounting obligations straight out of an AI solution? mika does the ongoing bookkeeping, the Umsatzsteuervoranmeldung, the Jahresabschluss and the corporate income tax, trade tax and annual VAT returns from the app, with bookkeepers doing the quality control and with direct filing. If, as a GmbH, you have only ever needed DATEV compatibility because your Steuerberater uses DATEV, mika replaces the whole setup.
It works mid financial year too. mika imports your master data and open items and takes over the ongoing bookkeeping from a date of your choosing. If the Jahresabschluss is still open, you do it with mika retroactively. The switch usually takes 14 days. You talk to your current firm about taking your data with you, and you have a legal right to it.
DATEV Unternehmen Online (DUO) is the delivery portal for the ongoing bookkeeping of your GmbH or your business. You upload receipts and the firm processes them. DATEV Meine Steuern is the equivalent portal for private tax matters (income tax), so for individuals working with a Steuerberater. Neither is a bookkeeping solution in its own right, they are client portals for the firm.
The DATEV Copilot was introduced in February 2026 as the successor to DATEV GPT and bundles AI functions such as text generation, document analysis, research and anonymisation. It is built primarily for Steuerberater and workflows inside the firm, not for end clients. Over the course of 2026 it is being integrated step by step into the DATEV cloud applications.
DATEV Unternehmen Online comes to around €11.28 net per month, and additional modules such as Belege online and the bank data service are often added on top. Those are only the DATEV software costs, though. The actual work (account assignment, the Umsatzsteuervoranmeldung, the Jahresabschluss) is done by your firm and billed under the German fee schedule for Steuerberater. So the total is DATEV modules plus the firm's fee.
It is included in the "Bookkeeping and financial statements" plan, staggered by transactions per month: €99 at up to 25, €199 at up to 50, €549 at up to 150. A small GmbH with up to 25 transactions per month pays around €1,188/year for the complete bookkeeping plus the Jahresabschluss plus all three big tax returns. For comparison, under the StBVV (the German fee schedule for Steuerberater): a GmbH with a balance sheet total of €2.5 million and 10 employees pays a mid-range €24,298/year to its Steuerberater.
Yes. mika exports your bookkeeping in the DATEV EXTF format at any time. You can hand the data to your Steuerberater without mika locking you in.
For the routine (the ongoing bookkeeping, the Umsatzsteuervoranmeldung, the Jahresabschluss, the balance sheet, corporate income tax, trade tax, the annual VAT return) mika is enough. If you need strategic tax advice, for complex shareholder structures or cross-border matters for example, mika will match you with a partner Steuerberater. A common setup: mika for the routine, your own Steuerberater for the strategy. The DATEV EXTF export is available at any time.
With mika the Jahresabschluss is included in the "Bookkeeping and financial statements" plan. The pricing scales with transactions per month: €99 at up to 25 transactions, €199 at up to 50, €549 at up to 150. So a small GmbH with up to 25 transactions per month pays around €1,188 per year for the complete bookkeeping plus the Jahresabschluss plus all three big tax returns. A typical agency with 50 transactions per month pays €2,388/year. For comparison: under the StBVV, the German fee schedule for Steuerberater, a GmbH with a balance sheet total of €2.5 million and 10 employees pays a mid-range €24,298/year to its Steuerberater, and over €40,000 at the top end.
By July after the end of the financial year. At classic firms it often takes until October or longer, because the financial statement is scheduled as a separate job. At mika it is part of the package and takes shape continuously out of the data that has already been checked.
Yes. Since March 2026 mika has had a native, official MCP server (read-only) for every customer. You connect Claude, ChatGPT or another MCP-compatible tool straight to your mika data and ask bookkeeping questions with your real numbers as context.
GmbHs, UGs and AGs in agencies (IT, design, marketing, software), recruiting, SaaS, professional services, ecommerce (with the Pathway integration), property management, holding companies and bricks-and-mortar retail with a digital till. Not supported are freelancers, a GbR (a German civil law partnership), sole traders, trading firms, crypto companies and gambling.
All data on German servers, GDPR compliant, AWS infrastructure in Frankfurt. mika is built along the GoBD principles for proper bookkeeping in electronic form. Authentication with two-factor (a TOTP authenticator app).